Time and Stuff

I’m reading a book called Tell Them Who I Am by Elliot Liebow, an ethnographer made famous by his book, Tally’s Corner. An ethnographer is a social scientist who investigates social phenomena by immersing him or herself in the setting  being studied, like an anthropologist but different in some way that isn’t entirely clear to me.

In Tell Them Who I Am, Liebow works as a volunteer in a homeless shelter. Over many months and years, he gets to know several women very well. Interestingly, while he is volunteering in the shelter and writing this book, he is also dying. There is no drama attached to that; Liebow just mentions this by way of explaining how he had time to be hanging around a homeless shelter. He quit his government research job because he was dying and then he had time to kill, so to speak, so he started volunteering, first one day a week, then several. And out of that familiarity came friendships and out of the friendships came stories.

I am only 43 pages into the book but I am struck by Liebow’s discussion of two issues confronting women who are homeless. The first is the chronic, endless, mind-numbing boredom. The second is the ever-present worry about the safety of one’s stuff. That he raised these so early in the book means both were immediate and obvious. The twenty or so women he befriended and whose attitudes and behavior he tracked and described had these things on their minds every day. Time and stuff. Time and stuff.

Time because there was so much of it. Stuff because it was who they were. They walked around during the day, sat in the library, tried to start conversations with other folks on park benches, and came back way too early to stand in line to get back into a place that already had a bed reserved for them. And they worried about their stuff, their papers and pictures, sometimes their furniture, their mother’s dishes, their clothes from a better time. They paid money to storage companies, hauled stuff around in suitcases; one kept a broken down car that hadn’t run in years because it was her closet.

So I thought about that today. How often I see people who are homeless who are walking down the street. Where are they going, I wonder. Nowhere, probably. They are just walking. Killing time until they can get let in to the place they are staying. And that could be hours. Hours walking.

And where is their stuff? Where are their papers and pictures? Where is the furniture they spent years paying for? Their favorite recipes? Their yearbooks? The thick socks they got for Christmas five years ago? Are there phone numbers in their pockets, places to call to inquire about their stuff? Or maybe they’ve forgotten about their stuff. Doesn’t their stuff matter anymore?

I wouldn’t do well as a homeless person. I am attached to time being filled, being pressed for time, watching the clock, having a purpose for every hour. And I have stuff, two houses of stuff, stuff to wash and put away, stuff to file, stuff to take to Goodwill. I have stuff in my car and in my closets, purses hang on a hook in my closet, and suitcases lay stacked in the attic.

I would have to lose so much to become homeless.

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash