Author: Starshine Roshell

The guy at the off-ramp. The teen at the gas station. The lady in front of the market. Their stories, no doubt, are as different as their cardboard signs — “Anything helps.” “God bless.” “I’d rather be working.” But there’s an unnerving sameness about their demeanor: downcast eyes, slack posture, and clothes that haven’t seen a spin cycle in weeks. Maybe months.

There are more panhandlers than ever before, and it’s no mystery why. The mystery, for me, is how to respond. Sometimes I offer coins and wonder what good my 63 cents could possibly do. Sometimes I ignore them and feel bad about it. Usually I just smile impotently and wonder, as I pass, if there isn’t some smarter way to help.

My grandma once took a homeless guy to Denny’s and bought him lunch. She drove him there and — gulp — stopped by an ATM on the way. Prudent? No. Constructive? Unequivocally. He got to order the hot meal of his choice and tell his story to a great listener over bottomless cups of coffee. (He had to listen to her stories, too, but fair’s fair.)

Not all of us have my grandmother’s time. Or her huevos. Isn’t there something we can do beyond flicking nickels at these folks, and short of asking them on dates?

I talked to a guy standing outside Trader Joe’s on De la Vina Street with a sign: “Thank you for all your help.” “It’s my preference to technically not ask for anything,” said the man, who wouldn’t give his name. He’s been, er, not-begging for seven months, trying to get out of debt. “Sometimes people give me food that doesn’t fit with my diet,” he said. “I’m vegetarian, on an all-raw diet.”

Only in Santa Barbara.

Long before I owned a big velvet couch, I owned an itty-bitty one. Years before I could sweep my front porch with a broom, I could dust it off with a fingertip. And decades before my dining room sparkled under a ponderous chandelier, it glowed under a pee-wee one, about two inches long.
I had a dollhouse. A dazzling, one-of-a-kind dollhouse that my father built for me. A blue two-story Victorian with an Astroturf lawn, white popsicle-stick fence, and working lights — and switches — in every room.
My dad’s a woodcarver, and quite a craftsman. The way he remembers it, I approached him one day with this oh-so-casual remark: “Grandma said you could make me a dollhouse. You couldn’t do that, could you?”
And the game was on.
He called it my “tiny mansion” and worked on it most of the year in his garage, in secret. I recall with breathtaking precision the moment I first saw it: French doors and balconies, old-fashioned wallpaper, buzzing doorbell. A wooden cutting board slid out from the kitchen counter. My initials were carved above the front door in scroll letters.
My dad’s a joy to me. He’s smart and funny and there when I need him. But if he’d never done another kind thing for me — ever in my life — this would have been enough.