Morning Hug

It is four in the morning. I check my phone and turn off the alarm just as it is about to ring. I have been awake for several minutes, looking out the window at the white stucco house across the street and waiting for it to be four and now it is. My husband is sleeping.

I go to the bathroom and put on the clothes I laid out the night before. Underwear, socks, blue jeans, bra, black pullover, black hoodie. I wash my face, and brush my teeth. I wet a brush and tame my hair. Then I look for earrings. I put in the small silver hoops with a tiny row of diamonds but then decide I shouldn’t be wearing diamonds to an emergency warming room for homeless people. It’s a queer thing to think, like anyone would notice or care, but it seems not right to me so I switch them for a pair of plain silver hoops.

I go downstairs and pack up the seventy hard boiled eggs I made last night, heat up coffee in the microwave, and layer on my parka and mittens. I drive across town on the city streets. The moon hangs in the early morning sky like a kid drew it there. Steam rises off hot things, vents of buildings, and I remember when the electric company put a fence over a steam vent to keep homeless people from sleeping near it. I keep an eye out for people who should have come to the warming room but I don’t see any. I pass a parked police car on a long street with no traffic; the car pulls out from its spot and starts to follow me. It makes me nervous for no reason.

There are fewer cars in the parking lot of the church than the last time I was here. There is a single space marked “elderly” and that is where I park. Elderly people show up, I think to myself, they’re not afraid to show up with their boiled eggs. And so I put my travel mug of coffee in my jacket pocket and carry the eggs inside. The heavy metal door squeaks when I open it.

Two volunteers, a man and a woman, both in Street Angels sweatshirts, are sitting at the check-in desk and smile at me from the shadows. There is a tiny bedroom lamp lighting their faces. They have been here all night and I am just coming now. I tiptoe across the gymnasium, past fifty people sleeping on thin sleeping bags and fleece blankets. They lie on their backs, on their sides, some curled up, others sprawled, their arms and legs carefree as if in their own bedrooms. Each one has their space, not one too close to another, unless they mean to be. There are couples who sleep like couples do. They are all here because they could freeze to death if they stayed outside. It is 7 degrees.

I help set up breakfast in the other room but the breakfast lady needs little help. She has a system so I decide not to intrude. We bring out dozens of donated boxes of pre-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Little frozen circles of bread. There is cereal and milk and my eggs. I wish I had a frying pan and a hot plate and could make scrambled eggs for people but there are too many people and not enough time for that. A man who has gotten up early and is looking at the breakfast offerings asks me a question but his voice is low; I hear just a murmur even with my cochlear implant and all my hearing equipment. Not being able to hear is why I picked this morning shift; it’s about cleaning up, folding blankets, wiping tables, not talking. But here he is talking to me. I find someone to help him. Maybe I shouldn’t be here.

At 5:30 we begin to wake people up. It is dark as I walk around the big gymnasium with other volunteers but still our presence, our movement, seems enough for people to stir. When people leave their sleeping bags and blankets, we fold them up and carry them to stack in the store room. I’m careful about doing this because last week a man got angry that I’d rushed him, flashing me a look that stuck with me for days. There is a blanket that smells like vomit and I throw it in the trash. I find the peppermint gum in my pocket.

A few yards away, a black man in a plaid flannel shirt who I remember from last time, sits up and smiles at me and I wave at him. He is wearing khaki pants, LL Bean boots, and a thick leather belt. He is trim and handsome. I watch him as I gather other sleeping bags and blankets, wanting to make sure not to show up too soon. He isn’t the same man as the angry man but I’d learned my lesson. Finally, he folds his blankets and puts them in a stack and that’s when I walk to him and I say, “Is it okay if I take these now?”

“That’s it?” he says. “No good morning? No how are you?” He is smiling at me.

I smile back and he holds open his arms like I am the sister he has been waiting for at the bus station all afternoon and into the night. And I hug him and his flannel shirt, feel his sturdy arms around me, hear him smiling, and, in that moment, I am glad that I came to this place out of the cold even if I couldn’t hear the man who asked me the question I couldn’t answer. I am here to help. I can be imperfect and help. I don’t have to hear everything. I just have to be here.