Someone Else's Story

I have a younger sister who lives just a short walk from my house.  She is a beautiful girl with long brown hair, a bright smile and a trendy sense of style that has never crossed the threshold into my comfort-only, hippy tinged closet.  She works for the Chicago branch of my father's company and volunteers at PAWS animal shelter in her spare time.  She doesn't know I exist.


I have an aunt with lovely hard earned lines on her face.  She has lived a life spanning the world with 20 years service to the US justice department, experience as the executive director for the USO's Okinawa base, time spent as a Peace Corps volunteer to Cameroon, and recently, she traveled to build houses and focus on the betterment of life for women in southern India.  She fascinates me, though we have never met.


My father is a good man with my eyes. (or rather, I have his..) He is incredibly intelligent, hard working, overly pragmatic and loyal to a fault.  However, he is not a brave man.  Everything I know of the relationship between him and my mother is from the varying stories of those who were there at the time and old enough to recall; stories of perceived unequaled class, questioned loyalties, spectacularly dramatic arguments, heavy drinking, unbridled jealousy, manipulation and complete utter chaos. All of these factors eventually led to my father happily accepting a job transfer and moving out of state to avoid constant confrontations.  He married, had two daughters and built a respectable, slightly more peaceful life.


My life after his departure followed a wildly different and more painful course.  My mother, who used her own physical beauty to systematically destroy herself and those around her, continued to drink bars dry. We moved more than 10 times before I had acquired ten years, crossing multiple school districts in pursuit of her most recent lovers. A prolonged disappearance on her part, resulted in a much too short stay in foster care.  (with the most wonderful foster parents EVER!) I spent my childhood in fear, and went to sleep each night with a bag packed (as only a child can pack) under my bed, praying for the courage to simply leave in the night, to find a place where I finally felt safe. I spent my school days pretending the final bell would never ring, trying desperately to be just like everyone else. One day in particular found me in front of a mirror in the school bathroom, pathetically trying to comb my hair down over a bare spot where my mother, in her anger the previous night, had pulled to hard. At the time, I didn't want to be rescued.. I just wanted to fit in.


As I got older and less meek, my mother quit drinking and 'found God,' thus discovering yet another way to belittle and tear down those around her.  Only this time she had the irrefutable bible to back her up.  There were many mornings I would enter the kitchen to find a detailed note with scripture verses telling me all the ways I had recently sinned and how according to God's word, I would burn in hell. To this day I will not set foot in an evangelical church and happily rebelled by becoming catholic.  As a child, our house was always immaculate. There was no eating in the kitchen, no messing up made beds by actually sitting on them, certain rooms were completely off limits as walking through them would cause the grain of the carpet to go in different directions.  There were never to be empty hangers in the closets and no one EVER took clothing from the ironing pile or got clothes being worn dirty. (I currently have a closet that has daily clothing avalanches.) All of my mothers compulsive obsessions led to my childhood being spent sitting on the floor, losing myself in books while I willed my life to pass into adulthood quicker.

***

My most recent visit to the shelter in Uptown was a difficult one.  As it is currently spring break around the country, the kitchen had fresh faced volunteers from an Oklahoma youth group lending a hand.  I worked the first part of the line filling lunch trays with sausages or hamburgers while two other girls ladled on canned veggies and oranges.  People were increasingly short tempered with us, wanting an extra hamburger or oranges despite knowing that we couldn't comply until everyone had been through the line at least once.  I got shouted at by a deaf woman who has likely spent her life being misunderstood.  And as yet another person complained that their food was burnt, undercooked, overly salty etc.. I felt the overwhelming urge to slam down my tongs while telling everyone to piss off before dramatically stomping out of the kitchen to resume my own peaceful life.  I was jerked out of my impending hissy fit by the voice of a crabby older woman shouting at a young volunteer who had apparently failed to place  oranges on the woman's tray gently enough.  I watched as a red flush crept up the girl's neck and her eyes began to fill.  In her innocent young mind, she was only trying to help and people should be thankful, not angry and mean.   


As the line of hungry people slowed to a trickle, we talked about the importance of trying to empathize with where people are coming from.  We don't know everyone's stories and the difficult roads that have led them each to our particular lunch line.  We can't fathom the tears and disappointments of those we serve and we don't feel how difficult it is for them and their pride to accept a tray, to accept that they can't provide it for themselves.  But in order to serve them, we have to try to understand.  


A few minutes later, little Ashley came through the line. She is a tiny 5 year old with light brown skin, gorgeous curly hair and an impish smile.  Last week before she left the lunchroom, we had woven a flower into her hair.  This week she extended her small hand across the lunch line, gifting me with its contents; a ragged, well loved, hand picked dandelion. I smiled and she skipped happily away.

I do not lament my childhood. My mother has since done her best to make a peace that she can live with and I have grown to be a wife, a friend, a musician and a teacher. I don't blame my father for the past.  In fact, I think he would be horrified to know what my reality had been.  I suspect he thought he was a cause of my mother's issues and that if he left she would finally be happy.  Of course, he was wrong. My father is an occasional presence, though due to fear of a return to former chaos, he and his wife have long declined to tell their two daughters of my existence. They worry that I am as my mother. Their combined decision has caused me to scrutinize everyone I meet. Afterall, everyone has a story, be it dramatic or glamorous, or blissfully mundane. One never knows who one passes by in everyday life. One could be passing the next president, the next great humanitarian, or someone much less grandiose, like one's next door neighbor, or even one's own sister. 

I do not wish to have led a different life. My life, my story, has led me to where I am now and has given me the hunger to fight for myself and for those around me. My history has given me a fantastic perspective and I try to use that to see the hurt and insecurity of a broken home in the eyes of the gang kids on the corner. I do my best to understand the sadness in the faces of those on the other side of the lunch line.  And I draw on my past to see the beauty in the simple gift of a tattered weed.   

I Try to Speak your Language..

"I see you periodically

I try to speak your

Language."
-Sentiments of a shelter patron-

Each week at the shelter, I see two kids in their early 20s. The girl is a tiny, delicate, pale thing, with long dark hair, a pretty face, and strong dislike for meat. (which, coupled with her strong dislike for canned vegetables, leaves her with little sustenance on her lunch tray.) Her friend is a young black man with large expressive eyes,  an open trusting face and a gentle demeanor. Each week, they go through the line, smiling and chatting, inadvertently bringing a lightness to those around them.  Despite their struggles and surroundings, they maintain wide innocent smiles and are completely lacking hardness and cynicism.  Since I started my weekly foray to the shelter, this particular young man has chatted with me, asking my opinions and telling me about his interest in poetry slams, spoken work and improv.  This past week as I handed a tray across the line to him, he handed back a folded sheet of notebook paper.   I slipped it into my pocket, wanting to wait till I was home to see what this young person had working through his mind..

"..Being shy?

That's what makes us hide

Being blind

Looking for love far and wide

But it's right here.."

At the bottom of his page of beautifully written thoughts (figuratively and literally speaking!) he wrote the word 'corny' followed by two exclamation points.  I disagree.

Spring is in the air in Uptown. Forgotten daffodils and tulips are forcing their way through the earth, bringing a contrast to the stark concrete and prolific litter of the neighborhood.  Dogs are being walked with considerably more enthusiasm and the sounds of happy children laughing and shrieking are floating in the unusually warm air.  However, excited as we are to be waking from the long winter's slumber, we forget that the cold forced people indoors who are now again standing dangerously on the corner.  This past Monday as I drove home from teaching, my husband called my cell, giving me an aggravated earful about the ten or so kids standing on the corner. After hanging up, I contemplated my strategy, fulling knowing that I didn't want to spend the remainder of my evening with a husband whose nose was pressed against the window.  I decided that upon parking, I would happily fall into the role of the neighborhood crazy chick.  After reaching home, I approached the corner kids quickly, frantically asking if they were all ok and who it was who was shot.  They looked at me with surprise and I said, without sarcasm, that that must be why they were all standing there at 11 o'clock at night.  One boy, surely not older than 15, responded that they all were just simply waiting for a ride.  'So, everyone is Ok then?"  I asked.  'Yeah,' the kid responded.  "My name is Jen," I said while holding out my hand. Two boys looked at me hesitantly, before one thought up a suitable fake name and insecurely shook my hand.  I then mentioned that I worked at the local shelter and we could always use more help.   Before we parted ways, I said what was utmost on my mind.. I mentioned that by standing on the corner, they were making themselves huge targets and we didn't need anymore blood on the sidewalk.  The boys nodded, eyes down and before I had gotten up the stairs to my home (and to one very pissed off husband,) they had all disappeared.     

The following night (Tuesday) as I drove back into the neighborhood from teaching, I saw a group of guys walking towards the lake and away from the unmistakable blue flashing police lights.  The boy who shook my hand the night before, looked at me and immediately fixed his eyes at the ground.  Sure enough, five shots had been fired, thankfully missing everyone...no explanations, no one in custody, nothing changed.  Spring is in the air in Uptown.

The words of my shelter friend bear repeating..

"I see you periodically

I try to speak your 

language."

Las Palomas

Standing on the shore of the Mediterranean, a weary traveller can look out over the water to the east towards the lovely island of Majorca. To the North about a three hours drive is the French border and upon looking away from the sparkling dark blue waters, one turns to face all of Barcelona in her stunning beauty, draped like a pagan goddess on her alter.  To the south sits the Olympic Mountain, centerpiece of the 1992 Summer Olympics.(Montjuic..which in Catalan means Jewish Mountain, was once home to Barcelona’s Jewish population.) Montjuic is now home to the Joan Miro foundation and the Magic Fountain (Font Magica)which times a water show playfully to classical music. 

A short walk from the shores of the Mediterranean to the North is the Gothic district, full to bursting with beautiful ornate buildings and churches hundreds of years old. And directly in front of the water, lies the entrance to La Rambla, a walkway that bisects Barcelona. While walking La Rambla Northwest, deeper into the heart of Barcelona, a traveller passes the Teatro Principal de Barcelona, (where I saw a fantastic version of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in which the heroine sang what seemed an earsplitting hour long aria before finally dying.) On La Rambla, one passes stalls filled with fresh fruit and flowers along with the entrance to the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria which is a brightly colored market dating back to the early 1200s. One also passes convincing, outrageously costumed and magnificently creative human statues...statues who will loudly chase after hapless tourists who snap pictures without dropping coins in return.     

Upon reaching the very heart of Barcelona, a traveller finds the perfect place to rest weary feet in the Placa de Catalunya. Years ago, I sat quietly on the edge of a gray fountain with stone fish spitting water and I quietly observed the large square (approx 50,000 square meters) as vendors sold tiny baggies of birdseed to families out with their young children. As each baggie was torn open, the pigeons(las palomas,)would hungrily descend, causing each child to excitedly emit piercing shrieks of joy.  One little boy patiently waited as a crowd of pigeons surrounded the ground near his feet.  He purposefully and fearlessly leaned down, placing his tiny hand, full with birdseed, under the pecking beaks of the ravenous pigeons. He watched with a bright happy light in his eyes as the pigeons made short work of his offering. 

There is a man in the Chicago neighborhood of Uptown who occasionally feeds the pigeons. The hard life he has led is made apparent in the shabby lines of his clothing and the gray tangled mess of his hair, His face is deeply creased and his hands look rough. But, despite whatever difficult path has led him to the corner of Wilson and Broadway, his eyes fill with an impish childlike light as his arm sweeps to feed the birds; his movements imitating those of a happy little boy nearly four thousand miles away.  

 

Uptown Pilgrimage

The Universe knows me so well. It understood that the only way in which I would heed a call would be if I were to find myself surrounded by at least a hundred pianos, varying in age and uniqueness, pianos which had felt the hands of thousands of musicians before myself, pianos through which music had been born.

My boyfriend at the time and I had begun our warm summer day wandering through a dusty piano store in the heart of Toulouse France. I had run my hands over at least twenty pianos before settling in at a pretty Zimmerman to play an entire song. As I finished, a lovely, middle aged, fair skinned yet youthfully freckled woman started chatting at me in rapid excited french. Ten minutes later, she cheerily waved us on as we drove off out of Toulouse and pointed our car towards her home where we would meet her husband Michel.

Michel, with his endearing smile and eccentric Beethoven-esque grey hair, met us at his beautiful Chateau de Pompignan,a stunning home built in the mid 1700s surrounded by acres of lush historical gardens. (Gardens which Michel is currently fighting bitterly to keep as high speed rail has chosen to build a track directly through the heart of his property..but that is another story..)

As beautiful as the château de Pompignan was, it was merely a backdrop for Michel's passion and life's work of collecting and repairing pianos. We walked through room after room crammed with stunning pianos at all levels of disrepair, age, and beauty. Pianos with peeling paint lined with gold leaf, pianos whose tops opened like butterfly wings, pianos with incredibly detailed carvings, pianos in their own suitcases etc.. I played a piano from 1794! Michel, in his excitement, had taken on enough work to keep him busy into the next thousand years.

Towards the end of our visit, Michel led us into a dark quiet chapel with light filtering in though colorful stained glass windows. At the front of the chapel, next to a large double keyboard Bechstein, was a door to a tiny circular room. Within the smaller room, the bare stone walls were carved with multiple symbols of the stonemasons and the signs of Saint James. As my hand reached up to touch the tiny scallop shell carving, I realized that my feet were already standing on the pilgrims path.

According to legend, the body of St James, a disciple of Jesus, had washed up, covered in scallop shells, on a beach in northwestern Spain in the 9th century. For nearly 1100 years, pilgrims have walked hundreds of miles across Europe from their own doorstep the the feet of Saint James, crossing front lines, enduring hunger and physical aches, danger and fear, simply out of faith and hope. Pilgrims have synched their footsteps to the countless who had walked before and the countless who would follow in order to become closer attuned to the beauty of the surrounding universe.

Since fitting my hand over the cool stone carving a few years back outside of Toulouse, I now see scallop shells everywhere. As a result I have recently made the decision to heed the call and walk the way of Saint James this summer. However, my pilgrimage does not merely start in Southern France, but rather here in America, in Chicago, in Uptown, in me. So, in order to help prepare for thirty plus consecutive days of walking through southern France and Northern Spain, I will begin my pilgrimage at home, walking Uptown..seeing beauty not just in the exotic and far away, but here at home.

Thailand 

Mexico City

Uptown

West Coast

Southern France

Uptown

Madeline Island WI

Uptown

Mexico City

Lourdes FR

Peru

Uptown

Toulouse FR

Barcelona

Uptown

Mexico City 

Uptown

Uptown

Toulouse FR

Your next door Neighbor

"I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. 
Do you know your next door neighbor?" 

-Mother Teresa

There is a man who lines up at every meal. He looks to be about forty years old, has a slight build, dark hair and beautiful naturally kohl lined eyes.  He is shy, very rarely meeting my eyes, and at each meal he quietly asks in a slightly accented voice, whether the meat is pork. Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he passes on the meat and asks if he can have more of whatever else there may be.  I would like to know his story.

There is a thirty something, skinny, black man with eyes perpetually full of infection who, despite his compromised vision, is always sure to tell you that you look beautiful and that you have made his day. He makes my day.

There is Ed, with his tattoos and dangling earring, who efficiently rules the kitchen, employing astonishing amounts of flexibility and creativity in the face of varying supplies. There are the two little blond boys with their cowlicks and cherub smiles. Their lovely blue eyed mother who is slightly younger than I am and is always happy to talk about her boys, tells me that they are doing well in kindergarten. There is Jesus, another cook with stories filling out the lines on his face. He tells me that the first three years of marriage are the hardest and assures me with a wry smile that he should know as he has been married for twenty two years now. 

There are the gruff old men who line up again and again for seconds, thirds, fourths, etc.  There is the beautiful tall and thin black woman who is potentially a beautiful black man. There is the laid off teacher from Lawndale who, having nothing else to do until she finds her next job, has worked her way through half the shelters in the city, spending a week volunteering at each.  After hearing Jesus' advice on marriage, she said with a laugh, that she wouldn't marry until a man can prove himself faithful. And since a man could never do that, she would simply never marry..  There is another kitchen worker who looks terrifying at a height comfortably topping six feet and a few hundred pounds to match. But his gentle soul will stand with can opener in hand until case after case of canned green beans have been opened.  And there are a couple hundred more people yet to be mentioned.

There is nothing to set us all apart.. only circumstance and whatever other contrived misguided ideas our minds might come up with.  Despite color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, we are all the same and want the same things.. food, health, home, love and a better life for our children.  We simply want to be whole.   

Where I find that my own words fail to be enough, 

I defer to those who have gone before...

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

Buddha

"Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work." 

Mother Teresa

A man once asked the Prophet what was the best thing in Islam, and the latter replied, "It is to feed the hungry and to give the greeting of peace both to those one knows and to those one does not know." Hadith of Bukhari

“The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.”

Swami Vivekananda

(and to the 99%..don't forget!)

"Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own." 

Mother Teresa

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” 

Rumi

Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Matthew 22:37-39

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." 

Martin Luther King Jr.

"I want both of us to start singing like two 

Travelling minstrels

About this extraordinary existence 

We share,

As if 

You, I and God were all married 

and living in 

A tiny 

Room."

Hafiz

The Call..

The Response!!!

Thanks to my awesome students and fellow Tower Chorale singers, This is the second carload of men's clothes to go to Cornerstone Community Outreach!!!! 

You all ROCK!!

...though I did steal someone's blue shirt for myself... 

Relative Wealth..

I am not sure how old I was that horrible afternoon...somewhere between 7 years and 9 years old? My family had spent an eventless day grocery shopping and weighted down with food, we trudged up the stairs to our pretty little apartment on the second floor of an old farm house. While my mom's boyfriend, my older brother and I plopped down in front of the TV,  my mom began putting away groceries. Seconds later, the quiet air was pierced by my mom's terrified, astoundingly loud screams. We stared at her as though she had suddenly sprouted horns for precious seconds before her message sunk in.. "FIRE!!" A thick dark smoke had begun billowing out from the cabinets below the kitchen sink and we jumped to our feet, racing back down the steps from which we had just come..only this time with nothing in our hands. 

We lost almost everything, most notably our home, and what wasn't ruined held a bitter smell of smoke as a permanent reminder of that day.  As my family has never been one to save for a rainy day, we had no savings or resources to fall back on and relied on the charity of those in the community who had read about our poor unfortunate circumstances in the local newspaper. In the days and weeks following the fire and before raising enough money for a security deposit on a new apartment, we lived in various sketchy motels.  My memories of that time are restricted to teaching myself to swim by jumping into the deep end of the Motel 6 pool (my backstroke technique is still severely flawed) and sitting on the bathroom floor at the Dekalb Motel, tracing the path of the ants meandering across the cracked tile.  Life had fallen into a strange sort of purgatory like existence.

However, we were so blessedly rich. We had walked away with our lives and amazingly, even our pet mouse, whose cage had been conveniently located next to an open window, had survived.  The same could not be said for the occupants of the downstairs apartment.  The young mother, after drinking through the day, had passed out  on her bed, leaving her two little boys unattended to play with a lighter. After starting the fire, the fearful little boys hid in a closet where the firemen later found them.  They had not survived.  The mom, suffering horrible effects of smoke inhalation and burns held on mere hours longer...long enough for doctors to realize that she was pregnant. Her devastated husband had lost his home and his entire family while he was at work that cruel day.  As I said before...my family was exceedingly rich.

Many years have passed and as the fire has become a vague shadowy memory, so too have the lessons learned.  I have had lapses in my perspective on wealth, foolishly thinking that I didn't have enough or needed more, be it a bigger house, a more expensive car etc..  But each time I feel as though I am losing touch, I find myself knocked rudely back into the knowledge of my relative wealth.  Rather than comparing myself to the wealthiest and coming up woefully short, I have begun comparing myself to those in need.. thus forcing myself to examine the tenuous thread of circumstance that separates us.  People are sleeping under a bridge two blocks from my home, how dare I feel as though I don't have enough..?

I have visited the people under the Wilson/ Lakeshore bridge three times now. The first time, I dropped off cookies and bananas and shook the hand of a friendly old woman tucked under approximately 30 layers of old blankets.  The second time, there were no people there, but their piles of blankets remained, waiting for them to return from their wanderings for the night.  I tucked baggies of cookies into each pile of blankets, got in my car and headed north on Lakeshore to teach.  The last time I visited was Christmas Eve.  Earlier in the week, I had visited a few resale shops in search of like-new gloves, scarfs and fleeces.  After hitting the jackpot at a local thrift shop called "Unique," I raced home with a pile of fleece jackets (and a 'new' pair of awesome black rain boots for myself..) loaded up the washing machine and ended the night with ten brightly wrapped Downy fresh smelling Christmas gifts.  While on our way to midnight mass, my husband and I stopped to hide gifts within the blankets under the bridge.  

Uptown has been nice, quiet and gunshot free in the past week...as far as I know.  However, I have still felt the overwhelming need to roll up my sleeves and get to work.  Providing me with an outlet, Cornerstone Community Outreach is an organization that has undertaken the enormous task of feeding and sheltering Uptown's homeless population.  Each day, approximately 400 men, woman and Yes, children, eat and sleep under CCO's benevolent roof.  Tucked away, just a half a block from Truman College's front door, Cornerstone differs from other shelters in that they have separate floors for separate needs; a floor for single women, another for single men and even 35 private family rooms.  While most shelters tend to separate, men from woman and children (men being defined as males over 12 years,) Cornerstone strives to maintain the integrity of the family unit, keeping men together with their partners and their children.  Despite being run by the christian organization, "Jesus People," Cornerstone does not force the gospel on those it helps.  Rather, each person is fed, clothed, given a bed and assigned a case worker.  I volunteered for a few hours yesterday, unloading a truck of donated food alongside high school kids from Green Bay, A Logan Square man with his daughters and granddaughter, Philip, a master organizer, and a group of the usual kitchen staff.  While chatting away, I asked a strong black man who was constantly taking cases of canned green beans from my hands, how long he had been working at Cornerstone. He responded with a broad smile while nodding towards the people waiting for their food, "I used to be in that line."

For the love of Brownies..

This week, my students have been granted a reprieve from their pianos as I have been trapped at home with a nasty bout of a perfectly timed Christmas flu.  After a few days of NyQuil induced sleep, I find myself stuck in a chair, wide awake and plagued by words warring with snot for the precious space inside of my head.  (I am truly lovely, I know..) 

Btw, I realize that this particular post may disqualify me from ever attaining public office and may also result in mild disapproval from some readers.  However, I implore you to read to the end for evidence of my possible redemption...

Weed was a constant presence in my undergrad, not necessarily in reference to my own use as I was too afraid to jeopardize my tenuous position in the voice studio to risk a puff.  I actually believed that my teacher would hear the weed in my voice during warmups and would immediately proceed to toss me out of the program. However, weed was a part of life for most of the musicians I was lucky enough to be surrounded and influenced by, many of whom have since gone on to become some of the strongest musicians on the Chicago scene (and elsewhere.)  I never questioned or knew where it came from...weed was simply there.  About six months into my freshman year, I found a wrapped stash tucked away on a bathroom shelf while cleaning my boyfriend's apartment. (yep, I have always been OCD enough to clean the apartments of past boyfriends..) He responded with glee, while sheepishly admitting that he had likely hidden it away shortly after smoking and had promptly forgotten.  Soon after that, I decided it was time I try.

My friends had never exhorted, nor applied even one ounce of pressure on me to partake with them. However, upon my word, they began endearingly planning my 'first time.' We picked the Friday of a three day weekend and one friend, another voice student a couple years my senior who never had less than a kind word for anyone, came up with the perfect solution to my smoking dilemma...Brownies.  However, in all of our careful planing, we had overlooked one very important fact... I really love brownies.

That Friday night, I sank into an overstuffed frayed couch whose past life probably involved someone's grandmother.  Surrounded by eager friends shrouded in innocence and excitement that only youth provides, with the smell of incense and baking in the air and Michael Jackson alternating with Jamiroquai in the backgound, I picked up a brownie and took my first bite.  

The problem with eating rather than smoking is that one cannot necessarily gage the amount of weed taken in.  When one smokes, one can have a puff and then wait for a slight effect before deciding whether there is need to continue.  When one eats, one can simply be hungry, possibly taking in more than needed or anticipated.  After my second brownie, my fingers and toes began to tingle and my body felt comfortably weighted down, (thus proving that I would never be one of those musicians with the ability to perform enhanced by any sort of drug.) I turned my head, my eyes stubbornly focused on one point, only to have the room swivel to catch up seconds later.  Shortly after that I mentioned to my boyfriend that I needed to use the bathroom, but I needed him to remind me.  And not long after that, I asked him if I told him that I needed to go to the bathroom or if I had merely thought it.  My brain had become utterly useless and it became clear to everyone that I had had too much.   

After that night, weed played a miniscule role in my life, a mere puff every couple of months in the company of friends, or a peaceful presence in the face of a brutal migraine. Weed had proven a much safer alternative to accidently overdosing on Advil or to the suggestions from doctors of increasingly stronger and addictive pain killers. A few years later, a close friend, overtaken by curiosity, sat on my couch, a tiny joint in her hand and her husband within reach. Upon taking a small puff, she turned to me and immediately said, "I don't feel anything."  Her husband and I laughed while quickly taking the joint from her hand. 

I had never had cause to fear weed.  After all, weed had not caused my mother to be pulled over for a DUI with her kids in the backseat... Alcohol had done that.  Weed had not caused my mom to disappear for days on end... Alcohol had done that.  Weed had not torn apart my family and filled my childhood with fear and dread... Alcohol had done that.  However, that being said, my overly liberal view of weed is fast being altered.  I live in Uptown and am surrounded by what is rumored to be a gang drug turf war and while I am not naive enough to think that Marijuana is the strongest drug fought over, I also recognize that it is a healthy part of the sadness afflicting this neighborhood. I do not fear weed, but as I hear gunshots and read the news, I am beginning to fear it's social costs and am loathe to contribute.   (I find it ironic that I had to use spell check for the word marijuana..) Recently, I have called friends who enjoy their weed.  I have asked pointed questions, not necessarily wanting names or specifics, but finding that the trail of bread crumbs, despite the degrees of separation, almost always led back to a dark corner, a gang, a contributor to mine and many other neighborhoods current troubles. The ease and availability of weed in my college days lost its naivety.  In the concept of supply and demand, in my younger days, I had been a contributor. 

Uptown has made the news these past few weeks which would be fantastic were a hostage situation not needed to reach that end.  We have had multiple shootings, a couple in the same exact spot where a broken police camera captured nothing.  The hostage situation was amazingly resolved with no shots fired and a few arrests though very few details have been made public.  The Uptown Update blog has become home to much bigotry and hatred, many posters marking 'low income' and 'criminal' as interchangeable and posts becoming extremely personal and in some cases, quite unkind.  As usual, no one seems to know what to do that could be considered even remotely constructive.  However, one citizen has managed to take the chaos as an opportunity to set up volunteer slots at the local soup kitchen, Cornerstone. 

This past Tuesday, I loaded up on DayQuil and nose spray and headed over for a quick lunch shift while praying that in my haste to help, I wasn't infecting Uptown's entire homeless population with my cold. 

In the midst of piling food on trays and teasing men into taking the green beans and not just the fries, I began talking with my fellow volunteer, a well spoken black woman with strong opinions of her home Uptown.  As she had lived and worked in this community and knew far more than I, I wanted her opinions and ideas.  As she talked, she mentioned the ineffectiveness of activities such as positive loitering as it merely drives a bigger wedge.. after all, what good can a group of white people standing around do.  What could they possibly know, when so many of Uptown's problems are rooted in race and poverty?  While she had a strong point, I felt as though I was being lumped into that group of clueless white faces, unable to understand poverty and pain.  I resented that because while I no longer wear my childhood disfunction as a badge of bitterness for all the world to see, I resented the fact that one might look at me and simply see a little rich white girl who hasn't a clue of the surrounding pain.  I resented in much the same way a black man would resent judgement, merely for being black rather than being judged on his own merit.  I had, after all, kicked, screamed, cried, begged and fought to beat my past and I refuse to have that struggle disappear under a pale visage.

As I walked home Tuesday afternoon from helping to feed a few hundred hungry people, I walked past bird poop and graffiti, under rusted el tracks, past sad aimless people and I searched,  ...Oh how I searched for a spot of beauty in this neighborhood. Wonderfully, I found it in a returned smile of a little girl, swallowed whole in her puffy coat, mittens dangling, hat askew...