Thursday, June 23, 2011

Unlikely

Yesterday,  while volunteering at Grub Club, I met Nate.  Nate is "going to be in seventh grade" next year, yields a killer grin, and is still shorter than me, which I suspect will change by the end of the summer. My volunteer position has changed from driver/delivery detail to "sandwich maker" so I showed up early yesterday at 8:40 am to knock out a bzillion PBJs.  Evidently Wednesday is YMCA field trip day, so volunteers arrive at 7:30 to prepare lunches for the Y kids.  Nate's grandmother had been spreading peanut butter since the church opened, and Nate was along for the ride as he would be working in her yard later-- his Wednesday summer job.  When I arrived, there were only 25 sandwiches left to prepare so Nate and I were assigned to "stuff" duty.

First we sat down  to stuff  two cookies each into small zip lock bags.  As you can imagine my pre-teen friend Nate wasn't full of conversation at that un-Godly hour of the morning, so I took upon myself to get the conversation going.  He tolerated me, politely.  After 132 bags of Oreos were stuffed, we moved on to strawberries.  Now it is after nine and Nate's personality is emerging. 

"This one has a soft spot," he says holding the perfect-looking strawberry up in the light.  We had already established quality control.  If one Oreo was cracked, we made sure the other was perfect.  No kid deserves two broken cookies.  So it would go with the strawberries, managing size, quality, and number to honor each recipient's USDA right to fresh Oregon strawberries.  Nate and I developed a rhythm and system to our work, mostly chatting about quality, and of course me finding ways to tease him so I could catch more glimpses of that killer grin.

Having finished our strawberries, we were put back on Oreo duty.  I would easily unzip a sleeve of cookies and begin to stuff where Nate struggled to open each sleeve.  Finally, he asked, "How do you open those so easily?"  I showed him my unzipping technique and Voila he opened the next one almost perfectly.  In the spirit of a teen-age boy, opening Oreo sleeves became a competition to see who could do the longest, most perfect unzip of the sealed plastic enfolding the cookies.

By the end of two hours, Nate and I were volunteer buddies.  It is unlikely that we would ever chat or choose to do something together in any other situation; but, volunteering gave us the opportunity to cross paths.  I am amazed at the contentment I felt watching Nate successfully unzip cookies, grin, and inspect strawberries.  Time seemed to stand still as I cherished the teachable moment and remembered how harried I was when my boys were approaching seventh grade.  It was zen like...very in the moment...very volunteerish.  Georga says that is the great thing about volunteering, "It's not a job Pat; you can say no, you can do it when you like...or not."  This concept is so far from my usual task this time of year of jigsawing workshops, balancing schedules, and planning ahead to November.  I pray to become more "volunteerish" and more in the moment, eventually transforming from the task-master I had become to someone who is fully living the moment remaining open for more unlikely encounters.