There’s a new affordable housing facility going up in downtown Ballard less than a mile from my house. The Nyer Urness House, built by Compass Housing Alliance, will provide eighty apartments for formerly chronically homeless men and women. I received a letter the other day asking if I would help welcome my new neighbors by sponsoring an apartment for $1,000, which will be used to purchase needed supplies for one apartment and also help furnish the common rooms.

Nyer Urness opening Spring 2013

I know about this housing facility because my mother’s social worker at her current home, a shelter downtown, put her on the list to receive an apartment. My mother has lived in shelters for almost twenty years, usually in a large room with a designated bed and locker where she can keep her things as long as she shows up every night at 6PM when they open the door, and leaves early in the morning when the close the shelter for the day. Because my mother is homeless, most days she walks around downtown. If she has bus tickets she may ride around for a while, or hang out at the women’s day shelter. When she was receiving benefits before they were cut and eventually ran out (she refused to sign the papers that would continue them because of delusions about her social worker), she used to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island and peek in the shop windows. These days she complains of her knees and the cold, and I do what I can to help ease her discomfort, but her illness often prohibits her from taking the offered help.

In a few months all of this may end for my mom. She’ll still be schizophrenic, but she’ll have a roof over head, a caring community, and her family close by. I can only hope and pray she will take a gigantic leap and try something so, so new by moving away from the familiar night shelter environment. I don’t know that this will happen, but I do know that someone’s mother or father or sister or brother will be moving off the streets in a matter of months. And I want to be part of making their new homes welcoming and inviting. If everyone who was unable to give $1000 gave a small amount, we could, as a community, help bring real compassion into the lives of those who are taking  a new and perhaps scary first step into a place they can call their own. A place where they can sleep in, store their things without a padlock, watch the program they want to watch, or read a book without listening to someone else’s fight. Where they can be home.

Join me, by donating here. (And would you let me know that you did? I’d love to try to pool the amount so we can put up a plaque outside one of the apartments to acknowledge the gifts…perhaps from Ballard Moms and Dads?)  You can also donate household items through a Target registry, also available through the link.

Thank you. So much.

Laconic [luh-kon-ik]: using very few words.

I learned the meaning of laconic after I met my husband. Naturally less talkative, he marvels how I can work a room. But this was not always the case, let me tell you. For years I was painfully shy. Being outward focused rather than intensely nervous is a dramatic shift in my personality that started when I learned that God values me intrinsically, and feels the same about everyone else. Even the people that scare me.

Talking to new people is a skill I’ve been at pains to develop. I still get nervous (and have plenty of awkward conversations), but I’ve learned a few things about making small talk with people I don’t know.  After  a recent experience at our daughter’s school, my husband asked me how I learned to do it. Here’s what I came up with, the incomplete list I try to remember in these settings. I hope it helps those of you who feel challenged by these situations, too.

1) Remember you are not alone. Virtually everyone finds new situations intimidating. Your job is to focus on putting other people at ease, not your own fear.

2) Ask questions. A sure win: the subject people most enjoy discussing: themselves or their children.

3) Smile. Keep your head up, eyes off the floor. If you need to, look at the wall, just don’t stare at the floor!

4) Enunciate! I was talking to someone at a function like this and I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. I felt sorry for him because he was so shy, but that’s not the way you want to be remembered.

6) Know your exit and find the right lull (before things get awkward!). For example: “It’s been great to talk to you. I’ve been meaning to ask —- a question. Have a great evening.”

7) Take the initiative. Be the first to say hello. I was afraid of people and awkward silences for so long that I spent years in the corner, feeling stupid and pitied. It was excruciating. Now, even though it’s still scary, I feel more in control and less awkward.

8) Speak with confidence. I still feel expendable in unfamiliar settings with confident, accomplished people. I’m just a mom and someone trying to be a writer, I tell myself. Then I remember what my therapist told me: Fake it ’til you make it. You are a writer, blogger, mother, entrepreneur, waitress, whatever. You have expertise others can (and want to) learn from.

9) Exercise your curiosity. Rather than spending an hour feeling awkward and uncomfortable, I now take the chance to learn each time I meet someone new. I view it as an opportunity to connect or help someone else feel at ease.

10) Don’t get derailed by setbacks. I often can’t get my sentence out right. I stumble and stammer. Then I smile and laugh at myself. How big of a deal is it, really?

11) Have fun! If you reorient your thinking to see functions as an opportunity to connect and learn, you – and everyone around you – will enjoy themselves. It’s true. After all, you can’t just hide at home forever.

My daughter, Quinn, started kindergarten a few weeks ago. Like most kids making this challenging transition, we’ve had some rough days. And we’ve had some that were downright awful. Like today.

While my husband and I tried to get her dressed – forced her, really – she was kicking, screaming, hitting, crying. Finally, I just left the house – without shoes, the real sticking point – and carried her the six blocks to school. We were late, of course. Sylvia, our crossing guard, noticed. “Bad day?” she asked, as I led Quinn across the street, her arms folded tightly against her chest. When we arrived in her classroom the teacher noticed, too. “Hi Quinn!” she said, in her cheery way, and came over and put her arm around Quinn’s shoulders. As I walked home I fought tears. I know lots of people go through this, but I felt alone and at a loss. I worried that Quinn needs help I am not able to give her. I worried she will anxiously move through her day, like I did through so much of school. Walking back toward Sylvia, I determined to maintain my composure, to not let her see how hard this is.

And then, halfway home, I let the tears fall. There’s a feeling I get when things go sideways, and I didn’t push that away either. I wanted to talk to my mom, wanted hear her reassure me in a motherly way that it’s all going to be okay. Knowing I’d never be able to do that made me feel even more alone. Rather than wallowing in my misery, as I usually do, I decided to do the healthy thing instead: I called my sister. And my sister suggested something else I’d been trying to avoid: she suggested I ask for help, that I tell the teacher what’s going on and enlist her aid. So, reluctantly but hopefully, I did. Kicking and screaming, but I did.

Last week, my mom came over as usual on Friday afternoon. It had been beautiful all week and really warm. There was even an excessive heat advisory that will make you Midwesterners laugh: it was going to be 94 degrees for two days in a row. Mom, being the smart lady that she is, brought three swimming suits with her in a small black embroidered purse. She knows we have an alligator pool we like to inflate when the temperature rises.

Mom headed outside after lunch and pulled the pool toward the middle of the yard, next to the adirondack chairs. Mom is not one to make her needs or desires known so when she asked where the pump was so she could fill it up with air and then with water I moved quickly, smiling all the while. Like any woman who hasn’t worn a suit in years, or even a season, she tried on all three before she settled on a cornflower blue. We sat out together in the hot sun while the kids played with cups in the cool water. Within minutes my 20-month old gave up on splashing his sister and came over with cupfuls that he poured down my legs. “Mommy turn, Mommy turn,” he said, in his husky voice, as the chilly water ran down my knee and over my foot.

It only took a few minutes to get hot enough to want to stand in the pool. When the kids exited to play on the slide Mom stood and then quickly sat down and dunked her body in the pool that was just a few inches deep. It was enough for her. It had been at least 15 years since she’d put on a bathing suit and sat around in the backyard on a hot afternoon.