Constantino Diaz-Duran is a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. He is chronicling his walk from New York to Los Angeles to celebrate his eligibility for American citizenship. Follow Constantino’s progress.

Christine’s humble cabin bakes in the Texas sun, 12 miles west of the town of Brenham. At 62, she scrapes by with an income of less than $1,000 a month, and her home is testament to her poverty. Her generosity, however, is great. She took me in for a couple of nights, shared her homemade wine with me, and we even cooked meals with mushrooms and vegetables that grow on her land.

A former citizen of Austria, Christine came to the U.S. in the 1970s to study English. Her parents wanted to send her to England, but she chose America because she wanted to date-something her strict Catholic father forbade. She worried that England was too close to home and that her parents would visit her frequently if she lived there. She landed in Kentucky and a few months later, she fell in love. She married an American man, finished her bachelor’s degree in the Bluegrass State, and moved to Tennessee to get her doctorate at Vanderbilt University.

Christine’s husband died of cancer when she was in her late 20s, and she never remarried. She instead dedicated her life to academia and to raising two daughters. She became an American citizen in 1980 and spent several years teaching German in Spain and South Africa. She returned to the U.S. when her daughters were in middle school and took a job as a professor in Illinois.

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Christine dedicated most of her academic career to studying the German language and culture of the Texas Hill Country. Eventually, she fell in love with the area and bought the farm where she now lives. When her daughters graduated from high school, she decided to move here permanently and work at Texas State University in San Marcos.

So how does an accomplished scholar come to live in such poverty? Illness. Christine was diagnosed with a terminal autoimmune disease in the mid-2000s, and was forced to stop teaching. She lost her house in San Marcos, and her medical bills ate up her savings. The farm is all she has left. Her income comes from a job she got through an organization called Experience Works. Last year she got sick for several weeks, and could not go to work. She was then forced to rely on her neighbors’ charity even for food.

I wish I could have met Christine’s friends and neighbors. These people have kept this woman afloat. They lend her money when she can’t work, buy her food when she can’t afford it, and recently one of them helped her buy a car so she can commute to her job and do her best to support herself.

Seeing how Christine lives has given me much to think about. Her kindness has been humbling. She has very little, but what little she had, she insisted on sharing with me. Hearing her story, and learning about the generosity of her community has inspired me to be, myself, a better friend and neighbor.

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*Photo by Constantino Diaz-Duran.