Marla Duby rushed into this world. She was born prematurely and weighed only 1 1/2 pounds at birth, then quickly dropped down to a mere 15 ounces. She was given 24 hours to live.
“I had a lot of nurses praying over me. No one realized that I was hard of hearing until I was 3 years old,” Marla said. The San Francisco hospital where she was born did not diagnose that her auditory nerve never developed, miraculously the only serious effect of her premature birth.
Marla recalls the first sounds she heard when she got hearing aids.
“I still remember the first time I heard my mom’s voice. I love hearing sounds. It’s loud, but I love hearing them,” Marla said.
Marla and her mother moved to Hillsboro a month shy of her 21st birthday. She was getting sick in California because she suffers from asthma and had an aunt living in the Portland area. Three years later, she met her now-ex-husband. They were married in 1996 and stayed married for 18 years. They share a son, Charlie.
It was April 4, 2014, when she married James, known around Street Roots as “Pops.” Marla and James had both signed up for a dating site. Marla quickly gleaned his phone number from their exchanges on the site, and she said she just dialed him up.
One day, she got a text from James while she was at a care facility helping her ex-husband. James let her know he was on his way to see her, so she ran as fast as she could to meet him.
“I never hug a stranger. But I saw James, and I hugged him. That’s what you do when you meet your soulmate. I love him so much. I loved him then, and I still do,” Marla said.
Their first date was a movie at the Regal Lloyd Center cinema and dinner at Denny’s.
“I wish I remembered what movie we saw. Neither of us do. We were too distracted,” Marla said, giggling. “Our first kiss was like fireworks everywhere. It was just right. I finally found a soulmate.”
Ninety days later, Marla’s apartment manager served her with an eviction notice, and the couple were homeless. They traveled to Florida and Georgia, spending all of their savings on the trip, pinning their hopes on family members who had said they would help. Several months later, they returned to Portland.
“Being homeless is hard,” she said. “Not having healthy food — surviving on Nutri-Grain bars, coffee and Cup of Noodles — it means you are sick all the time. While I was living in the shelter, I got MRSA (a serious form of staph infection) and wound up at Good Sam for five days, on five different antibiotics.”
The couple feel fortunate to have been in their current home for two years. Marla is grateful for her husband and their kids and grandchildren. In 2021, she hopes to work more as a sign language interpreter. And she hopes that more people in Portland have housing and warm places to go.
Each year, Marla and James come up with a special project to help their community. For the past several years, they have purchased $5 or $10 gift cards and left them in places for others in need to find them. This year, they are thinking about filling backpacks with essentials, like warm socks and gloves, and putting them around town.
But mostly, Marla is looking forward to a better 2021.
“I’m looking forward to all the craziness stopping in the new year. I miss my customers from Street Roots. I miss putting a smile on their faces,” Marla said.