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Home for Christmas
A story in Six Installments
Based upon the real-life experiences of a Rhode Island Family
Interviews by Paula Andreason of The East Bay Coalition for the Homeless
Written by The Rev. Dr. Leslie S. Simonson
Interim Pastor - Hope Congregational Church,
United Church of Christ East Providence, Rhode Island
Chapter Two - To Grandma's House We Go
They would take Joel home from the hospital today. Almost impossible to believe. The sense of celebration was intense.
"Each day felt like forever" said Mona, his wife, to the discharge nurse. "But thank you for your care of him. You all were wonderful."
David opened the car door as Dad slowly made his way from wheelchair to passenger seat. Once again, it was Libby's borrowed car that Mona was driving. No way could Joel yet make the climb up into their own truck. When he raised either arm above his shoulder, sharp pains still shot down his whole left side, from neck to knee.
It had been an exhausting four weeks: First, the gut-wrenching fear of ICU, then cautious hope following surgery, then persistent physical therapy - A month of mounting medical bills with no end of them in sight. Thanksgiving dinner was the best that a hospital cafeteria could provide, but everybody had poked at their food and pretended to enjoy it. Or at least that's what their son John remembered. Mona didn't remember much about any details of those days. It was one long, gray blur, edged in anxious red.
"We are so deep in debt now," she thought, "so far in the red that we will never get out." No health insurance came with Joel's job. It would be workers' comp - which Fred, the foreman, promised would kick in "any day now." The hospital would take its fees on the installment plan. The Carpenter's extended family rallied around. Mona, Joel and their children would just tighten their belts even tighter. The Carpenters had long ago cut out luxuries. But maybe some of the necessities weren't as necessary as everybody thought.
"Mona, you missed the turn," Joel said, interrupting these anxieties. "It was a left back there to pick up Route 44."
Who would be the first to tell him? There was silence, while they all looked at each other to decide who would be brave. And then it all tumbled out at once.
"The flight of stairs to our bedroom is really too much right now" said Mona, trying to ease into the news gently..
"We don't live there any more, dad." Young Johnnie always went straight to the point.
"We couldn't pay the mortgage," added David. "But I've got a job after school starting on Monday."
Silence again…as Joel tried to take it in.
"The bank called on Mom's birthday, " David continued, "to foreclose on our house."
"Some birthday present that was!" said Johnnie. Joel had never heard such bitterness in his son's voice before.
"Grandma's place is on the first floor, remember? You and Mom have her bedroom now. She and I share the couch bed. And I can see the Christmas lights in all the stores out the living room window." That was their Rhaenna, ever the optimist.
Joel sat there, stunned, trying to take it all in. They were going home.
That was the good news. But they had no home anymore to go to. They were going to be as stuffed as a sausage… six of them in a one-person apartment, and the baby another month closer to birth. Why had nobody told him? Thirteen years in their one home, and not even a good-bye to it! How could banks behave like this when you were in the hospital? Where was their furniture? He hoped to God that Mona had done no lifting and hauling in her condition. How did the kids get to school? What 'after school job?' Who had hired a thirteen-year-old? Joel's mind was reeling. He mustn't say the wrong thing now to his distraught wife and children.
As his head began to pound, and the pain worked its way down his left arm again, he held himself still and made himself smile. And when he finally replied he said, "Remind me to never again tell a bad mother-in-law joke. This is very very, generous of Anna."
Their truck was in the driveway when they pulled in. That familiar friend reassured him a little. Neighborhood dogs barked their welcome, or their warning, depending. Anna was waiting at the door. David rushed to help his dad get stabilized on his four-footed cane. Rhaenna attended to her mom, who found getting out of a car these days, with her growing girth, to be just as awkward as getting in. John ran hunting for where he'd left his soccer ball.
"Some things are still normal," thought Joel as he watched his youngest son disappear in a flash. "We'll get things back to normal soon," he silently promised them all; then began his slow, laborious walk to Anna's open door.
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But "normal" would be a long time coming.
Even Rhaenna's optimism faltered when certain realities began to set in. She was no longer at the same school as her best friend Lori. John had to change schools, too, and was therefore no longer the rising star of his soccer team. David's after school job amounted to his own lunch money, his own shoes and, therefore, less drain on the family finances, but it didn't trickle down to Rhaenna herself, as far as she could see.
There was no room in Grandma's apartment for a tree and its trimmings even if there had been money to buy one. It was going to be a mighty lean Christmas for the Carpenters while everybody else went merrily about their "ho, ho, ho."
"Everybody else isn't rich, you know. There are a lot of kids like us, without much money" said David to his cranky kid sister. "They just don't put them on T.V."
"You have money," Rhaenna snapped.
"It's so Mom won't worry about expenses so much," said David. "It's not for throwing around at the movies or the mall. Or hoarding from everybody else."
Rhaenna relented a little. David had not been to the movies with his friends in months. He had focused even more of his very spare "spare time" on his Scout activities, instead. Johnnie had pretended there was no point to new sneakers until next spring, when there would be a new soccer season. They were going to draw names out of a hat for the holidays. One gift to each family member. Only one present for each person to find. Extra points for creativity, and a gift that cost nothing at all.
Rhaenna missed Lori a lot. It was hard being ten years old without a best friend to talk to. And there was so much she needed to unload.
She was even missing Dad again. For, strictly against doctors' orders, Joel had returned to work.
"Much too early!" Mona firmly agreed with the doctors. And for too little money. The compromise they had reached was that Joel would accept an assistant to do the actual lifting of cargo. Joel himself would be the driver only…which further reduced his income, of course, but he was too proud to sign up for income assistance on any government plan.
"Less money for longer hauls" he agreed. "But I've always supported my family and I'm not going to stop now."
In truth, Joel was not making longer hauls. Even he had to admit that his stamina did not hold out for them. The truth was he was sleeping in the truck even when he wasn't driving it. Mona accepted the long-distance story. Or at least he thought she did. Maybe not. She was a hard woman to fool. But Mona was also realistic about the pressures that such crowding, in her mother's place, was causing. . One less person in the tight apartment meant a little less tension around the table. Anna had her own bed back. Rhaenna, and Mona, and the ever-expanding unborn, now shared the couch. David was out and about as much as he could manage. As long as the snow held off, his bicycle could keep him in contact with some of his former school buddies. They did not have to become "former friends." Johnnie just looked a little lost most of the time.
But they would make do.
Grandma rounded up her brood one Sunday morning and said, "It's time we perked up a little around here. And there's nothing quite like the lift to the spirits that you get with good music. So everybody get scrubbed and dressed. We're going to church."
"Church?" said David, groggily, from his bed. "We don't do church."
"What church?" asked Rhaenna, wondering if it would be Lori's church and they could hang out together afterwards.
"What music?" asked Johnnie, who wasn't much for the classics.
"What church?" echoed Mona.
"The church you used to go to as a child" said Grandma to her grown daughter. "The church you were married in, if you remember."
Mona could have done without that particular tone in her mother's voice.
But Anna went on. "The church that paid your last utility bill at your house. And the church that sends me home with canned goods and cereal every Sunday so that we have food on this table. That church."
"I didn't know that we…that they…."
"How do you think these children have anything more than school lunches each day?" Anna was really on a roll now.
Rhaenna could overhear the voices rising. "Mom, let's go say 'thank you.' And maybe I'll find Lori there, too." She ran off to rouse her lumpy big brother out of bed.
"Now that's the spirit" said Anna. "We've got a full hour to get ready, if we stop talking about it and just get going."
"Mom, wait. Listen to me a minute. This is embarrassing. Needing the help, taking their money and their food, not having been there in so long…"
"We don't have to sit together. They don't have to know it's you." "Mother, stop it! Of course we'll sit with you. We're not ashamed of you."
"And there's no need to be ashamed of yourselves, either."
There it was, right out there. Named.
"Joel is so set against taking charity, Mom."
"Now you listen, Mona. You've been hard working people all your lives. You are raising your children to be the same. David's not in there sleeping off a Saturday night binge. Your thirteen year-old went looking for a job without anybody even suggesting the idea. This is not a set of handouts to be ashamed of."
"But…"
"No buts about it. Why do you think the billboards call it a big food bank? What's a bank for? You put money in when you've got it. You take money out when you need it. Same with food. It's all very simple, Mona. Not so hard as you think. Things will get better for you. Now we need the food. We go to the bank for food. When things are better, all we have to do is remember to put some food back in the bank, okay?"
"But Joel says…"
"Joel's at work. Like the good father that he is. And I'm still the mother of the mother around here. So let's get these kids dressed and ready to go.
It didn't take long to organize the schedule of showers and brushing teeth. They were all used to the drill by now. On the way down the street,
Rhaenna kept looking for Lori. And they could hear the bells in the distance, calling them to gather and give thanks, to give thanks and to pray for strength, to seek strength and to receive help, to receive help and to offer what they had, too. Their friendship and their spirit of courage in very hard times.
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