Life lessons at a Coffee shop, part three

Update on C.

C came into work yesterday for the first time after several days absentee. She said that she had had her biopsy and they had found two small lesions on her liver. She needs an operation. Sounds like something that many people will, not take for granted per say, but be able to do. For C this is not the case. The doctor told C that she needs to have a place to stay for a week after the operation. This isn’t possible for a woman with no family and no social network.

C tells me of her current struggle not because she is seeking assistance from me, but just because she needs a friend. When she sees the frustration on my face and as she answers my questions about what happens if she doesn’t have the operation (she will die) she tries to make me feel better. “It will work out, don’t worry”.

C went and sat down to drink her daily Ginger Peach tea with vanilla and cinnamon. I was thinking a lot about how much she and T have come to mean to me over the summer. I realized that they aren’t just people passing through my lives. I spend more time talking and being in the same room as them than I do with my friends or family. I realized yesterday that I am beginning to love them.

I decided that I wanted to have C and T over to my house for dinner before C has to have her surgery. I’m not sure how all my roommates will feel about this. I know that three of them will be very supportive, the other two, I’m not sure how the request will go.

I told C of my plans, asking her if it was something that would interest her. As I did I saw tears well up in her eyes. At the sight of this, I too got rather teary. She said it was something she would very much like. We talked about the date of her possible surgery and logistics about how it would be possible for her to get to my house.

After she went outside later that day I was thinking about her reaction to my request. The reason she reacted like she did is because people don’t treat her like a human being. People dine together and talk together all of the time. Even though C and T have had careers and lived the life of the ‘typical’ (ha!) American we as a society have completely dismissed them because of a series of events that have put them at a disadvantage in this work of plenty. How can we be such a shallow society? How can we really call ourselves human and treat each other like this? Why do we not recognize the common humanity of those around us and reach out to people who are in a difficult space.

It is no wonder that people who are homeless appear to have mental health problems. T and I have talked about the stress that comes from living on the street. Can you imagine what it must be life once you lose hope? How can you do anything but ‘go crazy’?

To make the realizations about all of this even more clear, the shop I work at has a series of interesting characters. In contrast to Carrie’s tea I had a customer get upset because he had bought two coffees not realizing we had 50 cent refills. He became frustrated and demanded to cups of coffee for 50 cents each. Goddess, does it really matter?

I was trying to talk to some of my coworkers about all of this. One of them, E, is amazing and one of the most reflective men I have ever met. I didn’t get to finish telling him about all that I was thinking, but he helped me out in the café and heard bits of this story.

Towards the end of the shift he came by with some paperwork he wanted me to fill out: an ‘on the spot’ recognition form for being a good employee. E told me that the reason my tip jar was full and the reason he was giving me this recognition was because of the way I talked to people. E told me that I was genuine and that it meant a lot to customers to be treated to in this manner. I told E that I wasn’t doing anything special, but treating people like I wanted, and expected, them to treat me. He made me understand even more clearly that most people in this country don’t do that.

I find it so funny that we teach our children to share and to follow the ‘golden rule’ yet, as adults, we teach the opposite lessons to our children: it is all about the bottom line and what is best for you. What kind of cognitive dissonance must this create in our youth? I was blessed to have parents that followed the advice they gave me on how to treat other people.

Again, I return to the questions: What kind of nation are we? What kind of people to do we, as individuals and as a society want to be? How, in our daily lives are we living, or not living, in this way? Why is it so hard to let ourselves simply be human? What is life worth if not to interact with and love each other, and not just the each others that can benefit us in some material way?

Life lessons at a Coffee shop, part one

I realize that most people have, at some point in their life, been in debt. A few days ago I woke up and found out that I had negative money in my checking account. I had come face to face with a reality I had been teetering on since graduating from college and working for Americorps.

I had been stressing over debt and money for months. This all-consuming panic and stress really eats at a person. I spend the day in question trying to figure out how I could make it through the summer. I‘ve already been working 50ish hours a week at two different jobs – so I really was struggling.

At work this day I had an incredible experience that put everything in perspective for me. I work at a café in a bookstore in a rather wealthy part of Washington DC. Part way thought my day a ‘regular’ came in. T is a younger man, perhaps in his mid-thirties. He comes to the café every day with his worn out gym bag and reads books about religion and spirituality. He has a great big toothy smile. In between his much needed naps he eats cinnamon-raisin bagels and oatmeal-raisin cookies, if he has money.

This day Tony didn’t have money for his bagel. So, I bought him one… even though I know I don’t have enough money to be doing it and I’m sure it is against some corporate capitalistic policy. He doesn’t know either of these things so the gift wouldn’t make him feel bad.

After work I was walking home (About a 30 min walk) and he was ahead of me. I caught up to him and we started talking. He told me his story (ex-Navy, plan after getting out fell through, grew up without a lot of opportunities, has no family). I ended up having him over for dinner (leftover spaghetti), he sat and talked with a few of my roommates and I.

The whole experience was really humbling. He told me his story, and there is so many intricacies I can’t write here. However, it has just all made me realize that what I have been studying and reading about class, privilege, and the struggle of people in poverty is not even close to what it is really like. Yesterday I felt an ounce of the stress most people go through. I don’t know how I’ll pay my credit card bill when it comes, I don’t know how I’ll pay for food, but I know I’ll find a way and, if I can’t, I have people to rely on. In the books I’ve read it has explained this as privilege. Now I know what that feels like even more.

Life lessons at a Coffee shop, part two

So, a week has passed since my lucid realization of class privilege. To make this awareness even more palpable C, a homeless woman who hangs out at the coffee shop, brought me a gift the other day. C is perhaps in her mid-40s. She talks to me a lot about how hard it is to get a job without an address, but how it is impossible to live somewhere without money. She is on the waiting list for title-8 section housing, but has been for years. C is weathered beyond her years. Her neck is crooked and she walks slowly and hunched over. The other day she was going to try to get a biopsy done. She came and told me, so that I wouldn’t worry.

I thought about the fact that C felt the need to tell me about her Doctor visit. Yes, she was right, I would be worried about her if she didn’t come in for a few days. However, I realized that her need to tell me of her current life events had nothing to do with this. She simply needed someone to care about her and what is going on in her life. I am a constant presence for her. I see and talk with her daily, perhaps more than anyone else in her life (simply because she is always at the café). This experience made me realize how important it is to have people who care where you are and what you are up to. It made me realize how important it is just to have someone who will worry about you, or someone to tell your plans to. I’m not sure how I feel about being one of those people for Carrie: in a way humbled, but in a way completely and intensely sorrowful.

I mentioned that C gave me a gift. Typically I save the coupons off the receipts people don’t want and give them to Carrie to use when she buys her food. The other day she returned the favor by bringing me a ‘vegetarian starter guide’ that she had gotten from the activists on the street. I recognize that this magazine could have been in her collection of things for months and she simply felt a need to recognize our friendship on this particular day. This sentiment is itself incredibly. However, she told me that she had ‘thought of me’ and picked it up for me. I can’t explain what it felt like to be told that she thinks of me when I’m not at work.

I can’t explain how much I have learned this week. I know that the Goddess has really ‘blessed’ me (to use Tony’s words) by showing me what is really important. I don’t think that I have explained any of this very clearly, but, I’m learning more than I thought I would working at a bookstore.