ice lolly

Today, it is only partly sunny in Austin.

Compare "partly sunny" here to "a very nice day" in Ottawa or "gorgeous" on the west coast and you will find very little to distinguish them, except for the fact that it is likely to be warmer, softer and lovelier in Austin - with less road work - and better restaurants.

People can be good anywhere, I think they always try. Just the same it is easier to be friendly when the air is soft and fragrant, the sky is blue and the temperature remains above the freezing mark.

Maybe it's just me.

Of course there are lots of problems in Austin, just as there are in any city but if you're going to tackle problems, I think it is somehow more manageable under blue skies. Simplistic, I know - maybe I should say, it's easier for me. Fine weather soothes me like money soothes many people I know.

I am going out tonight - going to have dinner at a family restaurant all by myself. The reason I am doing this is because it will benefit the local homeless shelter. I'm trying not to mind that it's just for men. Gotta start somewhere.

There is just so much to do in any community, people take on the problems they think they can manage first. I'm looking at it this way; if we can all make an effort to get this program settled and stable maybe then there will be the time, energy and resources to help homeless women.

But then again - I just looked at that and it sums up my entire life and not in a good way.

All my life I have put my problems on-hold because there is always someone with a more pressing or more predictable problem standing right beside me demanding to go first.

My sister with her refusal to stay in school and subsequent employment problems - her three pregnancies, her endless need for every bit of the family resources in every way, my lover - with his very many catastrophic individuals who are in seemingly endless orbit around him, propelled by one distaster after another - drugs, career derailment, petty crime, family suicide, unplanned pregnancy - all self-made, of course but no less pressing for all that - work, where some other woman attached to the firm needed more work directed her way than I did because she was going through a very messy divorce and had two kids to support...

And on and on and on - all of these are very good reasons for me to stand aside and wait my turn, after all, I am pretty self-sufficient and one way or another, I get by. More accurately, I give the impression of getting by. What I really do is stand aside, make do, keep trying and wait.

It occurs to me that this method of coping with my own seemingly insoluable problems, is very similar to how women in this era deal with homelessness. I've been there myself. Without enough money to support yourself, women go to family or they find a man. How many marriages have been made out of fear?

Fact is, homelessness presents more challenges for a woman than it does for a man. Once a month, for example, a woman must bleed. She needs a clean place to do it. We have been convinced by the purveyors of "feminine hygeine products" that somehow, having a period is effortless, insignificant - a minor inconvenience. I am here to tell you (or remind you) that is not true.

Having a period is messy, painful, sometimes embarassing and nearly always exhausting. Unless you are on the pill, have a car, have access to pain killers, have an ensuite bathroom and a readily available shower - it is a bit of an ordeal. I do not know of any homeless women who possess any of those things.

So how is it that the women have stood aside and waited while men, who experience none of this, have their homeless problem solved? Even if that was the only complication faced by women, that would be reason enough to put them first.

Of course there are other reasons - rape, children, physical weakness in comparison to the average homeless man, inequitable access to credit, employment, even transportation - a man can hitchhike, a woman really can't. All of these are reasons why women should come first. Yet, they still don't.

I'm not blaming anyone - you have to start somewhere. It's just that there is so very much to do. Front Steps has started a recuperative care program - how many of us have ever even thought about how it would be to have a heart attack with nowhere to live, nowhere to go? Front Steps is trying to help end that situation, in the processs, they've discovered they often end the patient's homeless too. That's something else to think about.

Austin has problems, Austin is doing something about it - Austin needs a little more. I pray every day that I can contribute something to that.

And I pray, every day, that when people tell me I need to wait for someone else to go first before I can have a life, a job, a love, a place - I remember that they think that way not because it's true but because they just don't know any better. It's easy.

I have to find a way to change that.