Leave the gun take the cannoli (9)

The best gift you can give anyone is your undivided attention.  Five minutes of your time is  precious  to someone isolated by illness, dementia or loneliness.     On Christmas Day, 86 exceptionally generous New Yorkers, my favorite couple from the U.K.  and my three new Australian friends gave their time and energy to the  clients of Caring Community.

 Co-ordinating volunteers for Christmas Day was  like assembling an all white jigsaw puzzle.  Tom Marrone organized the delivery routes  to accommodate my penchant for overbooking volunteers.   A normal delivery route has 7 to 10 clients.  But for Christmas he divided each route so that the volunteers could  spend a few minutes engaging every  client in a conversation. 

Tom had asked for 40 people and was expecting a mere 31, but I  can’t say “no” to someone  who wants to do a good deed.  So, by 10 a.m. we had  a crowd of   smiling faces  eager to cheer up the   shut-ins of Greenwich Village with a hot meal and a small, brightly wrapped gift.

My best regulars, Lauren and Marciano Estigarribia, Charity Diaz and Fredrick helped me organize my New York Cares team and  the City Meal On Wheels crew.   New recruits, Joel Mejia from Things Are Changing , Dara Shinler and  Amanda, Anita and Barney  were quickly teamed up with someone who could show them the ropes and sent out to spread good cheer.            

 By noon all of our jovial  volunteers had returned.  Many of them had anecdotes about our colorful clients. 

 Amanda, Anita, Barney and   I  went over  to Our Lady of Pompeii Church on  Carmine Street to serve at Caring Community’s Christmas Diner.   Every year the basement of the church is transformed to look like a restaurant with large round tables  that seat eight.           

We joined  Ginger, from the Wildhearts, and Jane Graley  who were already  hard at work waiting on tables.      I made my way around the room talking to each guest as I served the salad.    The faces were familiar and I was happy to spend yet another holiday with my extended Caring Community family.

As a New York Cares team leader, I got to take the bow for the 300+ clients we fed and greeted on Christmas.  But my friends, and fellow volunteers from City Meals On Wheels and New York Cares deserve a standing ovation for helping to allievate lonliness in NYC.       

 Organizing all of my holiday projects this year would not have been possible without the help of my good friend Barbara Genco and her daughter Bea.  They worked behind the scenes, entertaining my home-bound mother so I could wrap gifts, collect coats and run food drives.   Bea Genco  stops by after school every week to have tea with my mom.  The entire Genco family, Barbara’s  husband Mike,  son Micheal and even her brother Greg Johnson rallied together to help get my mom out to a party at their home on Christmas Eve.     

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 2:00 am and is filed under the disenfranchised, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.