Was it really not this past Christmas night but the Christmas night before that when a woman knocked on our door in the pouring rain asking to sleep on our couch? I was in my office in the back of the house, so I didn’t hear the knock. G came into my room at 10 o’clock at night with a look on his face I’d never seen before. He said there was someone here, and he’d let them in. We talked with her for an hour or two, and gave her a hot meal of pot roast leftovers. She had a cut on the bridge of her nose that looked raw. Her strawberry blond hair was soaking wet from the rain (this is not a hair color added in post; I remember distinctly thinking while she was in our house, “that is some strawberry blond hair.”) She wanted to stay on our couch with an intensity that was a little bit frightening. We live in a three-bedroom house that we’ve rented for a few years now, and my office doubles as the spare bedroom. But it seemed like the warmth of the room and the big soft red couch had almost bewitched her. I said that I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with someone I didn’t know staying on our couch while we slept in the other room, but she didn’t seem to hear me. I think she said something about a boyfriend or partner with whom she was no longer living; I called a few domestic violence shelters and one kind woman actually picked up. I explained the situation and she empathized, but they were full, and they might not have been able to take her anyway. We offered to put her up in a hotel for the night and pay for a cab there (although I didn’t know the feasibility of finding either so late on Christmas night in Portland) but she refused. There are no hotels in our immediate neighborhood, and she said she’d been sleeping on the stoop of a nearby church. Mostly she looked at the couch and repeated how badly she wanted to stay. Ultimately, I decided I wasn’t comfortable with that, and G agreed. She was annoyed, but not very angry or violent. We gave her a sleeping bag and a warm blanket, and then she walked back out into the storm. She left her coat behind, which was soaked through. It’s still in our laundry room. Which is why I can’t remember—was it this past Christmas night, or the one before that?
We don’t celebrate Christmas. Despite the fact that I was raised an atheist, growing up we did have a Christmas tree and a big dinner and family over for exchanging far too many gifts. But I haven’t seen the point for the past few years. Still, it was hard not to feel that turning the woman away on Christmas night was us failing some sort of test. I felt guilty about it for a long time. I didn’t tell anyone what happened. It wasn’t a story with a shape. I didn’t know how to talk about it. Eventually it would come up in conversations with a few close friends as we discussed aspects of our city, our world, the suffering that feels unmanageable. They always said that we did a lot, more than most people would. It never felt that way.
Given the same circumstances, I wouldn’t make a different decision now. G and I spent the rest of the night and much of the next day talking about what happened, how it made us feel, if we’d made the right decision, and what we could have done differently (we didn’t come up with anything.) It was a failure, on our part and on others. Since then, somewhat subconsciously, we’ve befriended more neighbors. I continue to grow a garden on our front patio, and I painted ABOLISH ICE and NO BORDERS in big letters on the front of our garden boxes facing the busy street. Then last night I was out for a walk and something shifted. I felt proud that someone would step up to our house to ask for help, that we were the only house on the block that answered the door. That the front we put out even then said ‘if you are in trouble or you are hungry, you can stop here.’ That we live in a neighborhood in a city where that’s possible, where there are people who need help and we sometimes can provide it. This has drastically shifted how I think about that night. Just writing this out and giving some kind of shape to the story changes how I think about that night. It also might not have been a failure, or not a total failure. Seen in the context of my life/our lives, it might have even been a kind of turning point.
I saw the woman one more time a day or two later. She was walking past our house, absorbed in her thoughts, hair floating behind her as she moved quickly. She gave no sign of recognition of our house, but I don’t know how many houses she knocked on that night. It’s possible she might not have remembered which house it was. I drove past the church where I thought she might have been sleeping after that, but I never saw her again.
It had to have been Christmas night 2024 that this happened. Less than two years ago. And yet it feels like it happened just a short while ago. I can still feel the feeling I felt when G walked into my room. A sort of unreality, not knowing who or what I’d find when I walked into the other room. So much has changed since then, and at the same time, nothing has changed. I feel at times like the last blink I blinked was two years back.