The Wednesday Girl

I was looking for something new to do - something that Tom and I had not shared so that I could take one more bold step into this future of mine. I found it at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

I'm volunteering there on Wednesdays, taking the library cart around from room to room offering free magazines and books for patients and their families to enjoy while at SMH.

What's not to love about "free"???

There are over 1000 volunteers at Sarasota Memorial, isn't that amazing? It's a tribute to not just compassion and community service but also to retirement benefits that have, thus far, allowed all these kind-hearted people to just give away their time for hours and days and weeks and years at a stretch.

God Bless America!

If the State of Michigan screws with my benefits any more than they already have (and moreover threaten with regularity)I may find myself in a position of having to work for money again but - for now at least - I'm enjoying the opportunity to be a volunteer.

The uniform notwithstanding!!!?

It physically hurt me to buy and hang in my closet two pairs of white elastic-waist polyester pants; they are and always have been the trademark uniform of the elderly. Yikes!! I so did NOT want to go there.

But go I did.

In training I got to wear a sort of semi-cute royal blue pinafore apron over a simple white blouse but now, as a graduate volunteer, I have to wear this God-awful
tunic top in a hideous guaranteed-to-wash-out-ANYONE's-color blue. I'm still at the stage when I shudder dressing for my Wednesday date!

But it's like my father always said, "Keep your head up, Judith, and smile. THAT's what people notice, not what you're wearing."

I love being able to talk to real patients! I love being able to spread that smile my father righteously claimed a winner. I love being able to offer (free) something that has the capacity to divert even for a moment each anxious/scared/depressed/lonely person who could easily be you or me, your family member or mine.

I'm so glad to have found a niche where, even if briefly, it's in my power to bring a smile where there was none before.

It's absolutely more a blessing to me than it could ever be to anyone I serve.

And that's the truth (insert raspberry noise here!).