Liza Doolittle Sings to Me

On television I heard Stephen Colbert and his guest sing a song you know.  I whispered the words Audrey Hepburn sang in “My Fair Lady”: “All I want is a room somewhere, with one enormous chair. Lots of coal making lots of heat.  Warm hands, warm feet.”

A cold, arctic wind has swept down over Texas, bringing the first “hard freeze” of the winter.  Do I really need  my luxurious apartment?  Lying back with my feet up in my big, brown electric recliner, I have my enormous chair.  No coal, but gas heat keeps me warm. 

At suppertime I will push my walker, which carries the oxygen tank, down the long hall to the dining room, where the chef will have prepared a gourmet meal of some fancy, marinated steak.  Do I really need all this fancy living?

This “retirement home” where I live in Dallas is expensive.  Most of the people who live here are rich, including retired doctors, Air Force colonels, plant managers, and the like.  Or they have rich children who pay the rent here to avoid having to put up with their parents living with them.  How many of them appreciate this way of spending their “declining years”?

I remember that, after Wally and I were divorced, my alimony was only $500 a month.  My rent for an apartment in Albuquerque was $350 (one-third of what it would be in Illinois).  I borrowed $15,000 from my mother for a down payment on a little house with payments of $350 a month.  A good deal, as it turned out, but I could not survive on the remaining $150.  I left my son Karl in the house in Albuquerque and drove back to Illinois to sue Wally for support.

What followed was three dreadful years.  Thanks to the generosity of friends, I was given places to stay for a couple of years.  Embarrassed to impose of them any longer, I went to a shelter for the homeless.  In DuPage County, Illinois, the program is called PADS; the homeless sleep on mattresses on the floor in various church halls, a different church each night.

One of the most rewarding experiences in my life.  I met people who were forced by circumstances to live this way.  At that time most of them were (like me) mentally ill.  Those poor souls could not work.  Others were young people who had low-paying jobs but could not afford the expensive rents in DuPage County. One was an unmarried pregnant girl who worked all day laying floor tiles, then came to Pads to sleep on the floor.  No one was there because they were “too lazy” to work.  No one wanted to be there. 

I slept on the floor in PADS for only a few nights.  Then my daughter Martha and her husband Don let me stay with them.  They were newlyweds.  It was not a happy situation. I found ways to escape.  Walking in the Morton Arboretum was excellent exorcize, plus being outdoors in the woods cleared my muddled brain.

On Monday nights I went to a writers group at the Downers Grove Public Library.  After meeting with the writers, I would go across the street to the Congregational Church, where PADS provided shelter every Monday night. Months wet by and the same group was still sleeping on the floor, caught by fate in situations which they could not change.  None of them could afford “a room somewhere, with one enormous chair.”  For them a small room of their own would be luxury.

Last night I had supper with a genial man who spoke with an Irish accent to order his supper of chicken-fried steak and black-eyed peas.  Born in Ireland, he came to the U.S. as a young man and achieved success as plant manager for a company which manufactured custom-made hats for a rich clientele.  . He said proudly, “I love America.  Anyone can succeed in this country if they just work hard.” He does not realize that the homeless are people who can not help themselves.

To my shame I did not speak up and tell him my experiences.  What will I do? Not much  I will send a check to the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army takes care of hundreds in Dallas County. No enormous chairs but a warm place to sleep on these cold nights.  My little donation  is very little in the magnitude of the problem.