The official Dancing Deer Baking Company Blog

Submitted to us by Louise Place, Trish's goddaughter who joined her at the Naylor Road Family Shelter:

The small room was peppered with tubes of white icing, green gum drops, white and red-striped mints, raisins, and snow-capped chocolates. Debating the intricacies of architecture and decoration, children congregated around the gingerbread houses. Lights were low, but spirit and sugar content were high.

Amidst all of the children carefully selecting raisins to shingle their roofs and line their windows, one little girl was methodically picking each of the candies off of her house. She was wearing a pink shirt and a look of concentration. She asked me for a paper towel, and promptly proceeded to use said paper towel to smear the white icing all over the walls and roof. The gingerbread house stood naked, stripped of its raisin-lined windows.

“You didn’t like the gumdrop door we made?” I asked, crouching down and putting my mouth to her ear.

At first she didn’t answer, and merely reached for another paper towel to continue the smearing process. Then, she turned to me deliberately, and announced, “I’m making the White House.”

Last night, I had the privilege of decorating ginger bread houses at the Naylor Road Family Shelter in South East Washington, DC. Opened two and a half months ago, this shelter features apartment units available to any homeless individuals or groups. “We are not picky,” one of the program managers explained. “Grandmothers, boyfriends, mothers-in-law, god parents, uncles, children, old neighbors…if you consider yourselves a family, so do we.”

While decorating the houses, no one grabbed fistfuls of candy. Rather, each child stared at the houses and carefully prepared the icing tube before meticulously picking out the perfect piece. No one fought over the snow-capped chocolates; in fact, one entrepreneur even established a trade route, weaving in between the tables and exchanging his raisins for gum drops. He even joked that his business was so popular that soon he would have to make business cards!

One boy in the corner of the room caught my eye. His house was impeccable. The door was lined with alternating different toned raisins, and the windows were equipped with textured, frosting curtains. Shaking my hand with a firm grip, he informed me that his name was Stephan, that he was very creative, and that he was going to become an artist; he was a man with a plan.

His sister interrupted our conversation to ask me if I sang. I told her that I did. She then told me that Stephan and I could sing together, because he was a “real singer.”

“Oh, really?” I asked Stephan. “What do you sing?”

“I don’t,” he answered curtly, avoiding eye contact.

“She just said you did,” I probed.

“I used to sing gospel,” he answered quietly. “But I don’t anymore.” He turned back to his gingerbread house, suddenly short on words.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

That was clearly the end of the discussion, so I asked him if I could be his assistant. He perked up immediately, and put me to work doing the landscaping of the cardboard foundation.

At the end of the night, each child posed proudly with his/her house for his/her own personal Kodak moment. We set up the camera, instructing everyone to “Smile and say cheese!” One boy refused to have his picture taken, claiming that he had nothing to smile about.

“Sure, you do,” his mother piped in, rubbing his back. “This shelter is wonderful,” she asserted. “It is the next best thing to having your own home.” He nodded with grudging acceptance, and insisted that we photograph him with the house’s best side.

This experience reminded me that an increasing percentage of the American population is homeless; we have a third world within our first world. Trish's bike ride helped me to put a face to this problem.

We need to humanize the homeless. We cannot continue to shuffle past them on the street as though constrained by blinders or glued to the ground. Instead, we must treat them as the equals, walk the talk, and make good on our commitment to public service. As U.S. citizens, we must heed JFK's words that, "Everybody can make a difference, and everyone should try."

Before leaving Naylor Road, I approached the girl who had smeared the white frosting. “Who is going to live in the White House?” I asked.

This time, she answered me without hesitation. “Well, me, of course! If Obama, why not me?”