The shelter at Christmas serves some hope

In the weeks before Christmas the lines changed at the homeless shelter. These are times when Dickens rises and the spirit of the present opens his cloak, when the boy called ignorance and the girl called want stand inside, and Scrooge asks, “What of them?”

The line began at the door to the stairway. Dozens of hungry people came. The smells of ham, chicken and gravy floated overhead.

On the tables the icing of the cupcakes turned to festive red and green. Santa’s smile showed at the wall where cards hung and the poor spoke of hopeful things.

In the Christmas shelter, a young man appeared. He was a bag of bones as thin as a spaghetti noodle. His stringy hair was thick from not being washed. The beard was long, his watery eyes were dull but he moved quickly. He headed to the table filled with noodles, where the aroma of tomato paste plastered the dry air.

“Hey man,” a regular said, “You all right?”

No sound from the bone thin young man. He opened the crock then turned around. The red tomato paste boiled.

“You should eat some,” the regular said. The skeletal youth said, yeah, OK.

“You’re not getting fat, you know.”

Sidewalk lights glowed in the reds and greens and white of the Yuletide.

Dozens of frosted cupcakes, a holiday bounty, waited on the counter. Rolls, buns, garlic bread, sesame seed buns and hamburger buns filled the boxes at the floor.

It’s hard to pass through a shelter, to look into the hopeful eyes, to hear Christmas chiming, and to hear the babies crying. No heat in the house, breath showing in clouds in their homes that are heated by electric heaters.

When the young man finished his meal he ambled for the door. When he was gone, a few began to discuss his life. It was the discussion that becomes ritual, a repetition about justice, that intractable riff that things aren’t fair and someone should do something.

“He’s got a problem with employment.”

“He’s too young.”

“People don’t want to be well. They like being crazy.” One said while another nodded assent.

Dirty snow highlighted the street that holiday but the insecure, and the tired who live nearby the shelter stepped a little higher, like a bounce was in their heels, because someone believed there was a manger and that hope might be found at the Yuletide shelter where the coffee grounds stuck to the Styrofoam cups.

“Hey brother!” A church goer said and there grew a light banter about better days.

We're born as sinners, the riddle says. Conversation turned to the homeless man they knew.

“You can’t give him advice.”

“Maybe it’s his being a victim, he plays the role so … ” a voice sung into the topic about the riddle.

“Being crazy is like having a pet. So there’s a lot of people with pets.”

“Everybody’s free. That’s why Jesus died.”

“Who cares?” The old man with the empty knapsack whispered.

The topic tasked the conscience. The line kept moving as it does throughout the year, hungry people with nowhere to go, only the seasons changing, ignorance and want shuffling at their threshold.

The spirit of Christmas was waving. The hungry had reason to smile.

Tim Trenkle has taught at community colleges in Iowa, taught most recently at Upper Iowa University and was a counselor at a homeless shelter.