Countdown to homelessness...Day 12....

Angels and Jackals

As children, growing up in the 50’s and early 60’s in the Mission District of San Francisco, my brothers and I were sheltered by a whole community of immigrant parents who were proud, hardworking and generous. The Mission was not yet the Hispanic barrio it grew into later in the 60’s. In those years, it was full of working-class Europeans who’d grown up during WWII and then migrated to the U.S. leaving behind their extended families.

Our neighborhood replaced those far-away families and our neighbors became more aunts and uncles to us than our own biological ones. Doors were propped open and there was always a cup of coffee ready or room for one more at the table. Everyone knew everyone else’s business but there was also an unwritten rule to respect each other’s right to work out their own problems. When my father left us, the neighborhood closed ranks around my mother as she struggled to raise us three kids on her own.

When it was time for my First Communion, little anonymous packages showed up on our doorstep, one by one—a crinoline petticoat, a lace veil, a pair of white gloves, some frilly socks, a new pair of patent leather shoes, a rosary, and even my dress. Things just got arranged. People were paying attention. Angels were plentiful, in those days. If someone could they lend a hand, they did. What we had—we shared. (What fun was it without sharing?) If someone got a bonus, the neighborhood had a party.

It was a safe place to live and people were easy to love.

I found similar community when, years later, I moved with my two kids to Oaxaca, Mexico where we lived for nearly three years. Like my mother, newly alone and in need of support, I found angels in the campesinos in Oaxaca.

Oaxaca is unique in Mexico because the Spaniards never succeeded in conquering the Zapotec and Mixtec people whose ancient cultures are still alive today. Most still live in tiny pueblas which look the same as they did hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago—with the satellite dish being, perhaps, the only new addition to the landscape. In this culture, the worst crime you could commit wasn’t murder; it was to refuse to help a neighbor if you were able to do so.

When we moved home, it was a shock. America had changed. There was no community. People escaped into their houses like burrowing rabbits. I lived next to the same family for ten years and it took nine of those years to convince them to speak to me. The family across the street never did... But, there was an elderly Ukrainian couple on the other side of me who became dear friends. They are Alla and Paulo. Alla, with her effervescence and open heart and Paulo, with his dead-pan humor became my angels. Quietly, never intruding, but always observant, they were quick to offer help. They also were gracious enough to accept whatever repayment I could give them.

They’d both been the ‘guests’ of Hitler, forced into hard labor as children on German farms while the men where away fighting the war. When the Third Reich fell, those same Germans hid them from the Soviet Army which would have killed them had they been captured. They’d immigrated here, raised a family, made some money, lost that money and stayed married for nearly 60 years. During my summer without electricity, Alla would appear with an ice-filled glass of tea and sandwiches when I was working in the garden. When the sun went down, Paulo would wave me over to their house and pat the place next to him on the couch to watch the 10 o’clock news and discus world politics.

My other angel was and still is my best friend, George, who always showed up with something I needed in tow no matter how broke he was himself. He’d pocket my phone bill or steal my car keys to fill my tank with gas. His wife, Melinda, supplied me with all the fiction I could read from their personal library. Two or three books a week was my average, just trying to hold on to my sanity. They both seemed to understand that without that escape, I would have gone mad.

These angels in my past and current life are the ones who buffered me in my encounters with the jackals. The jackals were the people who stole from me because they could—I was the latest downed-deer. They consisted of the neighbor who helped himself to my few valuable pieces of furniture as they waited the sidewalk to be loaded into the moving van; the meth-head who lived down the street and prowled around my property under the guise of walking her dog, digging up plants from my garden when she knew I wasn’t home; her son, the flasher, who showed himself to the little kids in the ‘hood and made up vicious, petty rumors about us for his own entertainment; the so-called friends who stayed with me when they had no place to go but conveniently disappeared when I needed help moving. These were the jackals and this is all the ink I will give them...

Except to say that, after that summer, I understood why, during disasters like Katrina, looters are shot first and questioned later.

Today, I hit the streets again, looking for a place for my son and me. And I’ll try to remember that our home is wherever we are together.

Next—

...and then, there’s the 11^th Principle...

Copyright © 2009 Stephanie Ericsson All Rights Reserved