It wasn’t the germs …it was the catching

The back of our small SUV is packed with bags of outgrown and overused clothing.  Bags, as in four large garbage bags.  With my kids in the backseat, we head to the Women’s and Children’s Emergency Shelter to deposit our donations.  I have mixed emotions ranging from the good, bad and ugly running through my mind.  I process them unconsciously and simultaneously. There is relief and a sense of accomplishment for going through our possessions and getting rid of the unused unwanted excess.   There is pride for giving my leftovers.   There is the feeling of leadership for teaching my kids to give to the poor and having them see the people who do not have what we have.

 As we drive further away from our home and protections of the Home Owners Associations and manicured yards; as we travel deeper into the heart of the city, I find myself asking my children if their doors are locked.  We come to a stop light.  I look over my shoulder again and chant “Are your doors locked?”  We pass a homeless man at the corner “Are your doors locked…?”  Not really wanting an answer.  Already knowing they are.  But the words come forth on their own.

As we pull into the Shelter I am self-conscious about driving a Lexus, even though it is eleven years old.  I take notice of the families milling around in the common area that also serves as the gated parking lot. Those very gates will close and lock all who have been left inside once the sun slips away at the end of the day.

Entire families, minus the men.  Talking.  Laughing.  Living as if this is life as usual.  What I perceive in my mind based off of the very little personal experience I have is that this should be a place of sadness.  The end of the line or bottom of the pit.  But instead, for many it is the beginning.  It is a new start.  It is safety behind the gates that lock.  It is hope.

After I park and open my car door my seven year old daughter asks with anticipation ringing in her voice “Can I come with you?” And just as I am forming the word no to automatically spew from my pierced lips, my nine year old son says it for me.  “No!” he sternly replies.  And then he adds his reasoning, that he believes to be mine, “…because of the germs!”

My heart drops.

I immediately retort, “No, it’s not because of the germs.  It’s because…”  And my voice trails off. “…because I just want you to stay in….”  I shut the door.

I look at the people looking at me as I transfer my bags, one at a time from my trunk to the wall just outside the Staff door.  My stuff that has been on my body, on my kids bodies as they played and went to school.  As they ate cake at birthday parties and sat in Sunday school learning about Jesus.  Things that have been in my home and a part of my home now sit on the cold cement in trash bags for women and children without a place to call their own.

I have volunteered at this Shelter before.  I have given to it with intention because I know there is immediate need and there will be instantaneous use.  People start to rummage through my bags before I have even driven my car completely out of the parking lot.

I have shared poetry with some of the women that happened to find themselves here and the freeing power of writing.  But today, when it came to my children, I wasn’t willing to share.  I want to teach them about helping others but at the same time I want to protect them from the harsh realities of life.  I know what it is like to not have a father.  I have been in a relationship with an alcoholic.  It wasn’t the germs that my son was referencing that stopped my heart.  It was the catching that is inferred to when talking about those germs.

More than anything in this world I want to protect my children from catching all of the things in life that led these women to bring themselves and their children to this place.