In this cold snap I am reminded of all the people who have no home and of an essay I wrote for Bangor Metro some years ago in a very cold January. At that time, I hadn’t heard from my brother for quite a while. He would never call if he were using, only when he was in a program or on methadone.
There were large swaths of time in which I never knew whether he was alive or dead. At this point, it had been a long time. He’s my only sibling. He died about five years ago, in a homeless hotel on the West Coast, doing the best he could. He was brilliant and lovely and creative, a sweet soul who carried other weights.
The Charlie of the essay disappeared from my landscape, and there isn’t a winter that I don’t think of him, hoping he indeed found his way to warmth.
HOME FEET HOME
Winter’s Cold Always Brought an Appreciation for Socks—and Worries about the Family Member No One Talked About. Then Came Charlie.
At no other time of the year do I love socks. I have a friend who can’t sleep without socks on—winter or summer. I could never sleep like that. All summer long, my feet are sockless in sandals. Actually, I use the “shoulder” seasons, too, extending my wiggle-toe time as much as possible.
My wintertime sock epiphany came when I was about 10 years old. I had agreed to collect donations door-to-door for something—in one of the coldest Januarys ever. I’ve never been a salesperson, and so merely undertaking this project was bad enough. It was a deceptive day—you know how they are this time of year: The sun is sharp and brilliant in the sky, a balm after the long darkness of a New England winter night. It never occurs to me that this day’s cold is ferocious. I was too young to understand deception.
I remember thinking that the way my feet felt each time I stepped down might mean that the blood in my veins was freezing, turning into slush. I walked up one street, down another. I tromped up steps. I tromped down steps. I cut through the park. Halfway across, I saw a man sitting against the fence, his pant cuff hiked up, a bare ankle visible above his shoe. My socks were thin, but able, I really did believe, to prevent ice from forming in my veins.
I think that is why I adore winter socks, and also why all winter long I think of the people I know who have no homes.
The first homeless person I ever knew was my brother, my only sibling, 18 months younger than I. Brilliant, funny, with large hazel eyes set in a perfectly proportioned Mediterranean face. But along the way, his story encountered some twists, some challenges, and now he lives on the streets, somewhere far from where we grew up and from where I now live.
For decades, I told no one about my brother’s situation, always hoping it would turn around. He was the only one I knew without a roof over his head, until I moved to Bangor and met “Charlie,” who carries his life in a pack and a bag. One winter I tried to give him a warm, clean, handsome men’s coat my son no longer wore.
“No thank you, ma’m,” he said. “I appreciate it, but I’m fine.”
Over these years, I’ve had some of the most stimulating conversations of my Bangor life with Charlie—about art and architecture, city government, economic development. (We never talk about homelessness. He doesn’t know about my brother.) He told me years before our beloved outdoor Pickering Square movies that we should—and could—have free outdoor movies downtown.
“You would love it,” he said.
“I wonder whether people would actually come,” I responded.
“They’d come.”
Last summer he told me he often thought in the coldest, nastiest blocks of winter of heading south. “Might still have some family there,” he said. “Georgia, I think.”
I haven’t seen Charlie for weeks now. All I can think is I hope my friend has socks.