Waiting For the Other Side

Two years. 

Two years since a virus raced around the world with dizzying speed, closing public gatherings, emptying store shelves, social calendars, and upending life as we knew it. Parents became teachers and teachers became pioneers of instruction delivery. 

For Project Armchair it meant an abrupt end to our volunteer services. The door slammed shut with a loud and reverberating clang. Two years of waiting and hoping for life to return to normalcy, then fighting despondency when new variants emerged, plunging hope into despair. Two years waiting to emerge on the other side. Two years of wondering how a volunteer organization premised on direct interaction with children could re-calibrate to still be of service. 

I must be honest here. I have felt a little lost wondering just how to do that. If we can’t read to kids, then… who are we? 

Miraculously, we DID find purpose. Or rather, purpose found us. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and its sub-committee, Children of Incarcerated Parents, asked us to help them find a way to increase visitation rates for incarcerated fathers at the state penitentiary. We collaborated with an incarcerated artist and a band of really nice high school shop guys to create an inviting space inside the visitation room at the penitentiary, where we filled the shelves with book and will continue to fill them, as long as donations for the project continue. This energizing task kept us thinking, growing, and dreaming big. 

While that initiative kept us from growing moss on our north side, today marked the turn of a really big corner. A big, beautiful, hope-is-born corner. For the first time in two years, I loaded my bag with books and headed to a local domestic violence shelter. Not to simply drop off books at the door, but this time to step inside, remove my coat, and stay for a spell. I looked forward to it all day, willing time to speed up, through meetings, presentations, desk work, and interaction with colleagues. C’mon, clock! Let’s end this workday. 

Pulling up to the facility, I felt a joyful buoyancy. Ringing the access buzzer, I fairly sang into the intercom, “reading volunteer!” The staff was happy to welcome me back and it felt so utterly right to be there, like finding the perfect spot on your pillow in the middle of the night. 

My little charges were sweet and unafraid of the grinning-too-big and alarmingly happy lady with the bag of books. They moved from bench to toys and back to bench, listening briefly then running off, only to run back to me the next moment. The tiniest tot munched happily on cheese puffs, ran his tiny, orange-coated hands over my black dress pants, and grinned at me with laughing eyes. And, oh how I loved every moment! I loved the brief flashes of true engagement when they pointed to the illustrations and jabbered incoherently, and the acrobats demanded to keep up with agile moving bodies. I loved seeing their mother’s happy smile watching it all. I loved the look of true gratitude in her eyes as I handed her new books for her children to keep. And I loved the brief chat we had, one mother to another. 

Coincidentally (or not), as I pulled away from the shelter, I had a phone conversation with another mom that I met in a shelter years ago under similar circumstances, who has since become a dear friend. She has worked hard to rise above hardship and overwhelming odds. Over the phone she glowingly shared her plans to attend college in the fall. To be witness to her triumph is an honor so deep words fail me. 

Because of women like these and the hundreds of children our organization has read to, I believe in the value of this work more than ever. A caring adult, a good book, and a child dealing with challenging circumstances is a sure way to provide a needed disruption in the difficult narrative of a child in crisis.

This work matters, and I have missed it. Perhaps the long, dark night of abstinence has helped me realize just how much. 

Now it’s time to get back to the work of serving our community's most vulnerable children. But first I need to wash the cheese powder out of my pants.