The vision of the flailing babies

“Is it gettin’ heavy???? Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be. Tell everybody waitin’ for a superman that they should try to hold on best they can. He hasn’t dropped them, forgot them or anything…it’s just too heavy for a superman to lift.”
-The Flaming Lips, “Waitin’ for a Superman.”

“The truth is, there is no hope.”
-Tupac Shakur, “Keep your head up.”

At first, the vision was benign. My thoughts of babies were brought on with more exposure to them, I guess, hundreds of them, in various degrees of behavior, in a place unknown, the only description being dark ground against an even darker horizon. Just sitting there, they were, being babies. Then they became agitated. First there were just a few sounds of…imbalance and upset, and then those few babies were joined by more, then many, cries increasingly laced with a fear from beyond their realm of understanding. And then, they were wailing and wailing, all of them, in hysterical unison, their little arms awkwardly lifting upward.

The ground began to change, terra firma unbecoming, slowly dissolving into a lesser form, surrendering to their weight and swallowing the helpless ever so slowly. Those babies who cried first had sensed this immediately.

The wailing continued at full urgency for quite some time, then, the intensity began to decrease. Decibels slowly falling back, the crying not so sustained. A general quiet began to descend on the babies. More and more, then a majority, then, almost all, then all, stopped crying. They all sat very still. At this point, their expressions became visible. Wide eyes, open mouths, fear etched on frozen expressions as they sank deeper into the ground. They just accepted.

There was nothing to do. There is more to the dream but it is what is inevitable.

I think about such things walking the halls and offices of the Human Services Building for the City and County of Denver. I work for a non-profit called Work Options for Women. Our mission is to teach women coming off Welfare (Now called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF) food service skills, and to help place them in the work force. We run the cafeteria and a smaller concession within the building.

The women attend life skills classes and are taught in the kitchen and on the serving line. I’m a manager in the program, cashiering and bussing and stocking and receiving shipments and catering and delivering food and distributing flyers for daily specials and counting cash and mopping one or the other location, sometimes both. We are a very small non-profit. We all do about an equal amount of work, because we all have to.

Another of my duties is to assemble lunch bags with condiments of mustard and mayonnaise, napkin, knife, potato chips, a ham, turkey, or roast beef sandwich, and a soda, and deliver them to women attending other welfare-to-work programs within the building, and to the main lobby, where people begin the wondrous journey of life on the dole. The lobby is also where the homeless, looking for somewhere, anywhere to turn, are referred.

Because of my many responsibilities, I travel the building more than the majority of others that work there. So I tend to see how the building works, actually functions, as a unit. Neither the building nor most of those employed inside really “work.” And it’s not pretty. Sadness, anger, misery, sexual and physical abuse, murderers, victims, pain, alienation, absolute despair…it’s all there. And this includes a lot of the staff, too. Some of it is more evident, but suffering is comprehensively represented here. And the air conditioning system is broken for weeks at a time. A smell-hell, indeed.

The ones who are paid to help these people don’t do a very good job. Some of the “Social Technician” cattle are worse off or more insane than the ones in his/her caseload. So while it has been an eye opening experience, it’s jaded me to certain types of these people (both case and case worker), whose entire existence is someone else’s fault. But the experience has not closed me off to others whose lives are more poignant and/or heartbreaking.

I was on my way to drop off the last group of lunches before heading back to the cafeteria to cashier during the rush. Cranky, pissed off as usual at the general pervasive bullshit and pre-occupied, looking down, not paying attention, I barely noticed a little boy in a stroller. He was two years old or so (His mom was no more than 18, possibly younger.), sitting up and smiling big at me. I always try to smile at the little kids, so I smiled back and waved, and said “Hey man” while walking by.

“Senor, Senor…” I looked up at his mother. “Yes?”“The lunches…(she was pointing tentatively) can I have?” I said something like, Sorry, no; they’re for the TANF classes. They are all accounted for. “Sorry.” I said, beginning to walk away.

When I looked back at the boy to say goodbye, his eyes had gone from excited and smiling to sad, dull brown and resigned. I don’t know how much he understood, but he did comprehend that those lunches weren’t for him, and that someone else was telling him no, he couldn’t. Poor little sinkin’ baby: no child should ever have such an expression. I stifled a cry by pushing a breath out my nose.

I looked back to his mother. Are you registered at the lobby? No, they weren’t. They’d just come in off the street and were hungry. So I told her to stay there and I’d go get a couple extra lunches.

I made a call to Group Services for permission, called the cafeteria so the lunches would be ready when I got back, dropped the rest of the sandwiches off, picked up the new lunches, and brought them back. The woman and child were in one of the day-care facilities so I didn’t see them again. But at least they ate that day. I hid out in our kitchen’s dry storage for a few minutes after returning, crying over their situation, thankful for the childhood, advantages, and life I was lucky enough to have.

I have become a friend with our primary Case Manager. She is 24 and has come to us from a prominent hospital where she was a researcher and part time substance abuse counselor, which did not prepare her for her present responsibilities. She is charged with the task of helping the women in our program with their problems. And there are many. Sometimes she is overwhelmed with the burdens of her job, but gives everything she’s got. I couldn’t do it. Too much pain for one person to handle. And yet, every day, there she is, doing her best. But the implications take their toll on her, too.

She stopped me in the hall one day, obviously upset at one or some of the many, many complications she faces every day, playing advocate or mother or disciplinarian or friend to these women and their situations. We talked for some time, during which she looked at me and asked, “Is this all worth it?” The red tape, the frustration, the heartache, immersion in other people’s horrible circumstances…Is it worth it?

I keep my head down here, thinking while walking. How do some people live their lives? How do they find the strength to just get up in the morning? These people, living with such deficits, children and babies depending upon them, sometimes their parents, too, who might be sickly or dying or requiring as much or more attention than the little ones…all heaped on the shoulders of someone who might not be able to read, write, add, cope, has health problems, is dealing with other domestic issues…so many other “special situation” possibilities that are mind blowing and possible…How do they do it? I don’t know. And I don’t know if I’m really helping them, either.

But these women, with their heavy burdens, whose names I now know, and their children, the innocents in these situations, are what keep me here, at least for the time being. Maybe some, a couple, or even one child won’t sink into the system, dying before they even have a chance to live.

I hope so, but am not that optimistic.