Marilou Haskell and Sarah Shettleroe stood shoulder to shoulder at side-by-side sinks preparing for a once-a-year meal that brings back old memories and makes new ones.
Michael Carpenter wasn’t helping, but he wasn’t hurting either, and he was wide awake when you could start to smell Thanksgiving in the air.
Guy Sanford — “Crickett” to those who know him — was fast asleep with a smile on his bearded face after receiving long-hoped for news he had every right to be thankful for.
There were others — many others — none of them family, few of them “friends,” at least not in the truest sense of the word, and while most steered clear of the spacious kitchen they were all somewhere “there” and, for better or worse, on the verge of making a memory.
Welcome to The Welcome Center — a place for fresh starts, second, third and, in Carpenter’s case, many more chances. A place where there’s room to roam, room to be alone and room to gather.
It’s a place where Haskell, a suddenly homeless 72-year-old woman, was busily peeling potatoes, while Shettleroe, half her tiny sink-mate’s age, was removing the innards from a turkey.
The two women have more in common than you might think, and both were focused on what they were doing until, briefly, they weren’t.
Asked to pinpoint her most memorable Thanksgiving, Haskell gave her potato peeler a rest. She tipped her head to one side, seemingly gazed at the ceiling and carefully considered the question as if there were a right answer.
In Haskell’s mind, there was even if she had to reach back nearly six decades to find it.
Haskell recalled a kitchen half the size of the one she and Shettleroe were working in Wednesday afternoon — one that was filled with generations of her family — “grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles and cousins.”
Family, food and a memory.
“I was 13,” she recalled. “I was the oldest of all the cousins, and I still had to sit at the small table. I was so mad I didn’t get promoted.”
“I remember that,” Shettleroe said, nodding as if she hadn’t grown up in a different family, in a different state, in a different generation.
While Haskell is a “guest” at the shelter Good Samaritan Haven operates in a converted roadside motel, she hasn’t been for long.
Haskell explained her husband died last October, and when October rolled around this year it hit her hard.
“That was the frosting on my cake,” she said. “I had a nervous breakdown. I walked away from everything.”
Haskell said she left her home in Waitsfield and everything in it behind and briefly landed in Central Vermont Medical Center, where she’d worked as a nurse for 20 years. After she was released, she found her way to Good Samaritan Haven’s shelter on Seminary Street in Barre, spent two nights there and then moved to The Welcome Center where she has been staying for the past few weeks.
“This is a new beginning for me,” she said, busying herself in the kitchen of what was once the home of the motel’s proprietors.
Shettleroe was right there with her, though she is a shelter coordinator, on the verge of a promotion, not one of The Welcome Center’s 30-plus guests.
However, Shettleroe said she knows what it’s like to have no place to live because that’s where she found herself after driving from Florida to Vermont in a 12-seat van with her two young children — one of them an infant — eight years ago.
“We were homeless,” she said that thanks to her sister, Melissa Battah and Church of the Good Shepherd, she never needed to seek out Good Samaritan Haven’s help and didn’t know much about the organization until Battah, who serves on its board, suggested she consider going to work there.
Shettleroe did in June and hasn’t regretted it because it appeals to her kind nature.
“I like to feed people. I like to make sure that they’re comfortable and cared for and have a safe place to lay their head,” she said. “I guess I have a soft place in my heart to help people.”
The Welcome Center fills those needs, especially this time of year, and Shettleroe said she was looking forward to the controlled kitchen chaos being replaced by the “quiet hum” that accompanies people settling in for supper together when all the work is done.
“I like the community and the fellowship part of it,” she said, noting she’ll leave the pumpkin pie to others.
“You have to finish it off with banana pudding,” she said. “I’ve got the family recipe. It’s the best part.”
Pudding prep was on a long to-do list for a massive meal Shettleroe, Haskell and several others had a hand in preparing.
Carpenter wasn’t one of them. Not that he didn’t want to help, but cooking isn’t his strong suit and a disfigured hand from a childhood ailment creates an added challenge.
Carpenter has been an on-again-off-again guest at Good Samaritan Haven since long before The Welcome Center opened.
Now 60, the struggling alcoholic, who said he was “two-days sober” while Haskell was peeling potatoes.
Carpenter was aiming to make it three and wistful about Thanksgivings past. Not the ones he spent in jail, or in a shelter, though he didn’t complain about either.
The ones he spent growing up in Randolph.
“Those were the best,” he said. “Being home with mom and dad.”
Then there’s Sanford. The man they call “Crickett” had a story to tell, but was too tired to tell it, so Rick DeAngelis, co-executive director of Good Samaritan Haven told it for him.
Sanford, who has been at the shelter for more than a year waiting for a subsidized housing unit to open up in Montpelier got word Wednesday his wait is over, and he’ll soon make the move to Pioneer Apartments.
In a super-tight housing market that makes Crickett something of a unicorn and DeAngelis said it was hard not to be happy for him.
Still, while they aren’t family, or “friends” — at least not in the truest sense of the word — DeAngelis sure sounded like Pioneer Apartments’ gain is The Welcome Center’s loss.
“I’m going to miss him,” he said, while Sanford was napping in his room. “This place won’t be the same without Crickett.”
He’s not gone yet and Thanksgiving was a better time than most to share that sort of sentiment. It works at home, and it works in what was once a home overlooking what was once a motel, but is now a shelter that meets people where they are and buys them time to find their bearings and move on.
The Thanksgiving feast at The Welcome Center was large — likely too large. There was plenty to be thankful for right down to the one-size-fits-all table and the fresh batch of banana pudding.
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
