“Hi,” said the toddler in the stroller.
“He’s getting so he knows you,” said his mother.
And I felt very warm and happy — until I remembered that he knows me because I’m a volunteer at a soup kitchen where his family eats almost every week.
Bubba is pale, with dark blonde hair and large, greenish eyes that demand comparison to some exotic, nocturnal animal, but I’m never sure which one. He’s a good eater. That’s how I know the kids who pass through my station regularly. Good eaters, spillers, talkers, dreamers. I know who gets a kid’s plate and who can eat an adult helping with no problem.
One little girl, not even 3, had an amazing appetite. Slowly but surely, she ate every mouthful placed in front of her. She doesn’t come anymore. She died in a fire last year. Her mother was at work, her grandmother was taking care of the children in a three-story rowhouse, a fire started in the basement. Her mother doesn’t come anymore, either.
It was a slow day, which is a good thing. Fewer people need us. Yet the volunteers, myself among us, like the busy shifts best. In the two years I’ve worked at Viva House, I’ve learned a dozen small efficiencies of motion — refill the tea pitchers in down moments, carry multiple cups and desserts/fruits, wipe clean with one hand, put down the new setting with the other.
“Hi,” the toddler in the stroller said, his face lighting up. And happy as I was to be recognized, I wished we had never met.
That last paragraph made me cry, Laura. Every child who came into Viva House the day I helped out reminded me of my own, of course, and the arbitrariness–cruelty–of life and the portions it doles out.
And also the infuriating absurdity of an obscenely rich nation where, for far too many, staving off hunger depends on places like Viva House and the extraordinary people who volunteer there.
>>>It fixes writerly neuroses?<<<
Well, speaking from experience, only temporarily, alas. They haven’t come up with an anti-neurosis vaccine yet, only homeopathic treatments.
But I have to say that spending a couple of hours at Viva House and a few more talking books and life and who knows what else with Laura, AND getting a look at parts of Baltimore I’d never visited before, AND hearing their backstories, allowed me to return to my helterskelter real life (in some important ways a sequel to yours, Keith, though in some crucial ones not)with a lighter heart.
Even if the remedy didn’t last forever.
Keith, my hunch is that your sons offer the same kind of temporary fix for writerly neuroses. My de facto stepson did just that for me today, introducing me to his classmates as “My too-smart-for-her-own-good stepmom.”
To go off on a tangent about writerly neuroses — a powerful one had me in its grip yesterday. Post-Viva House, I was able to ask myself: Where is it written that you’re not going to fail? And where is it written that failure is so final, so hideous?
There are some pragmatic underpinnings to a writer’s fear — a critical drubbing or a commercial disappointment can have immense consequences for one’s _career_. But it can affect one’s creative output only to the extent that one allows it to.
Really, there’s a lot to be said for the “Serenity” prayer, about knowing what one can control and what one can’t.
I don’t like seeing a post like this go mostly unanswered, but I can’t get my feelings in sensible order. I wish I were doing that kind of work; but I’m not willing to give up what little remains of my writing time, and I can’t give up my day job. All that’s left are sleep time and baby time, neither of which can be sacrificed.
So I’m left feeling terribly bourgeois. It’s good work, but darling, I simply do not have the time!
>>>>All that’s left are sleep time and baby time, neither of which can be sacrificed.<<<<
I think if you work really hard at being as good a Dad as you can be, you’re doing important good in the world as well. That’s not bourgeois, not when there are so many parents who don’t even try.
My heart leapt into my throat as I read this, and all I could think of was how my daughter, at 13 months old in the restaurant at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China, picked individual grains of rice off her shirt and ate them one by one because she just hadn’t had enough to eat in the orphanage and even at her young age, she couldn’t waste anything. I sympathize with Keith because I’m in the same boat he is these days, but by taking my daughter out of her situation in China, I know I helped one child and have watched so many other girls like her thrive with their new families. So many tell me how lucky my daughter is, but I see myself as the lucky one.
Keith, not to sound too airy-fairy, but I do it for all of us. You’re a dad, working a fulltime gig and pursuing your art in your spare time. You’re rearing two future citizens, and that’s a pretty big job in itself. I’m not. So when I left my day job, I decided to take the gift of time and give some of it back.
And the thing is, I’m absolutely dispensable. Brendan and Willa put in 34 years at the corner of Mount and Lombard before I showed up. Anyone can do what I do. I just happen to have the time to do it.
Fact is, I often feel guilty for how much I get out of Viva House — the camaraderie, the opportunity to gain some perspective on what’s bugging me. Before I headed over there yesterday, I was in the throes of some real writerly neurosis. Three hours later, it was gone. My ego-driven problems were so laughably small in the context of Southwest Baltimore.
I’m no Marxist, but when it comes to philanthropy, I definitely believe in “From each according to, etc.” I have time, so I give it. I give some money, too. But I didn’t always have time and I may not again in the future. Then someone else will step up.
It fixes writerly neuroses?
Can I do it from home?
I was going to try to be funny, so I started two lists: Things You Can’t Change, and Things You Can.
Then I couldn’t figure out which items went where. For example, “Painful seam along toe of sock not visible before purchase” would seem, initially, to go in the “not changeable” column.
But is this true? Couldn’t one determined person who didn’t know it wasn’t possible shift the balance?
I’ll concede that changing socks is difficult for a writer.
But is it impossible?
Didn’t I mention recently you were going to heaven?
This reminded me of when I did volunteer work at my local AIDS Community Center, I was a “buddy” to the most vivacious girl you would ever want to meet, on top of being HIV+, she was also blinded in a car accident, and it was my honor to help her in the small ways that I could. While I was with her she attended The Southeastern Dog Academy, and she became quite the successful Avon Lady.
She confided in me once that she was aware that her husband knew that he was HIV+ when he was with her, and that she believed that she was infected because he wasn’t strong enough to die alone.
Eventually they both got sick, and she passed away weeks after he did. I don’t think I have ever met a more beautiful soul.
I understand what you mean when you say you feel get out of it. She changed me, for the better — and I don’t think I will ever be the same.
I took a break from volunteering there afterwards. It was the best thing I have ever done, and it was also the hardest, and even now I don’t know that I could do it again.