by Roger

After 7 1/2 years of working nights in the main building I recently moved out to our satellite location, Centre 2507, which has long been referred to among clients and staff as “The Warehouse”. A scrap of paper ended up in my pocket at work a couple of nights ago, and only today as I was aiming it towards my recycle bin at home did I actually look at it, and I found these words: “I live in a warehouse of broken dreams. Old, young… no difference, it seems.”

We know this side of our clients all too well. We see them come to us while helpless on a downward spiral of addiction; usually drugs, drinking or gambling. They come to us after being shafted by landlords, roommates, family, or the WCB. We see them nightly or daily, and meet their needs as we’re able. Occasionally one will open up to us with his or her dashed dreams, or seeking support as they raise new ones up, like kites, seeking a favourable wind.

Some of the lucky ones will break one or more of our rules, and over the experience of being held to account and asked to be responsible for their actions, they’ll find out that there are staff or volunteers who actually care about them. Then we get to watch as this sparks in them a growth spurt where they go beyond the rules to find something more important, something in them that is worth building on, or a call to share their experience and hard-won wisdom out in a suffering world.

And, mostly, our job is routine. For some of our deeply institutionalized clients, their lives are tragically, achingly, depressingly routine: at 9:00, sign in and ask staff for a 3:30 a.m. wake up call; shower and go to bed; get up hours before the sun rises, pick up a bag lunch from the office and get a ride on the DI van’s 4:30 shuttle run back downtown; show up at one of Calgary’s several temp agencies, still hours before the sun comes up, and hope for work for the day. Repeat daily.

For my staff and I, at least, Scott broke that routine on Saturday night, coming in late after having taken part in “Power Play: Homelessness”, which was part of the High Performance Rodeo as part of the This is My City initiative. I’d first met Scott in the main building where he would sit, and sometimes sleep, out in the lobby with his 4 foot keyboard beside him. I’d seen a picture of him and the other performing clients in a newspaper article online on Friday, and I asked him how the show went. After five minutes of hearing his excited story, pleased and proud of himself, I realized I wasn’t the only one who needed to hear this. Rarely do we staff get to see our clients up on stage, showing their talents in acting and music. Rarely do we get to see them publicly, powerfully and creatively expressing themselves, speaking on behalf of their street brothers and sisters, and richly adding to the cultural climate of our City. So I took him into the office to offer an impromptu inservice to two of my staff and I, teaching us about homelessness and what a homeless person looks like.

I watched Scott at least three times move his hand or fist to his chest, seeking with word and gesture to express how much the week of preparation and the two nights of performance had meant to him. I watched his hand show how deeply heartfelt the experience was, how much he wanted to take it way, deep down inside and hang onto it. He appreciated the Director, David Diamond, he bonded with his fellow players, and he connected with the audience; especially on this night, when he’d realized how to bring more colour and depth to his character in one particular scene and spontaneously, subtly, showed it. And the audience noticed.

His use of language demonstrated intelligence and passion. Having a diagnosis of ADD myself, I could relate to him when he spoke about his struggle with staying focussed. He told how hard it has been for him to keep a job, when his attention and thoughts go off on unexpected tangents for hours or days at a time. He’s hoping to get back on a medication that was helpful for him in the past, and to go to school in a young adult art program that I think is tailor-made for him.

I hope that Scott finds stable housing where he can function better mentally as the many stresses of street life and staying in shelters can slowly drop away into memory, rather than form the fabric of his daily life. But I am also very happy for him, and proud of him, as he has found within him a place of recognition that he belongs and that he is valuable. May he put his feet up and make himself at home there.

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one comment

1. Shauna : February 13th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
   

   Beautifully told story. Poetic and poignant.

   

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