MARGARET BENSHOOF-HOLLER

The prodigal daughter returns and
finds a cold-hearted country.

Some things will never change. Lean down your ear upon the Earth and listen. ..Under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something like a flower. ..forever deathless. .. -Thomas Wolfe from "You Can' t Go Home Again

SAN FRANCISCO January 6, 1994 -- ONCE YOU undo the apron strings, leave the hearth, live away from the mother country, you can't go home again, they say. You become a person without a country.

The prodigal daughter, five earth-changing years away from this country, returned home from overseas. My greeting, a rude awakening.

A wedge divided "those who have" and "those who have not" in the streets of The City. Men and women in business suits versus those with possessions in grocery carts.

Growing up in the affluent '50s and '60s, when homelessness was not a national issue, might have instilled the view that poverty was far removed from most American citizens.

Skid Row separated the poor from the more affluent until the 1970s. Single-room occupancy hotels and flophouses kept the poor from sleeping in public places. Urban renewal and the closing of state mental hospitals were among the forces that moved the poor out to the streets in the 1980s. Americans could no longer ignore them.

Approximately 45 percent of San Francisco's homeless are mentally ill, according to a late 1980s study by the Democratic Study Group of the House of Representatives. Up to now, The City has only been able to afford seven mental health workers to deal with the problem.

State hospitals are better equipped to deal with critical mental health problems, according to a 1987 report of the California State Employees' Association. But broad interpretations of the state law, which protects mentally ill patients from institutionalization without their consent, have released thousands of them back into the cities--where many end up on the street.

Beggars were abundant, but homelessness did not appear to be as rampant when I lived in Spain in the late 1980s. What was different there? Socialism? Or just the culture?

According to one of my Iranian students at City College, "Unlike here, where you're expected to leave home at 18, people can go back home to live regardless of age or whether they're married in my country. There are no homeless. Families take care of those without a job or money."

My students from Taiwan, El Salvador, China and Vietnam also say families are responsible for those without a job or home in their countries. In Spain, it's much the same.

Leaving home at 18 or -- 21, getting a job, making money so we won't have to go back home to live again -- that's the norm for most of us in this country. Financial gain becomes our focus.

What do we lose in the process?

An open face. An outstretched hand. A smile. A touch. Humanity. Have these things been laid to waste in our quest for success in America?

Perhaps not. Feeling like an immigrant in an alien land, I encountered the smiling face of a homeless man in my first few days back home.

"Good morning," he said. "Hope you're doing well today."

I wondered if he knew how special that was to me -- someone willing to risk a human gesture.

Deep within the soil of "broken bones" a flower grows. Welcome home to America.

Copyright 1994 by Margaret Benshoof-Holler