It is the night of Christmas Day and I have been living here for thirteen years and a few months. This is the longest I have lived in one place. I had an enjoyable day today. My friends who have immigrated here recently from Mexico and Spain shared with me here in my little apartment a bread pudding I made for brunch and cups of strong coffee. The afternoon I spent at work hanging out with clients, going for a walk, chatting and doing art work together then staying with them for Christmas dinner. Later I went for a long walk in the cold night air, the swollen newly full moon bathing me in its tender glare as I walked the winding streets of Shaughnessy Heights where some of the mansions are adorned with lights. I am home now, full of chocolate, pumpkin seeds and vintage Welsh cheddar and the silence of this Christmas night spreads its subtle heavy music through every pour, every nerve and every blood vessel.
I have been in the same job for more than eleven years. This is the longest I have been in the same job. I have no idea what the future will bring. During this era of global and local instability I cherish having a roof over my head, a place that I can afford. In Vancouver, now one of the world's most expensive cities for housing this is just incredible. Had I not found this place to live I would have but few options: share a terrible apartment with unreliable roommates, untenable at the age of fifty-nine; find the cheapest apartment possible and endure unsafe substandard housing while never knowing if I have enough money left over for food; end up periodically homeless because of the tight housing market and the extreme difficulty of keeping a stable roof over my head; or move to another, cheaper part of the country. While I feel nothing but gratitude to God and all those who have helped me find housing and sustainable employment I also fear for the future of this city, that it is becoming a place increasingly hostile to the poor.
I still hate the neighbourhood I live in. Today, while leaving the building I was threatened by three young street youths trying to gain illegitimate access to the building. This is not a safe area and I find that I stay home evenings rather than risk the nuisances and less than safe conditions outside at my doorstep.
The building is well-managed even if the fundamentalist Christians running the place can be a bit unreasonable at times. On the whole we get on well and simply politely agree to disagree on certain nonessential (for me anyway) matters of faith. We occasionally clash but there is primarily good will there and we all try to get along and work together.
Maintaining clear boundaries with mental health tenants with whom I have on occasion worked with as clients can be a bit of a challenge: like the tenant who was recently a client of a psychiatric centre where I work. Recently in the elevator she began telling me all about her toe fungus as though she could not get it through her head that I was no longer her professional support worker.
I am very grateful to have this place, my little bachelor apartment, adorned with multiple paintings of mine, four book cases overflowing with some six hundred volumes in English and Spanish, and my window festooned with coloured Christmas lights, my Christmas smile. This place is a Candela and my life has become a candela, a tiny light flickering but still shining despite the odds in the enveloping darkness. A light of hope as I grow each day a bit older and yet somehow feeling nothing of age or of youth, but a timeless eternal rhythm, a balance that holds my life in balance with all the lives that surround me.
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