No Room at the Inn

Marie and I have had some credit problems in the past, so our housing search is complicated. With the mortgage and credit crunch, there is a shortage of rental units, and landlords are becoming more restrictive and selective in their rental practices, with many now requiring first and last months rent up front and a deposit, about $1600 to move in. It happens that with the sale of the car, my deposit from my current place, and a week's paychecks we can raise this amount. but it's still a fair amount of money for "the working poor." I guess that's technically what we are, although it's terribly morbid to use the words in a sentence.

I've already given my notice for this place, so in three weeks I could be quite literally homeless. I'm a little nervous about it. I'm not sure what to do except prayer and worry about it once a day for an hour. In the meantime I've got to catch the train for work.

Going carless is a bit of an adjustment. It's a sacrifice I have readily and willingly made for the one I love, but I'm getting a lot more exercise, and I have to think ahead a lot more than I'm used to in getting to work on time and getting from place to place. For the winter I'll have to invest in some water proof hiking boots, some stocking caps for my bald head, lined leather gloves, and wool socks. I'm not a winter person. I don't like to be cold and wet. I'd much rather it be 95 than 35, remembering the bad old days when I used to be a trashman, up at five every morning lugging cans in the dark. One morning a rat jumped out of dumpster and ran up my sweatshirt and jumped over my shoulder, a huge brown Norway rat, fast as lightning with beady yellow eyes, about half the size of a house cat. Another morning a serial killer offered me a job in construction. He drove a dark-colored Impala with a big trunk, followed me across town for three stops, from the Greek Cusina to a downtown park to the bowling alley, then offered me the job. It was four in the morning. "I have a job," I told him, in my most unfriendly don't-mess-with-me-voice. He drove away. I read about him in the newspaper a few weeks later. I'm not being melodramatic; it was the same guy, the same M.O. He was crusing Old Town early in the morning, offering transients a job, then hauling them out to the Eastern Oregon desert to bludgeon them. One of my many brushes with death.

I believe in guardian angels. There have been too many coincidences in my life, too many moments that nothing should have saved me from my own stupidity or lack of awareness. When my brother and I were boys we watched a movie about the French Resistance, and the next day on the back 40 of the farm we tried to make Molotov cocktails. We stood right over the bottles, rags and gasoline, trying to light them with matches. Yeah, we were country boys, full of sass and ignorance. Nothing lit. Not a single flame or fume. I have no idea why, except it wasn't my time. We told the story to my mother years later at Christmas, and she shuddered in agony, just knowing how awful it should have been, her two precious boys burned to death or disfigured for life. No earthly force could account for the grace that kept us from the certain physics of gasoline, glass and matches, but something did.

Another time as a young man, just out of high school and full of depression and recklessness, I drove the old road from Willamette to West Linn at 80 miles an hour, a bottle of Miller beer wedged in my lap, and went around a corner and a bump and hydroplaned, completely lost control of the car. On one side of the road there is a stand of trees and a sheer dropoff to the Willamette River. On the other is an 80-foot high face of rock. I hit the rock wall and the grey Chevy Chevette flipped over, rolled twice and landed on its top. I crawled through the driver's side window, utterly senseless and without a scratch. I walked to the police station to report it and a cop on duty gave me a ride home. I bought an old Ford pickup a month or two later. Something slower and sturdier. This was a year or two before Stephanie was born.

I've had my adventures and misadventures in life. I've been without a car before and I've slept in one for a few weeks. I haven't had a conventional life, and at times it has been downright bizarre, usually of my own making. I spent six weeks in a mental hospital for bipolar disorder in 1993. There's a lot I haven't told you, and some of it might shock you or cause you to turn away in disgust. But that's the way it is. As I try to tell the rest of the story I'll try not to do so in such a jarring way. This morning I woke up sweating at five a.m., realizing we had an early morning meeting and in three weeks I wouldn't have a place to live unless I did something right away or learned to pray more faithful prayers, and it brought back a flood of the old memories, misadventures, and calamities. I have a big heart, I guess, but not much sense. But then again, that gives me a big edge in the writing game, doesn't it? Lots more to tell.

The whole country is waking up sweating. The morning news and the front page of Yahoo are filled with little dispatches of alarm, record losses on Wall Street and emergency drops of the prime interest rate, accompanied by stricken photos of floor traders and political leaders gathered around a podium. The presidential candidates debated last night and blamed each other for the crisis, predicting that the policies of the other would lead to certain ruin and a repeat of history.

My point is, I've faced despair before, and sorrow and neglect and ruin and desperation. You can endure anything, and the worst and most uncertain times are not unbearable, just interesting and a challenge. It's what you do next that matters. It's where you choose to turn.