Last night, coming home with Panda in the dark, Eric,
sitting on his front porch smoking, shouted across the street, “Mary Jo, I am
really happy about that shirt you got me for Christmas. It’s got two pockets in it … for my
cigarettes. I’m smoking one now. How’s Panda?
I love your dog, Panda; he’s a great dog. How are you doing? Hey, I was just next door for FOUR
hours. It was nice. Those people are great. And you know what? When I got back all the chairs were tipped
over. We have bed bugs, and they were
sprayin. Yeah, I killed five of them on
me last night. There was blood all over
the bed.”
Eric tells me all of these things with the same level of
joy. He is truly happy. Sitting there. Smoking.
Relishing everything.
“And you know what?
Shandra likes me!”
Shandra is the supervisor of the group home. She and Eric butted heads last summer over
his panhandling, and she got him evicted in August. He was back by late October, but our street
was the poorer without him.
I ask him how his relationship with Shandra changed.
“No idea,” he shrugs, but then says with certainty, “It’s a
miracle of God!” he laughs and goes on
to tell me how things didn’t work out in the forty-bed house, and, because he
refused to go to Brother’s Keeper, he was homeless for a while. They finally accepted him back to the group
home on our street.
“I’m happy here.
These are good people.”
I keep telling Eric that I am so glad … glad that he’s
happy, glad that he got four cigarettes from the guy next door, glad that he’s
returned to our street. I genuinely AM
happy. I honestly missed him. Who else is so friendly, so open? His voice always was a voice that reached and
drew me to him, and I’m sure it’s not just me.
It’s him. He is a truly beautiful
person. When I gave him the plaid shirt
for Christmas, it was a sunny day and warm.
He wanted to put it on immediately and took off the shirts he was
wearing right out in the open. I noticed
that he wore a worn string of red beads (a rosary) around his neck.
While I’m listening to Eric, Panda is scavenging. I tell him to stop and finally have to scoop
him up in my arms. “Eric, I gotta get
home.”
“Okay, Mary Jo. Bye,
Mary Jo. Bye, Bye. Come back tomorrow.”
I walk away smiling, feeling warm and enriched.
I get a few houses down into the dark, and his voice shouts
out,
“I love you, Mary Jo.”
“I love you, Eric,” I shout back, and smile big into the
night. Life is so easy. Why do we sophisticated ones complicate it? Sit on the porch. Smoke a cigarette. Talk to strangers. Accept gifts.
Enjoy the pockets in a flannel shirt.
Shout “I love you” into the night.
New Year’s resolutions.
