touch

A week ago, I was on the streets of downtown San Diego with a church group, handing out granola bars, bananas, peanuts, and bottles of water to the homeless people bedded down on the cement for the night. More than they were thankful for the food and water, they seemed most appreciative of our conversation. To speak and be heard. That was more important to them than nutrition and sustenance.



One guy, who looked suspiciously like a young Santa Claus, rolled over on his back , hands under his head to talk about bowling. Bowling. Another guy told us how he used to play the voice of the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Marvin the Martian. He sounded just like them. Yet another older man sat up and watched the cars go by while he shared how he had learned to run and pray at the same time, like David fleeing Saul in the Old Testament.



They all had a normal, regular life before they found themselves on the street. They weren't born into that life. It claimed them. And somehow, they were stunningly hopeful. I knew I was going to drive back into the suburbs that night and sleep in my bed, under clean blankets, with a glass of water close at hand. It seems so unfair. I could be one of them.



I was trying to hand out the last of my granola bars before we left for the night. I lowered the cardboard box down to one woman, who I had earlier seen meticulously folding and smoothing out a pair of pants that she wasn't wearing.



"Are they soft?" she asked me.



"Umm, I don't know." I picked one up. Squeezed lightly with my hand. Set it back down. "They feel kinda of crunchy," I told her.



"Let me see." She fingered one of the shiny wrapped bars and shook her head as she withdrew her hand. "You show me."



She grabbed my hand and shoved a granola bar into my fingers, holding on with hers.



"I'll take one," some guy I assumed had been sleeping next to her sat up.



I bent over and leaned across the blankets on the ground, stretching out the box towards him.



"No. Have her give it to you," the pant-less lady said, grabbing at my hand again, stuffing a granola bar into it, pulling on my arm to reach him. I nearly fell over onto both of them.



It seemed bizarre. But walking away, I knew what had happened. She didn't care that she couldn't eat the granola bars. Even though she had felt them for herself, she wanted me to show her, not at arm's length, but up close and personal. She wanted to touch me.



It was the first time I had done something like that, and I guess I didn't know what to expect. But it wasn't this. Not people with lives like mine, feelings like mine, needs like mine. They were polite (mostly), intelligent, interactive. To them it seemed the food was an afterthought. They wanted us. I think we could have shown up with empty hands and they wouldn't have cared. It was our voices, our ears, our eyes, our hands. That's what they craved.