jumping right into it

They promised me that it doesn't normally go like this. That yes, the recuperative care program does serve people who are sick, injured, addicted, and have no where else to do. That the Henry building, where I work, has 6 over a hundred rooms all housing people in different programs with central city concern, and many of the people have low incomes, mental illnesses, and a handful of complications keeping them from integrating with a large chunk of society. So yes, I'm working in a place where people are at risk all around me. But rarely (they promised) do three people die in one week. But unfortunately that happened to be the case during my first 5 straight days.

Death, I'm realizing, and the way people react to it, is a strange thing. On Friday a man formally in the program and living in the building passed away. A team of EMTs walked through the door and I directed them upstairs, and an hour later watched them bring the covered body out on a stretcher. On Tuesday a man jumped out of his 5th floor window across the street, from another low income housing building. I didn't see it, but I watched as some of the patients wheeled themselves inside. One cried. I gave her a paper towel as she talked in circles, wishing she could have known him, that she could have talked him out of it. Others shook their head. "Depressing morning, huh?" Ethan asked me, as he settled into the folding chair before my desk to use the phone. I nodded. Yes, it was a very depressing morning. I had no idea who this person was, but it was so strange going about the day knowing he wasn't around anymore. That he was so miserable that he couldn't keep up with it, or bear the reality that most of the patients in RCP have to deal with everyday.

Later on in the week a man in the veterans program made his transition. His caseworker found him in his room after unanswered phone calls.

And I keep going about my morning rounds. Handing out juice boxes and granola, and crossing my fingers that everyone is okay before I open the door.

But not all of it is emotional all of the time. There is faxing and running to the drug store to pick up meds and driving a large van to the primary care clinic and the attempt to properly work the handicap door. There is a brick park where I sit and eat lunch in everyday, and a sunburnt man playing the guitar. When I leave at five, there are people to say goodbye to, normally sitting on the sidewalk, smoking cigarettes against the doctor's orders.

The first week...

(And this is my community: Morris House 09-10)

After (almost) a full week of work, I caved and bought my first iced coffee. We only get $80 per month for such expenses, so I need to chose these coffee days carefully. It was after lunch and I could feel the afternoon yawns about to settle in as I looked out at the brick park that I'd sat in for my hour break. The sun was beating down on all of us, myself and two hundred or so other city employees or "unemployees" eating their lunch in solitude in the early afternoon. They read their books, pushed the buttons on their phones, and ate chinese noodles from cardboard containers. A man with a sunburnt face played the guitar on the highest step near Starbucks. I listened, packed my tupperware in my backpack, and headed toward the walkway. It was time--after the first chaotic days of work behind me I decided I'd earned it.

In that small treat the world seemed to open up a bit. Maybe it was the friendliness of the clerk, who smiled at my acceptance of a free dulup of whip cream on my drink, or the fact that the caffine kept me from falling asleep at my afternoon software training session, or the small comfort that keeps building with each day at work. But whatever it was, I enjoyed myself.

The first week at the Recuprative Care Program has had its ups and downs. I work in downtown Portland, which houses a hundred or so clients from Central City Concern (a portland non profit that runs programs focusing on employment, housing, and heathcare for the homeless). There is a small office that I sit in with the 4 other RCP staff members. There are white desks againt the walls, metal filing cabinents, and two-hole punches. There is hand sanitizer, and a basket of granola bars that I must pass out to the clients during my morning rounds. Billy often sits outside, in his wheelchair, sometimes drunk and sometimes sober, yelling his insightful rhymes to anyone who will listen. He is thin, and permently wounded from all of his leg surgeries, and seemingly traumatized from all he has experienced on the street. Patients come in and out of the elevator, smiling and moving on their way. And so far I've spent a lot of time in that small corridor of the office, looking out to those walking in and out of the building, adapting to medical lingo and answering the phone.

Tom, the logisitics coordinator, described the RCP as a place of a lot of darkness and a little bit of light. He, and other staff members, said it would be best not to trust the clients. They steal. They sell their pain meds or take too much of them. And he's right, the cruelness in the streets does not go away in the Henry Building, when the patients have a place to rest and recuperate from their time in the ER. But I guess the only way to get through a job like this is to notice the light, despite how small: a "good morning" from a sober Billy, an occational iced coffee after lunch, and a new client, Dan, morbidly obese, coming in after major surgery, and opening the door to his room, sitting down on his bed. He took a deep breath, and looked out the open window to the food carts across the street. "I think I'll relax now," he said. And we both knew that was something to smile about.

made it...

So I'm here, on NE Morris street in Portland, Oregon sitting in the attic trying my best to hold onto the first dose of Internet connection available since my arrival on the west coast, listening to an album I haven't heard since high school as my housemates come up and down the stairs.

I've been anticipating this moment for a while. Or maybe I've been anticipating a lot of moments since signing onto JVC northwest, as I committed myself to working in a transition home for people who are homeless that have just been released from the emergency room, living with seven other people I haven't met, and relying on a small stipend every month. But after the thought of all of those realities, came the ultimate challenge: the blog. The way I would somehow make all of this psychoticness seem somewhat compelling and interesting to not only people who cared to read about it, but myself. I'm here. Ready to be ruined for life.

This year will unfold differently than this past week was, as 120 brand new Jesuit Volunteers (or "JV's" gathered in the woods 40 or so minutes outside of Portland for orientation. The days passed by like a college orientation might, except in the woods, with sing-a-longs, long discussions about composting, and late night games of yuker (which I never actually learned how to play.) I stayed in a cabin with the girls from communities that I will be on retreat with, volunteering in the Portland and Seattle area. We were excited. We had our journals on hand, and were pleasantly surprised to find out the amount of people we coincidentally knew or knew of from our respective colleges or what not. I guess I was surprised how easily it all came, how quick the bonds were formed and the strange feeling of familiarity that came with complete strangers.

We had speakers several times a day, as you normally do during conventions in the woods, (not that I've been to many before) but I guess what I got out of everyone that came to share their thoughts was a certain fullness I saw in them, a strength that they'd developed throughout their JV year. The hour long discussions of what kind of milk to buy, who forgot to do their dishes, who farted on whose pillow. They had a certain spark in their eye that living in community, working among those who have been marginalized by society, and surviving on an $80 a month stipend had given them. "Every single moment has an opportunity to be holy," Maryland (I am forgetting her last name now) who works at the University of Seattle and served as JV for two years in the city 16 years ago. She paused for a moment. And we, the crowd in our creaky chairs, sat silently. She was right, we all knew this. Religion aside, every moment is special and alive and life changing, as long as you could see it that way, and her JV year was her chance to realize that.

So now I will try to live out her words. In the conflict and in the joy. In the slight awkwardness of orientation, the silly songs, the slices of ham that I accidentally put in my sandwich on the first day rather than turkey. I am now moved into my house. It is big and old and their is dust piling up in the corners. Stacks of books and cassette tapes line the shelves. It feels good to be living in a home that has been occupied by volunteers for the past few decades. My housemates are now mostly asleep. I can see the dark outlines of trees outside the window. I have no idea where I am, or what it will be like, and am slightly reassured by that.

(pictures soon to come)