{thanksful: 19 – charity}

Skyway Drive 132

Thursday it was cloudy, and the ladies were still sitting on the side of the road.

When I saw them in the summertime, they had umbrellas, and there were more of them. It was like a roadside coffee klatch. I had no idea why they were there, but they were on a main road, near a bus stop, and … I honestly don’t know what I thought. The are two churches within five thousand feet of them, one around the corner, the other, up the block. I figured they were… offering free samples of their religion along a busy street.

Thursday, on my way back from my errand, I looked up, and realized that the ladies were sitting in front of a teensy, tiny strip mall storefront… Planned Parenthood.

oh.

Not so much free samples of Divinity, then.

If you turn off a broad avenue to a narrower street in a certain mid-sized town near where I lived post-college, you’ll find another clinic by the same name. The waiting room was always crazy full, the receptionist was always brusque. Babies cried, snotty little kids with runny noses played with blocks that were probably covered in germs. Single and childless, I always felt so weird being in there. SO weird. I flinched each time someone opened the door. What would people make of me being there, weren’t people going to think — ?

And yet: even when I was a broke college student, a broke post-college student, a Napa Valley fledgling teacher who made a whopping twenty-three thousand dollars a year, I would slip an extra five or ten dollars across the counter when paying my bill, for the person behind me. Because I was in a waiting room full of poor ladies and their boyfriends or husbands, poor babies and poor children — none of whom had insurance either, all of whom desperately needed an appointment, or a prescription — for whatever. And, when it was my mother taking her tiny children – possibly with equally snotty noses — I hope someone could have given her that little bit of grace.

I’m so grateful for Planned Parenthood – because they were there for me, and they do good for the low-income community in which I grew up. (Please know that I don’t say that to upset or alienate or hurt anyone. I know this gratitude is abhorrent to some of you.) No matter how wealthy I become, no matter how much closer to the 1% a YA writer rises (and to that idea I say a hearty HAHAHAHAHA), I am never going to forget the straightforward women who examined me, offered me what they could, gave me cautions I didn’t need, and who tried to help me have a better life.

Today, there were empty seats where the ladies usually take over the sidewalk. A holiday is coming up, it was very cold, it had rained hard. Maybe the clinic was closed. Maybe today was a day of grace, a day in which we decided not to judge each other.

Maybe.

2 Replies to “{thanksful: 19 – charity}”

  1. I am deeply grateful for these clinics~having spent most of my adult life sans health insurance. I SO wish people would see ALL the services that Planned Parenthood offers and allow the gift of health care for those of us who need it and can’t afford on our own.

    Next, we can tackle why American teachers and/or artists are so poorly paid that they need to go to free clinics…

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