I continue to serve.

Some days are long, boring, annoying, and seem non-purposful. And other days I am crying on the way home, because I have seen pain and I had the chance to help.

I am at the end of my first month of service with AmeriCorps, and it feels like I have been here for a year. We have been doing various service projects, working with the city of Sacramento and a couple other non-profits. We have delivered food to seniors around the city whom cannot get their own meals due to COVID. We have organized palets and palets of clothes for a family services and put together items for families in need. We have spent hours on an assembly line at a food bank, each of us placing two items in the same spot of a cardboard box and pushing them along to the next in live. We have raked leaves, trimmed rose bushes, weeded gardens at local parks in the county. We spend weekends working at other nonprofits, talk to community members, see neighborhoods we wouldn’t have entered before, and drive by rows of tents of folks without houses.

I have stayed busy with my team. Some days we start at 7:30am…one day we started at 5:30! Most days we begin at 8 or 9. We work until a 30 minute lunch and then continue until around 4:00. I make sure to stock myself with coffee for the day, making sure I stay energized and wired. Wired enough to continue to learn and question things and be social with my team and our hosts and feel like I am being more productive, so I can make the most difference. I also have caffeine to feel happy and more purposeful.

Our days can be draining. The first couple hours we might be super involved in what we are doing, and then after lunch we are all ready for a nap and to go home. I’ve never worked a full time job before, so maybe it’s just me adjusting to that type of day. There’s something to be said about doing a full day of “service” verses a “real job.” We have no say in what we do everyday. We show up to our worksite and ask what needs to be done. Most of our sponsors have been kind to get to know us and care about finding things to do that would be meaningful to us and keep us engaged. Somedays, we are stuck pulling weeds until a path looks pristine in a neighborhood that has plenty of money to pay for landscapers.

I think I stay caffeinated in order to make sure I don’t turn into a robot. A lot of work we do can be done mindlessly. Hanging up clothes and getting lost in the music in the backgorund. Or pilling in corn and canned carrots into a box, and then doing it again, and again. It’s fun to make little games out of what we are doing. Like, how fast can a couple of us pack the boxes of food? Can we beat our record? I try to stay caffeinated so I that keep thinking about what I am doing and why it matters. I think about my thinking, to the point in which I am forget where I am. That’s been happening a lot, actually. I try to give more purpose to mindless activities and end up being too mind-full. I become detached to my senses and my body. I am not present. But do I need to be present while packing food into boxes? It’s a job that a machine could do; we are actually just being machines. Trying to optimize the process to get the most produced. The more boxes completed, the more people get to be fed… well the more boxes completed, the less work needs to be completed by other volunteers. I am merely detaching myself from an already dehumanizing act, to the point where I am not even there. It’s just a hand moving, two legs pivoting, and bugged eyes ready to catch the next box that comes my way.

Some days are not like that though. We had spent several days mindlessly putting clothes onto hangers and organizing it in a room. We didn’t feel much of a purpose to it. We knew that the clothing was going to those in need, but in that moment, it felt like busy work. But last week things changed. We were able to go ‘shopping’! This means we got a printed out email list from families around Sacramento, who were reaching out for clothing for their family. They all had children. In the emails they included their kids sizes and needs, as well as their own sizes (adults need clothes too). They put their names sometimes. And what gets me is the ages.

Girl, 2 years old, size 2.

Boy, 8 years old, size 9.

With a name or not, I imagine those kids standing next to me. They are sad, for some reason. I don’t know why exactly, but I know they are sad, becuase I know that if a parent is reaching out for clothing for their children, their family must not have much. And those kiddos are probably sad sometimes or somehow. They face things I can’t even imagine.

I grab a shopping cart and get to work. I pick out the cutest clotes for that two year old. I pack in an extra swimsuit, so she’s ready to practice for when it’s summer. She’s going to become such a confident swimmer one day. I go to the shoe room; they have extra tap shoes in her size and I slip in some ballet slippers in her bag. I can see her tapping all around her kitchen while her parent is trying to cook dinner. Only if they have a kitchen. Only if her parents have time to cook dinner everynight for her. But I imagine it anyways. I see her face when she opens this bag of clothes and gets excited for the fluffy dress I was able to find in the stacks of two year old clothes. I make sure to pack the essentials too, extra warm items and leggings. But when I happen upon a maybe “non-essential” skirt or colorful fluffy robe, I can’t resist. She shouldn’t have to settle for just essentials. I didn't have to when I grew up. I had more than I needed, and all she is asking for is enough to get through.

I hop into our van at the end of the work day and think about the families that I got to shop for. One of them made me especially sad. Their father through out all of the children’s clothes. That’s all I knew. And I think about what those kids are going through. What that wife went through. What they all have to continue to go through. Those children have nothing. It’s real, that there are families and people out there with nothing to their name. We pretend, as privileged folks, that we know what exists out there. We tell ourselves to finish all of the food on our plate, because someone out there has nothing to eat. It’s true. We don’t let ourselves feel that though. To really feel what they are feeling, the pain, the sadness, we can’t feel that all the time. So we choose to not feel it at all.

I’m crying in the van, because I imagine those kids and what they are going through. All I needed was a little story, a name, an age, and then I felt bad. But what about all those people that don’t send in their lists for clothes. What about the people who don’t reach out for food and are just hungry at nights. The people who don’t have the resources to get help. The ones that do and feel stuck, like they will never get out of the cycle. We, the lucky ones, don’t have to think about them because they aren’t in our life. We hop in our vans and drive home, distancing ourselves from anything sad or problems others might face.

I am in the van crying because I am sad for the children, but I am really crying because I have chosen for so long to be blinded. To pretend that all are okay, when they aren’t. To pretend I can’t do anything about it, but I can. I can help one family at a time, one food box at a time, rake one leaf at a time. I question if that’s enough; if it gives me a feeling of selflessness instead of really helping to make the world better. I write this blog and think of those children with nothing. What are they doing right now? Will they get a thanksgiving dinner? Will they grow up and have the opportunities to learn about themselves and the world that gave them just the essentials? Will they learn that it’s our fault that they had less and some people have so so much more?

Will I cry over those children and their family, but then forget about them in a week and move on? What will I do? I can hold onto the idea that the little girl learns how to tap dance in her kitchen, and I will continue to box food, and place clothes onto hangers, and rake leaves, until I will be given another need to fill. I will work and work and learn and learn about the realities of lives and families, until I can figure out what my place in the world. I will drink caffeine to ensure my brain runs quickly, so that I can think deeply about what I can do next. I will wake up at 6 or 8 or whenever, go to “work” and “serve” until I do the same thing the next day. I will never forget that every box of food is going to a real family. I must remind myself that I don’t need a name or an age to feel that my actions have worth, for I will continue to find ways to connect my being to the communities around me.

I continue to serve.