winter driving

Have I told you about the family living in their van in our driveway?

No?

I didn't think so.  Maybe that's because they don't live there all the time.  Or maybe because I am embarrassed for of them.  Perhaps I think them being so near to us says something about us.

They lost their house this fall to an inflated rental market.  It sold right from under them.  They lost their chance to get a new place to stay because of a past eviction on their record.  We never thought they would go all winter but they have.

Sure most of the time they aren't huddled in their van right outside our front door.  For starters he works everyday, their son goes to school and stays with friends.  I don't know what she does but they move around a lot.  We go weeks without seeing them. 

When it gets cold and they need somewhere to plug in the small generate that is somehow related to how they stay warm (I don't know the details because it seems rude to ask) they come back to us.

I do have so many questions though. The etiquette for this sort of thing is awkward at best.  Do you wave happily when passing by them to take out the trash, as you would when you see other neighbors? Hello there, I am just living in a house over here making trash and all, you know being normal.  We even have recycling too but I will wait to take that out later, now just seems too soon.

Do you knock to say "Hello" or Good-bye"? Yes, hello van people, this me walking into my house...and out of my house...and back into my house with bags of food that I bought at the store...then out again to go to work....and back to go to sleep...I know it seems super simple but actually it is a little bit harder now that you are parked in our little driveway and I have to step into the garden to get around you, and the day it snowed all day?! that really sucked getting plowed in on the street but don't worry about it because, um, well, it's nothing compared to what you are going through...so...yeah.        

I know they don't want to be invited in to stay.  We do have an open room.  They won't take it.  We have offered the use of our bathrooms.  That too seems untaken. 

On the days their van is parked in our driveway I walk around my imperfect kitchen wiping up crumbs my family is blind to.  It keeps me busy in the way it keeps all women who sweep dirt floors busy.

I am always aware of them being out there even though I have long since given up on asking BC to explain it to me one more time how they can live like that.

I wonder about them with the same amazement that attracts me to abandoned buildings.  There was a point, a very final moment, when the last person closed the door and walked away forever.  What was that moment like? What tipped the scale?  What forces could draw the line between I live here, this is mine, and nothing.  Who leaves a house?        

But they aren't buildings.  They aren't make of bricks and timber.  They are people: abandoned people.  

They live in a van with makeshift curtains and a pallet bed.  They move from place to place looking to be left alone.

We do that, we leave them alone because there are rules about trespassing.