It’s Wednesday night. I just finished some volunteer work (I’m now the secretary for the neighborhood association because why not endure Purgatory while you’re still alive) that I had been dreading, and it turned out to be not so bad. And now I’m done and I don’t have to do that anymore, at least until next month.
While we’re on the subject of unpaid labor, the high school divisional championship swim meet is on Saturday. Earlier this week, the team volunteer coordinator sent out the volunteer sign-up list. Divisionals is a six-team meet, and each team is supposed to send one official. I read the email and thought about how tired I am and how desperately I didn’t want to officiate this meet and how much I wanted to just sit and watch, just this one time. So I just waited, hoping that someone else would sign up, but no one did. So the volunteer coordinator emailed the handful of us who are certified as officials to ask if one of us could step in to help and of course, the person who kindly and immediately said yes is the one person who is just as crazy busy as I am and who has stood on the deck with a clipboard and a stupid white polo shirt just as many times as I have, and I just felt terrible for being so selfish.
And of course I almost - ALMOST - jumped right in to say “oh no, you already do so much, let me do it.” But I’m glad I didn’t. First of all, the offer would not have been sincere, because I still don’t want to do it, and I’d have only been volunteering in the hope that she’d say “oh no, don’t worry about it, I got it,” thus allowing me to bask in the glow of my own virtue while not having to actually do anything virtuous. Even worse, if she’d agreed right away and allowed me to step in, I’d be in just the same spot as I was when the sign-up came out, which is desperately not wanting to do this job. And anyway, it really was selfish of me not to volunteer sooner, and it was generous of her to step up, and I should just accept her gracious gesture and allow her to be recognized as the better person. I’m going to feel a little bad about enjoying the meet while she’s standing on the deck with a clipboard all morning, but you can’t have it both ways.
*****
It’s Thursday now, and I’m home from work and getting ready to go shopping for my old lady. Three years into the pandemic, and she’s still not leaving the house. I remember watching Louis C.K.’s first SNL monologue. It’s still worth watching if you feel like looking it up on YouTube. He tells a story about stopping to help a confused old lady in an airport and then realizing that having taken on the responsibility for this old lady, he was now in fact responsible for her, pretty much forever. “I wanted to help an old lady, but now I have an old lady. She’s mine. I own her.” This is my life right now. I helped an old lady, and now I have an old lady. She’s mine. I own her. And actually, I’m resigned to this now. I’m resigned to the idea of doing her crazy ass grocery shopping for the rest of her life or mine.
Why “crazy ass” you might ask? Because it’s true. I didn’t just write that because it’s a funny turn of phrase (even though it is). Her grocery list is by turns arcane, minutely specific, and slightly insane. It has to be SAIGON cinnamon, not just the regular old ground cinnamon in the McCormick’s jar. It has to be Bob’s Red Mill Farm baking soda. She needs flaxseed and whole wheat matzo and low sodium beans in pop-top cans. She wants at least a gallon of bleach every single week. She asks for 32-ounce bottles of hydrogen peroxide and 70 percent isopropyl alcohol (this is always specified - the concentration and the type of alcohol are always spelled out for me) every single week. She buys tubes of Neosporin ointment AND cream several times a month. I wonder if she’s performing minor surgery on herself. She asked me for iodine, foolishly revealing that she intended to use it to self-medicate since she’s out of her thyroid medication, and her doctor refuses to renew her prescription without seeing her, and she refuses to go and see him. And I refuse to buy iodine when I know she’s going to inadvertently poison herself with it. Thankfully, she gave up on this pursuit, for now. Maybe she has another grocery mule out there who will buy her the iodine no questions asked. She’s not getting it from me, though.
So yes, “crazy ass” is exactly the right way to describe this weekly supply gathering operation. I’ve never seen the inside of her house and likely never will but I suspect that there’s a fortified underground redoubt filled with Clorox and Neosporin and Cherry NyQuil (not the green kind!) and beans upon beans upon beans. When it all hits the fan, I’ll know where to conduct a supply raid.
*****
This afternoon I received an email from a new neighborhood resident. She wanted to know about the swim team - how to sign up, what the schedule looks like, do they have to try out, etc. I answered her as I have answered similar emails for the last 15 years. But I also copied the person who is taking my place in this job and let my correspondent know that I am a soon to be alumni parent.
*****
It’s Saturday morning now, and I’m sitting in the stands at the Germantown Indoor Swim Center. Warm-ups will end in a few minutes, and then the meet will begin. I’m sitting with some friends from our summer team, whose sons swim at rival high schools. We represent three of the six high schools competing today. I’m happy to be able to hang out with friends and cheer for our sons rather than standing on the deck watching for stroke and turn infractions, but I do still feel a little guilty.
It's hard not to feel guilty about not doing the work that I have always done. I've been the answer person for the Dolphins for a decade and a half. I've been a high school swimming meet official for eight years. Who's going to do all this stuff now? Who's going to hold the clipboard? Who's going to answer the questions?
The answer, of course, is someone else. Guilt is just another word for arrogance. Things will proceed in good order without me and no one will miss me and that is as it should be. That's how it works. With school and sports volunteer responsibilities behind me, I'll take my turn volunteering to run the neighborhood association and then I'll step aside for a new group of volunteers whose children are growing up and who no longer have to run the swim team and the PTA and the band boosters. And then I will just be an old lady. Maybe I'll need someone to help me with my groceries. And I’m sure that somebody will.
No comments:
Post a Comment