This year has been rough and the light at the end of the tunnel can seem like a minuscule pinprick that continues to be blocked by a barrage of hard things. However, as we often remind our students, we can do hard things, and there is still hope. Today SLOCA mom, Jaime Hendrickson shares with us her Hope for the 2nd Half.
Fifty feet of sidewalk
friends and strangers go up and down
a stream of souls flowing past
Nadia, (not her real name), became a part of my viewshed on a Friday, she became painfully real, one story of all those who daily migrate down our sidewalk from one support resource to another. She reminds me of someone who would have been in my department in college or someone I could have worked with in horticulture. That is what I used to think when she walked past. Across the wall of bamboo that separates our home from the adjacent property yelling and screaming had gone on all week, but now it was her crying, “I can’t do this anymore.” Alongside her, I was in a spiral of my own, “I can’t deal with this anymore, and what is the right thing to do?” This led to a generous police officer sharing Nadia’s story and empathizing with my need for my children to feel safe in our backyard. I continued to spiral while we sat down to dinner that evening, knowing outside there was a soul alone, reeling in a lifetime of abuse and mental health struggles. I hope that Nadia’s and my story merging for a few hours will bring greater awareness to the brokenness and need outside our door. That as a family we will be better equipped each time to give something, even if only with a kind smile.
Recently we had two new additions to our viewshed: the circling of helicopters for hours each afternoon and the chant “Black Lives Matter” reverberating from downtown, a somber playlist for my summer garden. I am trying to make more time for contemplation and tackling racial justice reading lists as I start the process of my own re-education, lament, and hope for a more just future.
In The Education of a Wandering Man, Louis L’amour writes: “no matter where you go, east, west, north, and south there are stories…but one has to only listen, to look, and to live with awareness.” Are we raising people who will listen, see, and be more aware than we have been? I think we are. We are collectively investing in putting living stories, rich in character, before our children. I am grateful that SLOCA is providing our kids with a more cosmopolitan feast than the one I experienced.
I have to remember this is a viewshed my husband and I chose, an urban environment with all its nuances and nimby-isms, where bike bells signal friends going by and the sounds of sirens move across town in harmony. Our hope moved us to serve and see change in our community, even while our kids were still little. The kids don’t remember being bounced through board meetings and distracted through community workshops, but we hope the seeds were planted.
Having invested two years at SLOCA I have learned we are playing the long game, each day is practice and patience. For me, the remainder of 2020 is a bucket list of uncertainty. My hope is that as my children step into their own viewsheds, they see the horizon stretched beyond what was once familiar as landmarks of citizenship, courage, integrity, and kindness rise up.
Thank you, Jaime, for giving us a glimpse of life from your viewshed and for your honest and genuine reflections.
