Near the Pines

A young woman recently shared with me, “Did you know that Schenectady means 'where the road ends'?" Puzzled by her question, I wondered who her source was but more importantly, whether she believed it.

Always in search of language roots and local history, I responded, “I could be wrong, but I think Schenectady is a Native American term meaning ‘near the pines.’” Sure enough, Wikipedia verified my hunch, making me feel proud of my growing nickel knowledge base, but still concerned about this young woman’s perception.

I asked her if she feels that Schenectady is in fact where the road ends, or more directly, where her road ends. She paused in removed thought and finally answered, “It’s just that whenever I come up here, I seem to have back luck,” her latest stroke of “luck” causing her to lose her recently replaced phone, which is her life line and most legitimate means to secure a job.

A 19 year-old single mother, she moved from the Bronx to Schenectady earlier this year in order to escape a life of drug dealing and to create a better future for her and her one-year old son. She regularly makes trips downstate to visit family and to scrounge up baby clothing and extra diapers, but she always returns, end of the road or not, to Schenectady.

It is here that she has an apartment, albeit no crib for the baby or an air conditioner and several flights of stairs to endure with a heavy stroller and a bad knee. But she has a place of her own, thanks to the Department of Social Services and a local job training agency.

In early summer, her career counselor arranged for her to complete her job training as a receptionist at the City Mission. On her first day, she entered with her shoulders bent forward and a downward gaze, wearing old jeans and a faded t-shirt.

Before starting at the front desk, she was invited to visit Phoebe’s Closet, the second-hand clothing ministry at the City Mission, which provides professional clothing for employment seekers. She hesitantly tried on a few outfits and soon the transformation was evident.

She came out of the fitting room, looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror and exclaimed, “I feel like a completely different person! I look so professional!” The young woman straightened her shoulders, adjusted the collar of the suit jacket she had tried on and said “My friends would never recognize me. I’ll tell them it’s really me, and that I have a job!”

After four months, this frustrated, lonely and overwhelmed young woman has secured a job at Macy’s department store, although child care may cost her much needed hours. She has also become more confident and articulate, able to assist volunteers, visitors and guests of the City Mission.

While she is a far cry from the dangerously illegal activity of her peers, her life in Schenectady is not the idyllic depiction given by Native Americans as the “place beyond the pine plains.” In fact, her story is fraught with prickers, thorns and on some days a glaringly bold “Dead End” sign.

With a litany of health concerns and a broken-hearted expression, one can’t help but want to support her, empower her, or at the very least, listen to her. And that’s exactly what I did, on my first day back at the Mission.

Fresh off of a week of vacation and happy be back home, I felt rather disappointed when she declared Schenectady as a land of lost opportunity. However, rather than discount her comment altogether, I simply asked, “What makes you feel that way?”

She described her difficulty getting a job, her piece-meal child care options and her constant pull to the city, where she seems to have more access to services, or can at least get away with securing more food and money. Returning to Schenectady brings ridicule from her family and friends, who are unwilling to accept her independent decision making and self motivation, traits which will be necessary if she is to achieve a promising future.

In the few words I was able to offer, amidst her therapeutic outpouring of grievances, I noted that her decision to move to Schenectady shows a great deal of courage, vision and determination. I also expressed that her main concerns about Schenectady, including job availability, childcare and lack of family support, are realities which are likely to exist in just about every city, big or small, whether they are filled with pine trees or sky scrapers.

I also reminded her that the opportunities available to us are often based on how we perceive our surroundings. In Schenectady, she has a safe place to live and a temporary job at the City Mission where she has an array of physical and spiritual resources, whether they are in the form of size-5 diapers and extra baby wipes, or the support of a community of women interested in her well-being.

And as this young woman realized, her most valuable resources are the women who reside at the City Mission, who are in the midst of rebuilding their own lives and can share their own experiences of doubt and despair, restoration and resilience.

Before this young woman left for the day, she peered into my office with a fully stretched smile and said, “Thank you! Thank you for letting me vent this morning. I spoke to some of the ladies during lunch, and they said to just keep moving forward, even when it’s tough.”

And she really believed them, hopefully more than the storyteller who shared the urban myth of Schenectady being an ending point, rather than a place of beginnings.