Always Hope
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
As promised, here’s a link to the story about Hope House I wrote for Present. About the beginning: last week, I saw the storm roll up out the back windows and this quaint Thomas Kinkade scene came to me with Hope House’s Lee’s Summit facility in its midst, only in my vision the sky was threatening. Nothing about the setting was serene or would make you want to buy a calendar or a jig-saw puzzle. I thought about the house standing firm – not just the house, but the purpose it stands for, and I thought it might be a decent description to set the tone. So I did some free writing about the storm pressing down on the building and the rain on its way. The night happened to be coming on at the time I started writing. With the storm front, the air thickened suddenly. You could feel it filling space around you. The clouds kept billowing, turning darker and darker gray, and it seemed like the night was heavy. I think I use the phrase “real weight.” There was definitely some weight on the nine o’clock air.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter how much hope it might create, the Hope House deals with dark issues. The sky, say like today, might be blue, but there’s something hanging over the cottage-like setting in Lee’s Summit. The picture of a happy house is a false one. Things are so much better for the women inside and their children, in some cases, but it would be wrong to paint a sunny picture. I took the opposite approach from the outside.
The last paragraph on Page One that begins with “Shehan has stories to tell” was written several days after I finished the piece. I contacted Pete Dulin and told him I felt the story needed some more emotional weight, primarily a story from a survivor – someone who’d experienced the services provided by the organization and came out changed, for the better. That happens to be the best piece to the story, especially given that the women were not offered for the interview. I was able to tap back into the story’s voice and add something that was more relevant than scene setting. The story hadn’t been told yet though I finished writing a few nights before. How does Hope House save lives? In most cases, they do it by altering them, come rain or shine.
