WE’RE HOMELESS, BUT MY DAUGHTER STILL MAKES SURE THE PUPPY EATS FIRST
I never thought I’d be here—sitting on a park bench with everything I own stuffed into a shopping cart, a tattered blanket wrapped around my shoulders, and my eight-year-old daughter asleep beside me with our puppy curled up on her chest. The world moves past us in blurs of hurried footsteps, car horns, and strangers avoiding eye contact. But somehow, even in this cold and chaotic life, there is something grounding, something warm: the way my daughter cares for our little dog like he’s royalty.
We lost our apartment six months ago. One missed paycheck turned into a series of bad luck, and before I knew it, we were out. No family to call. No one to lean on. Just me, her, and the tiny mutt she found behind a dumpster—bones showing, tail wagging. “Can we keep him, Mama?” she’d whispered. I wanted to say no. We could barely feed ourselves. But I saw something in her eyes—something I hadn’t seen in weeks. Hope. So I said yes.
We named him Lucky, though I sometimes think we’re the lucky ones.
Each day is a struggle. We rely on shelters when there’s space, soup kitchens when we can get there in time. Sometimes we go to sleep with empty bellies, but not Lucky. My daughter makes sure of that. If she gets a sandwich, he gets half. If we find an apple, she peels off the skin and hands it to him piece by piece. One night, I caught her tearing a granola bar in two, quietly sliding the bigger half into the puppy’s mouth. She didn’t know I saw, but it broke me and healed me all at once.
“I don’t want him to feel scared,” she told me once, as she wrapped him in an old hoodie. “He’s little. And he didn’t ask to be out here.”
Neither did we. But somehow, in her small acts of kindness, in the way she clutches him when she sleeps, I find strength. Her love for him is pure, unshaken by the harshness of our world. It reminds me that compassion doesn’t require comfort, and selflessness can grow even in the most desolate places.
People pass us by like we’re invisible. But sometimes, someone stops. They see her cradling Lucky and their eyes soften. Once, a man handed her a bag of dog food with a lump in his throat. Another time, a woman slipped her a dollar and said, “You’re a good kid.” She is. She truly is.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But I know this: as long as my daughter can find it in her heart to put someone else first, even when we have so little, we’ll be okay. Because that kind of love? It’s shelter. It’s warmth. It’s hope on the coldest of nights.
We may be homeless, but watching her with Lucky reminds me—we are not without a home. Not really. Because home, I’m learning, is where love lives.
