Jen: The $5 non-meal donation

Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017
This was the day of the non-meal. Instead, I gave a woman $5 which may have gone to feed her heroin habit. Or maybe it helped to get her a dry place to sleep for the night, or another meal.

Her name was Jen, or Jenny, or Jennifer. Sometimes names slip through my fingers. But not the image of her propped up in her wheelchair with the nervous mutt swaddled in a blanker on her lap and the cardboard sign asking for help in paying $60 in lodging for the night. Above her there was a glass awning that caught the drizzle at the corner in front of the Barnes and Nobel  at Pine and Seventh.

I tried to walk past, but she called out to me and I was curious about this woman in a wheelchair, almost in the rain, with the dog. In Rome, the spare changers would frequently have dogs with them. In one case I saw several dogs "cuddling" on a blanket with a donation bowl nearby. They were motionless. Ann, my traveling companion and hostess in Rome, suggested  their tranquility  may have been due to being sedated with drugs.

In Rome, in 2015, these dogs of a beggar were the epitome of tanquility.

When you engage someone on the street, they always have a story, and at least much of it has to be true in some way, because for whatever reason they are exposed to the elements and at least slightly uncomfortable. So there's a reason.

Jen's eyelashes were enhanced. She appeared to have a makeup foundation. She was articulate, conversational, and natural -- easy to engage -- and candid. As we talked, she munched on the remains of a Subway sandwich, so offering to purchase food for her seemed unnecessary at this time.

Jen told me there was a place where she could stay. Although she was in a wheelchair, she could walk a short ways. She could stop into Pacific Place to use the restroom, or sometimes she could just use an alley. To get warm, she could go into  Barnes and Nobel. She could clean up at Immanuel Lutheran Church on Thomas street. She could get around on the bus. If she couldn't find a place for the night, she could find shelter and sleep in her wheelchair, and she had enough wraps to deal with the cold. She could have used some sort of water-repellent cover.

Mental note: See whether I can find sponsors for disposable rain ponchos; for under $140 a bulk order of  72 2-packs is available via Amazon Prime, with free shipping--less than $1 per poncho.

Did she have kin nearby? Yes, she comes from Whidbey Island, and she had family there.

I asked her what was wrong with her leg. Ultimately, it had to do with her heroin habit. She had beaten it once, but her boyfriend got her back into it. The boyfriend is ditched, but the habit lingers. You don't use heroin to get high, she added. You use it to deal with the discomfort of not having it in your system. She had her on-street sources for more, she said. But she wanted to get back on methadone.

So, what to do? She didn't need food for the moment. What she needed was shelter. If I gave her $5 would she use it toward the hotel, or for drugs? She's try to use it for food or lodging, she said.

Meals distributed so far: still 17
Ubuntu,