LOVE

Tonight the weather in Baltimore is perfect. I took a walk along the waterfront this evening, reminiscent of the manifold footsteps I'd already taken along it, especially in recent months.

I just returned from 23 days on the road and have spent the past three days re-integrating myself. While travelling, I decried the dysfunction and dirt of my adopted hometown of almost 9 years, and drank in the physical beauty, healthy sense of community, wholeness of personal relationships, found in the small towns and communities we passed through.

I am revisited tonight with the realization that I love Baltimore.

Nina defines love as the feeling that exists naturally between human beings, unsullied by greed, fear, pain, jealousy and other such marvels.

On Monday, I went sailing with the Hood Kidz (See note: TenderBridge). Arriving one hour late, I was just in time to help ground, put away, and take down the sails of the boats. The boys were unruly, difficult to "collect", constantly poking at any chink of weakness in each other, and I inadvertantly donated about $40 in cash, prey to hood kidz who were able to reach slender arms through a crack in my car window to unlock the door while I was helping to store the boats they had left out after using them. Welcome home!

Today, I went sailing with a different set of kids, this time from Perkins Homes, a public housing neighborhood just west and north of Fells Point. It was like night and day. The kids were kids. They helped each other, they comforted each other when they were afraid, they responded to our requests, they put away all the boats and did not play until given the go ahead that all was clean. Noel Acton, the man behind the TenderBridge, described it wonderfully in an email (read at bottom of this post). Public housing kids live in poverty, but these kids had some adult who was able to navigate the beaurocratic red tape and secure a home through the public support system. Mr. Noel relayed that when he went to pick them up today, they were all waiting together as a group, ready to go. The kids from Monday are literally collected singly from the streets just north and east of Patterson Park - a dilapidated, neglected, decaying neighborhood littered with more abandoned buildings than inhabited ones. In another way to look at it, "no one cares." We immediately feel the difference in these barometers, these children.

The only difference is LOVE. The LOVE that makes or breaks a child. Makes or breaks a human being. I confided to Mr. Noel about my inadvertant donation that I was not aware I made until I was home on Monday. (Me: All my cash is gone! Lady: Where did it go? Me: That's a very interesting question!) Just before we left today, he said that on Monday we would round up the usual suspects. I was under the presumption that if you play with wolves, you are going to get bit, and he could see that in my reaction. But he said, "I don't want them to think that it's ok to do it."

Here lies my realization. This is why I love Baltimore City. A city of people like Mr. Noel who take such ownership over the deficits in our society.

It's not that folks from my travels don't care. Surrounded by love, they are too far removed to feel the urgency of decay. This is why I live here. My city.

And me, I'm finally learning to sail!

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Noel Acton wrote an insightful email to us. I share it here.

Hi everyone -

Sailing is off to a great start with our usual kids from the area north of Patterson Park, and this year we added some kids from the Perkins Public Housing Project for the Thursday crew. Two of the kids in the Monday group are refugees from Congo who I felt the program would help them socialize in the community easier. It turned out that they are pretty well socialized. The difference between them and our usual cohort is astounding. While they were born in the Congo and English is their second if not third language they are far ahead of the other kids in education, vocabulary, language skills, knowledge, social skills, and motivation. The primary reason is these two have both a functioning mother and father. It really pointed out to me how deprived our hood kids are and how much they have missed in life. While they are generally some of the most deprived and at-risk kids in the city there are still some even worse off that I feel no matter how much we do our efforts will not help.

One of the reasons the time we spend with our kids is so helpful for them is that they have such limited exposure to a world outside the hood and to caring sensible adults. My approach is that each kid is going to be a little better off in life for each positive experience we can provide them. While we would like to think we can help them see themselves being successful in life, it may come down to just providing them a memory of someone believing in them. Perhaps it will be when they are locked up in jail and saying to themselves "Mr. Noel told me I can do better than this with my life."

Sometimes things can be discouraging, but then one of the kids will do something that will really show you how much of a difference you have made in their lives. The other important thing our volunteers do is make the larger community aware of the difficulties our kids face every day of their lives. Thank you all for your interest and support for the kids.

Mr. Noel
Director
The TenderBridge