Columbus, Ohio USA
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Love Thy Neighbor
By Dawn McCombs
September/October 2019 Issue
See Also: Feature Article Mar/Apr 2015
Return to Homepage or Return to McCombs PageI bought T-shirts two years ago for my family and friends that said “Love thy neighbor. Thy homeless neighbor. Thy Muslim neighbor. Thy black neighbor. Thy gay neighbor. Thy immigrant neighbor. Thy Jewish neighbor. Thy atheist neighbor. Thy Christian neighbor.” At the time, I had every single one of those neighbors living on my block.
Since then, some have moved away and I have lost quite a lot of diversity on my street. However, my homeless neighbors have increased in population. A handful of them have even been around for as long as I have lived here, and I know them by name.
It’s easy to assume why someone might be homeless, but their stories may surprise you. I have one neighbor who lives under a bridge. He grew up in Victorian Village and is a veteran. He had an opportunity to live in housing for vets, but was procrastinating with his decision to move there. I offered to help him with the paperwork, knowing that he didn’t have a computer or easy access to transportation. He was relentless in declining my assistance and finally let me know that he would rather live under the bridge than move to an unfamiliar place. He grew up in Victorian Village and considered it his home. This was where he felt most comfortable, despite his home being a cement slab under a bridge. He told me that it was always dry and it was right by the river, so he could hear the water rushing at night, which soothed him. He reminded me as well that he lived only a mile from his work, which he walked to every weekday to see if they needed help on the construction site. Often they did.
Another woman, whom I will call Mary, although this isn’t her real name, has lived on the streets in the Short North at least as long as I have lived here, which is twenty-four years. Neighbors who have lived here longer than me told me she has always been here. Mary has lived in two of my backyards and currently resides in the doorway of an unoccupied building, which just sold for a few million dollars.
When I first met Mary she squatted in the carriage house of my first apartment with her boyfriend. They carried on into the night, at times sounding like a scene out of the movie “Days of Wine and Roses.” The noise kept us up all night long, and at times into the day. We had a baby, so we moved into another apartment so that we could get some sleep. The second time I encountered her she was living in the backyard of a house that I had just bought. The house was in a state of disrepair, so the yard had 12-foot-tall weeds. Mary slept on a deteriorated bench hanging on the back porch, with empty bottles of Wild Irish Rose wine scattered beneath it.
At the time my children were young, so the first thing I did was have my husband build a tall fence, and then I cleared away several truck loads of weeds and reclaimed the backyard with a children’s garden, sandbox and kiddie pool. Mary came back every day for a week, knocking on the gate and demanding to be let back in. I offered her food, blankets, sleeping bags and a pillow, but she declined it all. She wanted her home back and I had taken it.
That was fourteen years ago, and she has never forgotten how I displaced her. Typically, when we pass on the sidewalk she yells at me and calls me names that I can’t repeat here. On Christmas two years ago I gave her a sack filled with a turkey sandwiches, cookies and a card saying, “Know you are loved.” She flung it into the middle of 5th Avenue, directly in the path of a speeding car and it splattered to pieces on the street. I meekly wished her a merry Christmas anyway and walked away. As it sometimes goes, we find ourselves in feuds with neighbors, wishing one day for forgiveness.
Just yesterday, Mary was propped up against my next door neighbor’s garage in the heat, drinking a beer. I noticed her when I was taking out the trash, so promptly returned with a tumbler filled with ice water. This time she looked me in the eyes for a good ten seconds, took the water and said, “Oh.” This surprised me, since she hadn’t spoken to me in years, and had instead taken to indistinct yelling. Her face was leathery from the sun, but she was clean and her clothes looked fresh, giving me hope that she was accepting help from someone.
I told her that I would be right back with food and raced into the house. I created a plate, with sandwich, a piece of birthday cake from the day before and a bottle of white wine, probably against my better judgment. I was gone for about 3 minutes, but when I returned she was gone. I ran through the alley trying to find her and spotted her in front of a church, snarling at a mother and daughter sitting on the steps. I yelled out, “Mary, I brought you cake and wine!,” thinking this would be the perfect lure to get her to accept my offerings. She looked at it and waved me away and said, “No,” but in her voice I heard a softness that I hadn’t heard before. I felt a sense of neighborly connection with her, having lived within the same two blocks together for so many years. And, somehow I felt forgiven.
I am thankful for my neighbor Mary, for the many things that she has taught me, like resiliency, resourcefulness and perseverance. I’ve also learned to be more grateful for having a roof over my head, fresh water for a shower, and food. I have learned to be less judgmental of others, and feel that any one of us could find ourselves without a home if thrown into a crisis without proper support.
I still grapple with my decision to evict Mary from my back yard all those years ago. She has not let me forget it either. I try to think about the different alternatives I had, instead of just constructing a fence to keep her out. Two or three times I have played the Mega Millions lottery, when the winnings are over $1 billion. In my dreams, I win the money, buy a large lot in the neighborhood and construct tiny houses for all of my homeless neighbors to live in. I haven’t won that lottery yet, but I don’t think that I have to be a billionaire in order to help. Sometimes the best thing you can do is smile and say hello. It’s those interactions that hopefully show that as neighbors, we care about one another, and that we are all in this together.
Dawn McCombs lives, and is the owner of Glean, in the Short North. She likes swashbuckling around the neighborhood, planting Ohio prairie gardens in urban landscapes, and reducing her carbon footprint by cycling and recycling.
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