Homelessness

Homelessness is a relative thing. Last week I was feeling sorry for myself. I am preparing to leave my retreat in northern Wisconsin and return to Johannesburg. The housing we anticipated has not come through, and we will stay in a self-catering guesthouse for a month (more living out of a suitcase) before moving into the house of fellow-missionaries going on home assignment. Although we plan to use our own linens and dishes, it will be their house, their furniture, and their gardener, at least until our South African visas run out in August. Next week I will leave behind my roll top desk, my blue stoneware and the Sri Lankan tablecloth Steve gave me for Christmas and go back to improvising.

This week I traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, to meet with my agent. We went over my manuscripts, discussed possible markets and met with a publisher. Etta showed me a bit of the town, including the lovely Bicentennial Mall State Park, built to commemorate Tennessee’s two hundredth anniversary of statehood in 1996. With its lawns, carillon, spray park and 1,400-foot time-line etched in a polished granite wall, the Bicentennial Mall makes a delightful outdoor learning center.

As we entered the park by the farmers’ market we were met by a man in a bedraggled gray jacket. He dragged an overflowing shopping cart behind him with an upside-down, upholstered dining room chair poking its polished mahogany legs into the nippy February air. A pair of shoes dangled by their laces from some other carefully guarded possession.

Suddenly my ‘homelessness’ took on a new perspective. I have far too many possessions to fit into a shopping cart and kind friends who have graciously stored the boxes for me. When I get off the plane in South Africa, I will not only have a roof over my head, but a very nice roof with a comfortable bed and cooking facilities. I won’t have to cart my belongings from one place to another (as we did for fourteen months back in 1984-85 when we moved to Mozambique.) After the first month, I will have a three bedroom house to stay in for as long as we need.

I do plan to enjoy my Wisconsin fireplace while I may. And next week I will do what I can to make my temporary quarters a home. But hopefully the memory of that crazy upside-down, upholstered dining chair in a shopping cart will remind me not to complain about my cushy version of ‘homelessness’.