On the coldest day of the season, I talked to a homeless man in a thin coat about what it was like to sleep outside. “You can't sleep but about 20 minutes at a time,” he said. “The cold carves your bones.”

        In the season of goodwill, I met a man who has spent nights on the ground in Washington Park, his head on a pillow he found in the trash. “I couldn't go home because I burned a bridge there, and I couldn't come here because I missed curfew,” he said.

        Here is the Drop-Inn Center downtown, where Vernon and Keith spend some time. Keith has an apartment, he says. Vernon sleeps on a mat in the back room of the center. “I have a lot of hope that one day this is going to change,” Vernon says.

        Count your blessings.

        This is the season for that. I heard it all week: On radio, on TV, from the minister at my church. I read it in the news magazines, in the pages of this newspaper, saw it scratched in long-ago paint on a wall of an alley not three blocks from the Drop-Inn Center.

        Count your blessings.

        I have a warm coat, a good home, a place to be. My children's futures are as secure as I can make them. Last week, I didn't have to stand outside in a line waiting for a turkey dinner.

Myriad reasons

       

        I have enough blessings, I can think about what others have, or don't. That's a blessing, one too seldom recognized.

        Keith, 45, says he is a recovering addict. Vernon, 57, owes his situation to what he calls “bad money management.” Not that it should matter. In this season, or any other. But especially this season.

        You can talk all you want about empowerment or free will or “welfare queens.” But nobody chooses to be hungry. No one chooses to be cold. No one wakes up in the morning and decides he wants to sleep on a mat in a homeless shelter.

        We are more closely linked to Keith and Vernon than we like to think. A few missed paychecks. A fire, a medical calamity, a false step. A drink.

        Says Keith, “At some point, we've all been at this place, maybe not on the same level. But hurt is hurt. Pain is pain. Hunger is hunger, whether you haven't eaten in a week or a day.”

        Vernon has family in town. A brother and a sister. They are comfortable, but he is embarrassed to call on them for help. He has done it so many times before. He is in a Catch-22 situation, he says: He wants to save money for an apartment, but he doesn't work steadily enough.

        He works temporary jobs for minimum wage. Ask him if, at age 57, he still has dreams, he's puzzled by the question. “I don't. I really don't. I don't know. I always thought, if you're dreaming, you're sleeping.”

        He spent Thanksgiving at the center. “This hurts me so bad, being here, sometimes I sneak in and out of this place. Why would anyone want to (help) me when I'm homeless?”

        Keith worked at the center Thanksgiving Day, serving meals. “This is my family,” he says.

        As a recovering addict, he battles himself every day. “Before and after drug addiction, there is a nice guy. I can look in the mirror and say, "Here is a guy worth saving.' ”

        Keith stays close to the center to keep himself humble, but also to share what he hopes he has learned. “Not be sympathetic,” he says, “but empathetic. Look at everyone as if they could be you. Never look down on a man unless you're picking him up.”

Time to share

       

        The beauty of the next few weeks is in our ability to reach out. The joy is in taking time to connect, not only with those we love, but with those who need someone to love them. To not only count our blessings, but to exalt in them and, in some small way, wish them for others.

        On Thanksgiving Day, there was a good chance that Keith served dinner to Vernon.

        “We're all we've got,” Keith says. He wasn't talking about the men and women at the Drop-Inn Center. He was talking about all of us.

        Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; fax: 768-8330.
       

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