Sheri and Anne

Tonight we had our friend Sheri over for dinner. Sheri is formerly homeless. We met her on our second day living here. She was panhandling over on the corner, just half a block from our house. We were walking to the train to go to the beach for a much-needed break from unpacking. Paul saw her, and walked right up and introduced himself. We could tell pretty much from the start that we were going to be friends with Sheri.

There's a lot of stuff about Mark, her former partner, that I could tell here, but this isn't about Mark, and I don't have the time to chronicle everything about them. Mark is currently in prison, but he'll be out next month. Maybe I'll write more about that later.

Sheri is currently in a detox program. She is doing so well! She's been off alcohol for almost three months. She's going to graduate from the program she's in now this month, and go into group housing. In the short time we've known her (10 months) she has made such great strides. We've seen her at her worst--she spent the night before going into detox, and we saw her trying to wake up and get out of bed and shaking like crazy. Her body needed alcohol, and she kept saying that she just wanted to wake up in the morning like a normal person and drink coffee and wake up gracefully, like we do. I've been so happy to hear her say things like "I'm so happy to be sober, because now I can feel things and do things and drink coffee in the mornings and read my Bible."

Anyway. Tonight we were talking about the many problems she still faces, and there are a lot. She's been trying to get on welfare, and has been turned down for the last two months. She doesn't have any money coming in, and as she says, recovery is a full-time job. She wants to get a job and "be a normal person" as she says, but knows she doesn't have the inner strength now, but needs lots of work. And she's doing it.

So I've finished the Anne Lamott book I was reading on vacation, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, and also while we were on vacation we listened to the audio version of Traveling Mercies. (I succeeded in my mission to get Paul hooked on Anne Lamott, and he's now reading Plan B. :-) It suddenly came to me that hey, Traveling Mercies would be such a great book for Sheri to read, as Anne tells all about her journey to recovery from drugs and alcohol. And it's such an honest account. She really gets down into the nitty-gritty. And so I said, hey Sheri, you should read Anne Lamott's book Travelling Mercies. And she said, "I know Anne Lamott! I grew up with her. We were best friends in elementary school!" She had no idea that Anne was a writer, but said she always knew she was a special lady. I was going to take her to Booksmith on Haight street and buy her the book Traveling Mercies on the way back to her place, but it was closed. But we decided that, since Sheri really wants to see Anne again, and I'd really love to meet her, that we'll try to get in touch with her and I'll drive Sheri up to meet her. Hey, being driver has to have some perks. :-)