March 17, 2020 was a day that forever changed the landscape of the world as I knew it…it was the day I began working from home due to the uncertainty of COVID-19. Since that day, the only thing constant in my life--personally and professionally--has been change. There is such irony in that thought! My one constant is change.
For months, Eric* lived in a converted apartment inside of a garage with his wife who suffered from PTSD, and his autistic son. Eric worked as a part-time DJ, but his full-time job was taking care of his family. Although Eric’s converted apartment sufficed for some time, it wasn’t long until the county condemned their home, and ordered Eric and his family to find “approved” housing within 21 days.
“In these chaotic times...” Over and over again, in some form or another, I come across this phrase in my conversations--when I turn on the t.v. and as I scroll through social media for just a few minutes. Fires, floods, war, rumors of wars, pandemic illness, reeling economies, scarcity of resources, and community shutdowns have all become characteristic of 2020. While several of these things stem from natural causes, I of course find myself considering the human contributions that have exacerbated them and created the others. How did we get here?
I am so grateful to be a part of the Central Coast community. Even in the midst of these unprecedented times, with uncertainty reaching every corner of our lives, we have come together to support one another. Ever since the COVID-19 health crisis hit us locally, I have seen some amazing examples of generosity and compassion.
In a phone conversation with my sister this past week, she shared a heartwarming story that I really needed to hear considering all that is going on in our world right now. My sister is the head “lunch lady” at an elementary school, and for the past week she has been handing out bagged meals to students in the parking lot of her school. She shared that several of the children who came to pick up lunch one day this past week expressed excitement that they had been provided with cantaloupe in their lunch sack.
There have been times in my life when I didn’t have toilet paper. I usually had a roof over my head (even if it was a carroof), but we didn’t always have finished floors. Did you know that the term “dirt poor” is an Americanism from the 1930s referring to someone living in a house that has a dirt floor? In the United States in the 1990s, I was dirt poor, fleeing from one terrifying temporary non-home to another. Being dirt poor is not just a third world condition, it’s not just a Great Depression Era throw-back, and it doesn’t exclude any race.
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