by Kathy Izard
I didn’t dare look at my father. It was all too bizarre.
My mom moved back to the hospital bed, picking up her pile of index cards and the four-color Bic pen. With the multicolor pen she could record her brainstorms in the same vivid Peter Max versions that must have appeared in her head. Her attention went to the corner of the room, and her hands were poised as if ready to take dictation. She looked up expectantly at the TV, obviously entranced by the programming.
The program that held her captive on TV was All in the Family, a seventies hit sitcom. Archie, the main character, was legendary for his crass, unenlightened opinions. That my mother, a brilliant, well-read artist, was hanging on his every syllable for secret coded wisdom was more than a little crazy.
We didn’t even try to dissuade her. There was no point. We watched the show with her and did not comment as she dutifully penned notes on her three-by-five-inch cards during commercial breaks. I guess we thought it was the least we could do to offer some quiet companionship amid the loneliness of her delusion.
We remained quiet even when the ads were on. Finally, when the episode was over, we left in silence, getting back on the elevator and walking wordlessly to our car. Dad started toward our destination, a grand-opening party for a new restaurant. My dad had done the owners’ legal work, and I was going to be his date. It now seemed absurd to attend, given the scene we had just witnessed.
I broke the hush first. “Dad? Mom thinks Archie Bunker is talking to her.”
The lunacy of that statement hung between us in the front seat for a few minutes.
“I know . . .” he started, but Dad seemed unable to find the encouragement or explanation he needed to comfort his seventeen-year-old daughter.
And then he did something he rarely did. He burst out laughing. There was no explaining it, but I joined him. It was the kind of silent laughter that makes you shake though no sound escapes, but your whole body gets the most wondrous release. It went on for a few minutes, like a long hug that neither of us would release. My dad was laughing so hard that tears leaked from the corners of his sad blue eyes. He wiped them away slowly, making squeaky sounds as the laughter subsided and he caught his breath. We didn’t say anything else. There was nothing to say.
We went on to the party at the restaurant, and when someone asked how he was, my dad smiled convincingly and replied, “Fine. How are you?”
I knew when someone suffered from mental illness, it took every ounce of his or her will to keep crazy at bay. Mom’s daily courage was her constant choice to live. Not only did my mom have to fight to stay sane, we had to fight to stay sane with her. If my dad had left or my grandparents had not helped me and my sisters, all of our lives would have been very different.
Having lived my mom’s story, it was easy for me to feel tied to each Homeless to Homes resident, to feel personally responsible to do something about their plights. A part of me had always wanted to be the one to save my mom from her pain. But as a six-year-old or even a seventeen-year-old, there was nothing I could do. Only doctors could find the right pharmaceutical combination to restore her to the woman who would eventually pursue her master’s degree and travel to China.
Yet her manic episodes made me afraid to admit my real terror now. If I was “listening” to a man who was thirty years homeless “call” me to this quest, was I any different than my mom?
Was I, at the age of forty-four, finally exhibiting the very inheritable trait for manic depression? Was Denver for real? Was any of it real?
Just as I had my whole life, I hid my fear of a nervous breakdown in the same box I hid my mom’s mental illness. I never talked about it. I didn’t want to tell Charlie or anyone that I was beginning to crack.
Finally, in late April, I sent an e-mail to a minister at the new church we had been attending, Christ Episcopal Church. I already knew one of the ministers, Lisa Saunders, because Kailey and her daughter had played soccer together. I e-mailed Lisa, asking if she would meet with me. I had no idea what I would say, but I had to talk with someone who was not a part of the Moore Place story so I could be honest. I had to tell someone: I think I’m truly crazy.
As I drove to the appointment with the minister, I wrestled with what I would say. Was I mentally ill or was this some sort of spiritual call?
I honestly didn’t want either one. Bipolar or called—both seemed like the same kind of crazy to me.
Lisa greeted me in the church lobby and we walked back to her office, exchanging small talk. The collar around her neck was a little startling as I realized she had a professional life that was not visible on the soccer sidelines. She sat next to me in one of the two chairs that faced her desk and waited patiently as I fumbled with how to begin. My voice was catching on my doubt as I tried to explain why I was there.
I started by telling her a little about my mom’s struggles with manic depression, then I outlined the overwhelming magnitude of the Moore Place master plan. It had gone from an exciting change of career to a boulder that was crushing me. As I continued to explain the resistance from neighbors, the politics, and the money challenges, she listened quietly like a therapist, knowing I would eventually see my own circle.
Finally she led me to it by asking, “So why are you here?”
Months of lying awake at night came sharply into focus. The question I had been wrestling with, refusing to address, was suddenly right before me and undeniable. I looked at her, afraid to speak, but she seemed to know what I was going to say.
“The problem is, I really want to do this,” I began. “I really want to build this building.”
She nodded in encouragement.
“But I am not big enough to do it myself,” I finally finished.
My voice was halting, and I was trying not to cry. I had always been able to accomplish the things I truly wanted. My childhood had taught me to be pathologically self-reliant—to work hard and achieve my goals without anyone’s help.
“To do this, I need to believe in something bigger than myself,” I said, as if that was a huge problem. When I said it to a minister, it certainly did not seem like a problem. I tried to elaborate. “If I am going to succeed, I am going to have to believe that something besides me, bigger than me, is going to get this done.”
There, I had said it. Out loud. Almost. I had avoided the G word. Lisa smiled at me. She was leaning forward, forearms on her thighs, hands together almost in prayer. “And what scares you about that?”
“Because it feels crazy! I feel like I am crazy! To believe that I have been given some message, some call, to build this thing feels crazy!” Now I was crying. “And to actually listen to it feels even crazier.”
Visions of my mom and the voices she heard during my childhood were plaguing me. Wasn’t I just admitting that I was in some form of a manic state, hearing voices of grand plans?
“And what if it is not?” Lisa asked simply.
What if?
What if I really was supposed to meet Denver and he really had given me a message I was supposed to hear?
What if I really was supposed to get Moore Place built?
It felt too much like a Noah kind of foolishness, but that was the heart of it.
“It is what I keep coming back to: To get this done, I have to believe in God because I can’t do this myself. But to believe in God means I have to believe I got some kind of message that started this whole thing. And I can’t believe that part.”
“Why not?” Lisa asked.
“Why me?” I choked. “Why would someone who doesn’t even believe in God get a message from God?”
“Why not you?” she responded matter-of-factly.
Because I didn’t want it. Because I didn’t believe that kind of thing—Dale and Louise did. I didn’t even like the spiritual parts of Ron and Denver’s book; when it got too preachy, prayerful, or heavenly, I had skipped those pages.
I liked reality. I believed in reality. It was fine for Denver to believe he had a prayer chain going, but
not for me. How could I believe that Denver, who seemed to speak from an otherworldly place, had an otherworldly message for me?
But I was back in that circle again.
I wanted Moore Place. I didn’t want to fail. But to succeed, I had to ask for help. Big help. Otherworldly kind of help. As Charlie had so clearly pointed out, it was going to take a miracle.
My immense doubt sat heavily in the room, and Lisa waited patiently to see what I would do with it.
“So how will I know?” I whispered, afraid someone, even a minister, might hear me even thinking of believing.
How would I know I wasn’t hearing manic voices but some kind of real deal? And the really crazy thing was, my mom never stopped being a big believer. Since those college days of reading the Bible with my father, church and prayer had been a huge part of her life. Faith was truly her salvation in her darkest days.
Lisa leaned back and smiled. She seemed relaxed, like she had been waiting to deliver this punch line. “You will know,” she said with utter confidence. “God has a funny way of showing off.”
twenty
GIFTS FROM ABOVE
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
—Joseph Campbell1
Leaving Lisa’s office that day, I was comforted but not fully convinced.
It felt good to have finally spoken about the demon that was chasing me—I might have bipolar disorder. I decided after reflecting that it was preferable to think I was slightly manic than to believe I had been divinely chosen for this task.
Lisa’s conviction stuck with me, though, and I started to sleep a little better by trying an awkward prayer as I lay down at night. I felt a little like Scott Mercer trying to pray for neighbors on his paper route. It didn’t really count as prayer in the beginning. After I got in bed, I would try to release thoughts. More a list than a litany.
God, help us find some donors.
God, help the neighborhood not hate us so much.
God, help me fill out that CHA grant application.
That last plea, about the Charlotte Housing Authority grant application, was my next biggest worry. It could be worth $1.7 million of grant money and, even more critical, ongoing assistance for thirty years in rent subsidies from the federal government.
We were not excited about asking for federal money. Dale had been operating the UMC for years without taking a dime of public money—on purpose. Dale liked to act compassionately and quickly on behalf of the Neighbors. Government money meant red tape and regulations about who you could and couldn’t help, so we wanted our plan to build Moore Place to rely heavily on churches and individuals.
Once it was built, however, we needed government partnership. If we could partner with the CHA to provide federal rental subsidies, called Section 8 vouchers, homeless people could move in directly off the streets and work with Moore Place social workers to apply for income from disability payments. No longer sleep deprived and in a housing crisis, our tenants could make completely different decisions about their addictions, education, and life. Just as Coleman, Samuel, and Raymond had done.
It would change everything for almost a hundred people, not just thirteen.
But this crucial partnership with the CHA and the federal government had a huge hurdle I had not been able to clear. The incredibly complicated federal application entailed completing binders full of information and providing detailed budget projections for the next thirty years.
As I leafed through the dense list of requirements, I was clearly in trouble. This was not about me wanting to do good. This was real business. I needed an MBA, not a graphics degree.
One day as I worked my way through the lunch crowd of Neighbors at the UMC, trying to get to Dale’s office to confess I had no idea how we’d ever complete the grant application, I was stopped by Jerry Licari. Jerry had been in the car that day when we first spotted the junkyard lot and had been waiting for a task on this project ever since. I hadn’t given him one because I wasn’t sure what to ask him to do. He was Dale’s pick for the team, and I didn’t know what Jerry’s skills were.
“Excited to hear about all the progress on Moore Place,” he said as I tried to pass him. “I’d love to be doing more; is there anything I can do to help?”
My sarcasm escaped before I could stop it. “Not unless you can do proformas.”
I knew so little about the term that I didn’t even know if I had expressed my need correctly.
He looked at me strangely. “Are you kidding?”
I locked eyes with him and got a weird feeling. “No, why?”
“I love that stuff!” he exclaimed and started laughing. “I’m a retired partner from a Big Eight accounting firm. I can do that in my sleep.”
I tried not to burst into tears.
As it turned out, Jerry was a financial wizard who became the volunteer chief financial officer for Moore Place. We would be joined at the hip for the next year and a half. He created and endlessly revised financials for Moore Place. We attended countless meetings together and worked for months to craft the documents needed to secure public funding.
When the CHA held a vote on whether to award Moore Place $1.7 million in construction funds and thirty years’ worth of Section 8 rental subsidies, Jerry was sitting right beside me. Together, we watched the CHA board members raise their hands one by one and vote yes.
What I didn’t know until almost four years later is how improbable that meeting with Jerry turned out to be. We were having coffee in 2013, when Jerry confessed that the day we spoke at the UMC was the first time he had admitted his accounting background. After retiring in 2006, he had made a pledge to himself to do something completely different with his life. He was done with the accounting world; he wanted no part of it.
Jerry had researched nonprofit agencies before his retirement, selecting the UMC as one of two he wanted to serve, but he only wanted to be a counselor. When the UMC volunteer coordinator asked about his former profession, he replied, “I was a businessman.” Even when Dale asked him to be on the UMC board, Jerry had not mentioned his vast accounting experience.
Jerry later confided, “That day was the first time I had told anyone at the Urban Ministry Center what I used to do for a living.”
God has a funny way of showing off.
I looked at my watch and saw it was my table-wiping time. Every staff member, no matter his or her job description, had to clean tables in the lunchroom once a week. Dale felt it was too easy to get caught up in administrative tasks and forget why we were all there—to help our Neighbors. Something about wiping up dozens of vegetable soup spills once a week kept a person humble. But inevitably, like today, I did not want to go to the lunchroom. I really needed to finish an important grant application for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. We were applying for $1 million, and the deadline was looming. With the CHA vote of $1.7 million, we still needed $4.8 million to magically appear.
I had six days to submit the application, a complex matrix of exacting questions and measurements designed to confirm we knew what we were doing. It felt like I was writing a master’s thesis, and in some ways I was. My effort was the culmination of a year and a half of on-the-job training and learning from other national programs. The Knight Foundation, as others, didn’t care if we were doing good; they needed to be sure we could do it well. Budget projections, staffing models, and funding plans all had to be submitted along with answers to more probing questions regarding specific outcomes and expected results.
The grant would have to wait until after table duty. The lunchroom was noisy and crowded as usual. I worked my way to the back to pick up a rag and waved across the room to Liz Clasen-Kelly, who had duty that day too. As I started wiping down, I saw a young guy with wild dreadlocks get up from his table and sneak up behind those patiently waiting to pick up their trays at the stainless-steel counter. I looked back at his place where he had obviously eaten one lunch already.
The UMC offered seconds on food but only in the last fifteen minutes of the lunch hour to be sure everyone was served at least once. It wasn’t a crime really, and I knew everyone who came here was legitimately hungry. But he was breaking an unwritten rule that everyone else abided by. I moved up behind him to see that, sure enough, he was grabbing an extra bowlful of soup.
“Excuse me?” I said.
He looked at me, his hazel eyes wild and red-rimmed. “What?” he replied roughly.
“We aren’t serving seconds yet.”
“This ain’t seconds,” he said.
“Really?” I said, pointing to his first empty lunch plate still on the table behind us.
“What’s it to you?” he asked loudly. Several people looked up, including Bill, the quiet cowboy in his dirty leather hat eating silently next to the man’s empty tray.
I wasn’t sure I was going to do or say anything more, but before I had the chance to decide, the soup stealer threw the offending bowl of tomatoes and noodles on me. Immediately Bill jumped up between the soup thrower and me.
“Hey! You watch yourself!” he yelled to the young rule breaker. The wild-dreadlock guy looked as though he might go after my chivalrous cowboy friend, but two other men stood up and joined Bill.
“You go on now, boy,” one of them said loudly.
When the young guy turned to slink away, Bill asked, “You okay, ma’am?” He looked at me with his kind, sky-blue eyes and a weathered face as tanned and lined as his hat. He wasn’t much taller than me, and I was even more surprised that he had stood up to defend me from the much larger thug.
I looked down at my blouse. Luckily most of the soup had missed me and gone on the floor.
“Yes, thanks so much. I’ll be fine.”
Wiping my blouse, I realized I didn’t even know Bill’s last name. “I really appreciate that you stood up for me. Your name is Bill?”
“Yes, ma’am. Bill, Bill Halsey,” he said, tipping his hat and returning to his lunch.