It was a simple life. We had a nice home, a new neighbour friend, a new born, and had started over in Mississippi. We had planted a small tomato garden in our back patio, watched them grow, ate fried green tomatoes and sliced tomato sandwiches, even gave some to Angel, our neighbour. For Mother’s Day, Katherine brought home a gorgeous Hibiscus true form tree, with a braided trunk planted in a large pot with star flowers and purple sweet potato vines. It was beautiful and attracted a couple of lizard friends too! We loved our patio and spent many afternoons there with our plants, lizards and children. Katherine worked hard to provide us a home, since I wasn’t able to work. She worked as many hours as the company would allow, which was ten hours a day M-F and some Saturdays she would get approved to work as well. Each morning I would wake up, fix our breakfast and pack Katherine’s lunch. She would wake, shower and get ready for work. Jayden, Marie and I would load up in the car and we would see Katherine to work. Most mornings the children and I would visit the park at the Hattiesburg Zoo, where Jayden would run and play. Since, I was supposed to be on bed-rest as much as possible and just had a C-section with Marie, we just sat on the side lines and watched. After a couple hours and Jay expressed being tired, we would go home and all nap. After nap, I would clean, prepare supper, do laundry, rest more to recuperate from the activity and wait for Katherine’s text saying she was heading back to the green house. The kids and I would get Katherine from work. With Katherine not having a driver’s license, it was best I drove the car.
It was late September, our lives were changing so quickly. For days, we went to the McDonald’s down the road to charge our laptop and phones, since we hadn’t any power at the town-house. While there we would do research on places to go, cities with resources, which specific resources providing which services, in order to decide where to live next. Katherine spent many hours working online to keep us going while we figured out where to go. She filled out surveys, did click work, data entry and so on. Not that it provided much, twenty dollars here, thirty dollars there, but that’s gas and dollar menu items. I was going about our apartment finding everything of value, gathering it to sell. After a few hours of hunting, I sat down at the dining room table to empty the box and count the loot. All in all, I collected gold necklaces, rings, bracelets, books, Xbox controllers, games, cd’s, movies, and some random other small electronics such as a digital photo album, an alarm clock and a set of speakers. Only the jewellery and Xbox controllers sold. We took the games, cd’s and movies down to the pawn shop for a whopping dollar each. We thought of doing plasma donation, but unfortunately the center in our town had closed and there weren’t any in nearby towns. We settled on Denver. It seemed to be the best option. We saw many resources for the homeless. We saw long lists of shelters and public services. We also knew five people that were from our home town and we had been friends with growing up. We messaged them, gathered all our money, which was less than a month of rent and utilities, but we took what we had and left for Denver. I posted Craigslist ads for housekeeping and lawn care services so we could have work set up when arrived. Once we decided on Denver, it was time to pack enough for four people into a rather limited sized area of a dodge neon trunk and back seat. It was no easy task, and at around attempt four, we had everything we could manage to take with us, smashed together, with all doors and the trunk finally able to close. We gave our friend Angel our kitchen supplies and left many toys and clothes outside for donation. We sent our furniture to storage at Katherine’s fathers. The views on the trip were amazing. Travelling through numerous states, it took us two days to travel. We were both a bundle of emotions. Afraid of failure, excited about a new place and new opportunities, sad about leaving our home, but happy to have each other still. Our family of four, is all we had left.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Authors:James and Katherine are a transgender couple raising two kids. They were southerners when coming to understand themselves as trans. Ultimately it lead to a nearly three year road trip to find home. Now they are re-housed and still focused on outreach in the transgender community! Archives
October 2020
Categories |