Dislodged

Sometimes, and more times than I care to admit, the work just gets to be a lot.  I know a good bit of the “work” is stuff I like doing, rather than stuff I have to be doing, but who wants to do only the stuff they have to do?  I assigned my class more reading than I can really handle and prepare.  I stayed up a little lot too late reading Ngugi.  I stumbled around the internet more than I should have.  I baked bread for six hours.  I practice and sing for mass almost every day.  I was assigned to ring bells this week, too?  Now I have to get up, and instead of going to morning prayer with the rest of my brother monks, I grab some keys and a cell phone, try to grab a little food on the way out to the truck, buckle in and drive the truck across the causeway into New Orleans. 
The causeway is a long bridge to go across with bad feelings running through you.  You would think all that water and sky, the sun coming up, birds flying about, would make things just melt away and make everything right with the world.  You’d be wrong.  Takes a lot more than that to dislodge resentment. 
Sure, I’m tired and there are a lot of miles to go before I get that nice afternoon nap in, but I really just want to know what everyone else is doing that I need to be doing all that I’m doing.  These are the kind of thoughts that will make you a bitter old man at thirty if you’re not careful, especially if you have to drive the causeway very often.
Off the bridge and down a ways to Jefferson highway.  Jefferson turns to Claiborne, and I’m still not really sure where this magical transformation happens.  Right before Napoleon is the Salvation Army.  I back in and ring the bell, take three trays, each with ten loaves of bread in them, bread that I helped to bake the day before, carry it, put it on the ground by the door, and wait for someone to open the door.  All I can think to myself is that every second I stand here waiting is another second stolen from a nap I hope to take at the end of all this.  Finally, a nice black lady comes to the door.  She’s happy to see me, or rather, the bread.  “I’m glad you here.  I plan on using all that today.”  I tell her I’m glad we could help out, put the three trays of bread down on a wooden table, pick up the empty trays, and head back to the truck. 
Onto Napoleon and left onto Prytania.  This is one of the few places in New Orleans where you are actually allowed to make a left hand turn.  Right next to Touro is Grace House, a place for recovering women.  I parallel park wherever I can find space, which is usually right in front of the house or across the street, sometimes blocking the parking garage entrance to Touro.  I grab a tray out the back and head up the stairs and ring the bell.  A nice middle-aged white lady opens the door for me and always greets me with a warm smile and a good morning.  I head down the stairs to the kitchen.  I usually run across at least a couple of the residents.  Isn’t that a nice word?  Like they just happen to live here.  Sometimes I’ll have a very short conversation, and even when I don’t, I can see in their faces a history.  Not one I can read, and I’m not sure that I would want to.  If you think hard enough, or actually, if you allow yourself to stop thinking and realize, you know what most of these women have been through, and they’re standing right next to me and talking to me.  I try not to let the reality of this person become too much for me, but then I realize something, and something gets dislodged, just a little.  I take the bread out of the tray, put it on the stainless steel table in the middle of the kitchen, and head back upstairs with the empty tray.  I tell them all to have a great day, and that I’ll see them next week.  Down the stairs, I put the tray in the back of the truck and saddle up again.
Down to Magazine and the Mercy sisters.  They run a senior citizen center.  I pass it up and have to make the block in order to get to the back door.  In this one block there is a newly developed subdivision with very nice concrete streets with brickwork laid into the street where a crosswalk would be, and a street that is so horribly beyond repair that I am sure the patches that are done to the potholes only make the situation worse.  I parallel park right outside the back door that leads to the kitchen.  I knock on the back door and go to the back of the truck to get three trays of bread.  A slight black lady weighed down with too many badges and keys, her cigarette at the ready before the door opens, greets me and asks how it’s going.  We discuss the weather as I drop those three trays in the kitchen and head back for three more.  Drop those and go into the fenced-in area to retrieve the empty trays from last week.  I make sure to turn them over a couple times to get all the rainwater out of them.  I made the mistake once of just shaking them a bit and went to put the tray in the back of the truck and spilled water all down the front of my pants.  I put the trays in the back of the truck, stacking them on top of the other empties.
Back to Magazine and then a little swerve to the left where Magazine turns into a one way street, and onto Camp.  Drive pass Calliope (pronounced Cal-ee-ope) and just past St. Joseph and move up to the solid gate at Ozanam Inn and blow the horn.  A guy manually opens the gate.  There is only about an extra foot of clearance combined on either side of my truck, but I have learned some tricks on how not to pull down their nice brick wall.  Once inside the yard with the truck I have to turn it around, which on a good day requires a five or seven point turn, people and pigeons dodging the truck, and there always seems to be a bicycle that is right in the way.  After getting the truck turned around, I back up to the chain link fence where they take deliveries for the kitchen, and before I can get out the truck, they have it open and are loading the empties from the last delivery into the back of the truck.  I climb in the back and start doing some fast math to see how much I need for the rest of the deliveries, so I can give them all the rest.  They have a lot of people that get meals from them and they need as much bread as we can give them.  I hear a shout of “Hey, Bread Man.  How’s it going?”  This could only be Squirrel, the cook here whom at one time was standing in line to receive meals and sleeping in the shelter Ozanam Inn provides.  “How much you got for me today?”  “You need extra?”  “I’ll take whatever you can give me.”  I start doing fast math all over again.  “I can give you 14.” “I’ll take it.  How’s ole Brother Joe doin these days?”  “Oh, he’s still baking, just doesn’t do much delivering anymore.”  “Well, you tell him I asked about him and you have a good one, hear?”  “I will, I’ll let Brother Joe know and I’ll see ya next week.”  I slide two stacks of six trays and another stack of two to the back of the truck where two guys quickly take it down and put them on a dolly and the bread disappears.  I climb back in the cab of the truck and look around a bit as I get situated. 
There are so many different faces.  Faces you wouldn’t really put where they are.  For the most part, they don’t look like a sad lot, in fact, some are talking and joking around with each other, even at this early hour.  I wonder what they have to be so happy about.  They are dirty, couldn’t have slept very well in a very long time, they have no homes, no family around them, nothing to really take up their day, no friends . . . .Wait, no, that’s wrong, very wrong; they do have friends.  In fact, that is what I see around here, all of these people, the workers and those seeking food and shelter, there are many friendships.  These people are close, very close.  I look out, thinking, and fear that I have not one friend in the world I am as close to as all of these people have, and something gets even further dislodged.
I pull out onto Camp and call Larry at the Twin Towers, where Brently Baptist operates out of now.  He has to come down the elevator to meet me at the loading dock.  I make a right onto Poydras then down to the Hilton and around that statue of Churchill and pull up to another gate and honk the horn.  Larry is already on the dock and moving to the parking lot.  The gate opens slowly and as soon as I have enough room I pull in and park.  I head for the back of the truck and pull two stacks of trays to the back, one six high the other four high.  Larry rolls a rack that holds these other type of trays to the back of the truck and puts down ten empty trays.  I start transferring the bread from my trays to his trays two at a time.  Once full he picks up the tray and puts it up, and I fill the next one.  Larry is an older man that looks like he works way too hard and isn’t very happy with his work.  One would swear that he was some bitter old Wal-mart cashier or something, but he is a man that helps to feed and shelter the poor and homeless.  You can almost see his tender heart through his gruff exterior, but he will always remain a great mystery to me.  We get to talking about the weather and how much bread he is going to need over the coming weeks.  I finish transferring the last of the bread and Larry puts it up on the rack and starts rolling the bread away to the elevator as we exchange thank yous.  A little more dislodging occurs.
Honk the horn at the gate and it magically opens again and I pull onto Poydras and cruise up to Loyola.  Right on Loyola, and past this crazy guy with a bright orange flag trying to get people to park in this particular lot.  Pass Canal Street and curve around and take a right on Carrolton.  Up to the light and a left on Esplanade.  Drive on and take a left onto the street right before the Degas house, and park wherever I can fit the truck, which usually means getting up close and personal with a cedar tree that almost took the mirror off the passenger’s side of the truck the first time I parked there.  I get three trays, the last of the bread, and carry it down what archeologists would determine was once a sidewalk and up the steps to Odyssey House, put the bread down and ring the bell.  There is always a lot of activity going on in and around this place, and whoever happens to be close to the door will open it for me.  I grab two of the trays, squeeze in, and put them on the floor.  I take two steps back outside and grab the remaining tray, placing it on top of the others as shouts of “Bread man’s here” echo around the building.  A lady assures me that someone will be taking the bread shortly.  Somebody will come and grab the trays, bring them to the kitchen, dump the bread, and bring me the trays back.  In the meantime, I just get to watch the happenings of this drug-rehab halfway house.  A line of women appears at the top of the stairs and then is told to move down.  The first one reaches the bottom stair and stops, waiting for a woman who is wearing an ID around her neck.  We all steal glances at each other, they at me, I at them.  Again, my mind starts to wander and think about their lives, and I notice there is nothing left to dislodge. 
I suddenly realize that it is no burden at all to deliver this bread.  Point of fact, it is my privilege–no–my  honor.  I see the hope and determination in their eyes.  I see the people who work at these places who used to be the ones in treatment here. 
If you watch the news, you would swear everyone was on drugs and killing each other for those drugs.  In these places, I see real people of real hope and real courage.  They have seen a darkness I only know from its re-creation on a movie screen.  They have decided to fight back against that darkness.  They know that it is never very far away, and they crave it sometimes. 
I can’t help but feel like a wimp, like less than a man, and not much of a human being when I am in the presence of these people sometimes.  Their reality is just too much for me. 
I didn’t even want to do this today.  In fact, it pissed me off that I had to get in this truck and drive it out here.  But now I realize I am in the exact spot I need to be, serving them, dislodged.