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GUEST
STORIES
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from
a Basement on Montgomery Street -- written by Afia Fitriati
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On
a typical afternoon, the Samaritan
Center kitchen
is already lively at 3 p.m., forty-five minutes before serving time.
The aroma of hot meals fills the air,
mixed with the
clatter of utensils.
Brenda’s voice directs volunteers who arrive one by one.
At 3:30, Dan and Brenda,
the cooks, place
today’s special
on
the counter.
The volunteers and kitchen workers get ready to serve the meal.
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At the stroke of 3:45, the kitchen door
opens.
One by one, the Center’s guests walk in, picking up trays
filled with
food and drinks. Soon, the dimly lit room is animated with the clanking
of dishes
and the air fills with voices and laughter.
Greetings reverberate from the kitchen to the dining area.
Sometimes, someone slips behind the piano in the corner of the room
and plays a tune or two.
Down
in a basement on Montgomery Street,
stories pour over bread and coffee.
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Names
have been
changed and pictures are a sampling of those who join us for a meal.
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| "Seth" and
Friends
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| Seth
is seven feet tall, so it wasn’t surprising to know that he
used to be
a basketball player. Seth played basketball when he was studying at
Hofstra University, near his Long Island hometown. Unfortunately, his
days on the court ended one day when he injured his knee. |
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| Two
and a half years ago, as an answer to what he described as a
“mid-life
identity crisis,” Seth moved to Syracuse to study health care
at a
vocational school. He comes to the Samaritan Center because even though
he has a job, Seth lives in an efficiency apartment with no kitchen,
and he finds the Samaritan Center helps him stretch his small income. |
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| One
of Seth’s companions at mealtime is Ralph. Ralph works in a
labor-ready
agency and is not married. He jokes about the woman of his dreams, that
one day he can go home and find a nice home cooked meal on the table. |
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| At
another table, Pete and Smitty sit together. Pete never talks much
about his life, other than he’s from Minnesota. Pete likes to
talk
about geography and current events, things he learns from National
Public Radio, his favorite station. Smitty, on the other hand, likes to
talk about his dream to have his own business. Smitty is working at a
computer shop, where he learns to fix computers and to put together
computer components. His dream is to have his own computer-repair
business one day. |
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| "Mary" |
| Her
name is Mary. Mary’s mom works at a day care center. Her dad
just got
laid off from his job. Occasionally, her mom brings Mary and her
brother to the Samaritan Center during her lunch break. I asked Mary
what her favorite food is. She said, “FISH!” We
compared our rings as
the nine-year-old hurriedly finished her food. Mom had to go back to
work soon. |
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| "Mick" |
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biggest mistake: as part of his research for a book he was writing,
Mick started taking drugs himself. His first encounter with heroine led
to yet another one, and that was how Mick got into a vicious cycle. |
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| Recognizing
that his life was falling apart due to his dangerous new craving, Mick
decided to seek help. After failing to find a drug rehabilitation
center that could accept him right away in Rochester, where he was
living at the time, he found one in Syracuse. Determined to find help,
Mick commuted daily from Rochester to attend the program. |
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| One
day his car broke down. Unwilling to give up, Mick moved to Syracuse
and has ever since become a regular guest of the Samaritan Center while
undergoing rehabilitation. In his spare time, the 26-year-old man
listens to new age music (Enigma is his favorite), or works on his long
cast aside book. He said he was going to include his personal
experience in the book, so that “People don’t have
to go through the
hell that I experienced.” |
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| "Luke" |
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One October afternoon I was
talking to John, one of the Center’s regular guests, when a
man with a
cane sat at the table next to ours. He said hello to John and they
exchanged a conversation about birthdays. John just turned 45 a few
months ago and I thought I heard the man in the red sweater say he just
turned forty last month.
I
commented casually, “Life begins at forty.”
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| He
answered, “ No, I said I just turned 41.” He
paused. “But I am
beginning my life.” |
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| Seeing
my puzzled expression, he elaborated, “I was an alcoholic and
I used
drugs for twenty seven years.” |
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| Twenty-seven
years! And I’m not even
twenty-two! |
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| In
the twenty minutes that ensued, while devouring the day’s
menu of
biscuit and beef stew, Luke told me about the battle of his life. |
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| It
all started with peer pressure. It was the era of the flower power
generation and Luke was fifteen. Luke began sneaking bags of cocaine to
his home near Utica, New York. “My Mom might have known that
I was
drinking, but she didn’t know I was using drugs,”
He recalled. |
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| His
self-destructive habit carried into his adulthood, even during the time
he served in the army. When I asked if there was any trouble sneaking
in drugs into the barracks, he laughed, “The army is the
easiest place
where you can get drugs.” |
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| Yet
the luxury didn’t last forever. Luke quit the army when his
wife
objected to his relocation to Germany and started to work a regular
nine-to-five job. His ceaseless consumption of drugs and alcohol had
begun overpowering him more than he ever anticipated. “I
thought I was
in control, but it was actually what I took that made the illusion that
I was in control,” he said. Luke felt an ever-increasing need
to be
excited and stimulated, and he got bored very easily. He recalled a
time when he worked ninety jobs a year “Because I switched
jobs every
two weeks.” |
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| Between
three jobs that he held and five hundred dollars per week expenditure
on alcohol and drugs, Luke’s family life was deteriorating.
After his
wife found bags of cocaine in the cellar one day, they were separated.
A year after their divorce, she remarried. “That speaks a
lot,” Luke
said painfully. Even more painful, he also had to separate from his
only daughter. |
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| Recovery
was a road marked with challenges. Luke didn’t explain how he
began to
realize that he needed to recover from his dependency. Needless to say,
it must take an immensely strong will to do so after so many years.
Especially because in addition to his drugs and alcohol problems, Luke
also had to fight his mental illnesses: obsessive-compulsive disorder
and anxiety disorder. Even worse, drugs and alcohol had destroyed a
good portion of his nervous system and as a result, it takes him an
hour to get up from bed and prepare himself in the morning, and he can
only walk with the help of a cane. |
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| The
rehabilitation process was extremely difficult; sometimes he was
tempted to go back to the same old habits. After weeks and months of
rehabilitation, however, Luke has been able to escape from his
dependencies little by little. Luke said he hasn’t
been so happy
since he was fifteen. He has begun a new relationship, and was excited
to discover that he could finally “start feeling
again”. |
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| He
attributed his determination to prayers and family support. His mother
and two sisters were very supportive, even though his brother
hasn’t
talked to him for years. I asked him if he ever regretted his past.
Luke said, “I do, but I don’t dwell on feeling
sorry. The only thing I
can do is to build the future.” He told me about his plan to
work as a
home aid for the elderly, and how one day he expected to see his
daughter again. |
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| I
could see determination spelled out in Luke’s deep blue eyes. |
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| "Emma" |
| Emma
has a sweet smile, the kind that you see on little children when they
are full and happy. I suspect she was born smiling, because I never see
her without a smile. Sitting beside her while she eats, I often wonder
what she looked like thirty years ago. She must have been a lovely
girl. I can still see traces of a smooth complexion on her wrinkled
skin. Her cheeks turn into a soft rosy color whenever she smiles. |
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| Emma
doesn’t speak much about her life. I know that she lives
alone after
her husband died a few years ago. I know that she misses him a lot. She
cherishes how he always took her to the New York State Fairground with
free passes that he got for volunteering in the fair, or how they used
to have a dog. “He was a good fellow,” She always
says. From her late
husband, Emma has two stepchildren and two grandsons who live in
Florida. More than once I asked whether she missed them. She always
said no, even though she mentioned that she had not seen them for a few
Christmases. “They’re busy. They have their own
life.” She said with
the usual smile and shrugged, “That’s life,
dear.” |
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| "Betty"
& "Sam" |
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Betty is definitely a cat
person. Two of her four cats have just delivered six kittens, making
her closet even more packed. Betty doesn’t seem to mind.
After all,
those cats are her closest family. Betty said she had a sister who
lived in Syracuse, but they hardly met. Betty has long been a regular
guest of the Center. Sometimes she comes with Sam, who works in a craft
shop. “Betty is my friend,” Sam says.
As
they leave, Sam offers to go and get Betty’s coat. Betty
declines
politely while she reaches into a plastic bag that she is carrying and
pulls out a few bars of Hershey’s chocolate. She hands them
out to
everyone at her table before saying goodbye.
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| I
don’t eat a lot of Hershey’s with walnuts, so when
I see them, I think
of Betty and her ten cats. |
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