Leave the gun take the cannoli (9)

The weekend after Valentine’s Day is even more melancholy for those isolated by illness or advanced age.    Sunday’s movie night at Rivington House started off rather low key.    My  NYCares crew,  Jeff, Marissa and Stephanie arrived at 6:20 to help me serve chocolate cake and snacks as we watched a documentary on John Coltrane with the residents.    

At 7 the movie started.  It  featured  Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” at every milestone in his career.  The tranquility of the music  was wasted on me as the caffine from my  afternoon cappachino started to kick in.   When  I’d heard the first few notes of “My Favorite Things” for the third time my mind flipped to the  Blues Brothers movie and  the song “Rawhide.”     

I sat next to Baby Girl, one the youngest residents.  She had a million questions   ranging from who did the research for this documentary to where I bought  my boots.     “My Favorite Things” started up again and I took it as a cue to launch into one of my favorite things.   I signaled to Jeff, pointing to the chair on the other side of Baby Girl, made a brief introduction and circulated around the room.    A few seconds later the rest of us were whispering and giggling with several  of the residents. 

The energy level in the room spiked.  My buddies were smiling and so were my volunteers.     

 A little flirting does wonders for the immune system.          

January is a cold, cruel month.  The philanthropic spirit of the holidays vaporises around the time that Christmas trees become mulch.  The midnight oil burns in board rooms of non-profits as exec’s brainstorm ways to find donors and fill seats at their spring fundraisers.   This is the month when the dilettantes sleep in on Saturdays,  leaving   preeminent volunteers from Caring Community and New York Cares  to brave the weather and visit the shut-ins of Manhattan.

This week my NYCares crew and  a dozen members  from  Kingston  Church in Michigan joined my fantastic five,   Lauren and Marciano Estigarriba, Tom Vilar,  Ginger (Wild Hearts) and Joel Mejia (Things Are Changing),  as they helped alleviate hunger and loneliness in Greenwich Village.             

 The fantastic five  use their time  and talents to spread compassion, social  justice and benevolence around the city.   Like any true super hero, their cool, yet mild mannered exteriors  offers no clue to their powerful  commitment to  making the world better for the next generation.

Lauren  and Marciano assist an organizations that serves teenagers.  Tom is devoted to helping  disabled and autistic youth.  Joel empowers kids by teaching with technology.  He teaches them the photography and video skills they need to create multi-media projects.  Ginger is  the creative consultant of my inner circle,  offering marketing tips and   brilliant strategies for promoting  worthy causes.                         

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.     

The congregation of Village Temple is made up of wonderful people eager to preform a mitzvah when needed.   Twice a year they clean out their closets  so the clients at the soup kitchen can “shop” for a new wardrobe.  The clothes are given away free to anyone who needs them, but the foyer of the temple is transformed to look like a store.

  On Saturday, my NY-Cares crew,  Linda, Mary Beth, Lindsay and  Neil  sorted through mountains of clothes,  matching up sizes and colors like professional stylists out to please the most discerning customer.      Determined that no one would go away empty handed,  they exhausted themselves combing the racks to find exactly  the right coats, jackets. suits,  and scarves to make our  clients   feel pampered and special.

At the end of the day we had helped dress 250   homeless and fixed income seniors.              

You can never be too rich or have too many volunteers. 

 I’ve rewritten the old cliche to make it politically correct, considering the dwindling donations to food banks in the area and the spike in the number of households relying on emergency food for survival. 

The Thanksgiving holiday is the  one day out of the year that soup kitchens get such an overabundance of volunteers that they actually turn some away.  At Caring Community, Tom Marrone and I decided that we would find a way to put every volunteer who walked through the door on Thanksgiving morning to work.      New York Cares and  City Meals on Wheels each sent us a team of 40 volunteers to help us deliver  350  meals on  Thanksgiving to the home-bound in Greenwich Village.    Another six eager volunteers just followed the traffic to the Caring Community headquarters and offered their services.       

At first, I was slightly overwhelmed by the sight of so many people, but my regular volunteers, Tim Gibbons, Cindy Slater and Ginger from the band “The Wildhearts” helped me with crowd control , organization and clean up.       Together we set a record for rapid delivery as the troops hit the streets within 45 minutes and delivered the  hot feast to everyone on our list before noon.

Now, if there is someone out there who thinks that you can be too rich, please call me.  I’ve  got a charity for you.  

Cheering up the elderly can be challenging.  Usually, the first five minutes of our monthly Sunday breakfast at Methodist Hospital are devoted to scanning the room to find one or two patients that need some quality time.    Making initial contact  with  the patients can be tricky, as the elderly are often fearful of strangers.  So many seniors are aware of their failing memories that sight of a friendly, but unfamiliar, face can be confusing.

 One of the regular volunteers, Anthony Best, possesses a rare talent for coaxing even the shyest senior out of her shell. His contagious smile  and active listening skills make him the Merv Griffin of volunteers, as he brings out the best in everyone.

Last Sunday, I noticed a woman in the corner sobbing uncontrollably.  The people sitting it a  table on my left clearly      wanted to be left alone.   As my fellow volunteers dispersed around the room,  I sat next to the crying woman.  She didn’t seem to notice.   I said “Good Morning.”  She didn’t even look up.   I checked her name tag and tried again.  

“Senora, parle italiano?”

“No!  Not good.  I was born there but I speak English,” she insisted through  a thick  Neapolitan accent.   I made her a cup of tea and she told me her life story.      

When the nurse came to check her blood pressure I excused my self and  took a  left turn.   I stopped at  the table where   a frustrated volunteer was  engaged in  a staring contest with the patients.  Anthony  was also headed for this table.   I tried to get a conversation going but the most I could get out of anyone was that one woman likes to play the piano. Instantly,  Anthony cleared a path to a piano in the back of the room that none of us had noticed before.  

The minute the woman sat down her face lit up.  She played a mixture of gospel and show tunes for the rest of the morning.

I returned to my Italian friend.  She wanted me to go ask the nurse for something.   I didn’t want to leave her alone for fear she would start crying again, so I called over Anthony.

I was only gone for two minutes but when I returned Anthony had her laughing and reminiscing about her favorite Brooklyn apartment. 

Anthony always has the right  questions to keep the conversation  moving.  Whether he’s listening to a former seamstress explain the subtleties of her favorite fabrics or discussing an  old movie,  Anthony makes these women feel as if they  are the only person in the room.                 

Its amazing how a little male attention can help a lady perk up, even at an advanced age.                    

My buddies at Rivington House were in rare form last night.  Instead of our  usual schedule of viewing a documentary and a feature film, we watched  a DVD of an  Alicia Keys concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  A  slight break in the routine was just what they needed on  an Indian Summer night.  The humidity levels outside had taken a toll on my buddies who are already suffering the effects of HIV/AIDS.  You could see fatigue in their eyes and the stiffness in their joints as they  walked or wrapped their fingers around a soda can.  Despite their aches and pains Wheelchair Rambler and T were like two stand up comics in search of an audience.

Wheelchair Rambler was waiting for us in the lobby anxious to talk about the plans for the night and eager to hang out with my NYCares crew, Boris, Caitlin and Kristyn.

Last night, Wheelchair Rambler just wouldn’t let up with the wisecracks.   He was unusually animated about the Alicia Keyes DVD.   I sat behind him and he tested my knowledge of rock and roll trivia by asking me who sang the songs she’d covered like “Wild Horses” and “If I Were Your Woman.” 

“That’s right girl!  You really your stuff” he raised his hand for a high-five.

“That’s why you always ask me.”

“You’re the only one here old enough to remember.” He looked over at the other volunters “they’re  to young to know.”

“You calling me old?”

“I like older women” he smiled.

“You just need to wear make-up like Alicia Keys” T whispered.

“I’m cosmetically challenged.  You can’t expect me to match my eye make-up to my earrings. ”

“I don’t see no earrings.  If you don’t know how to do make-up then you’ve gotta go and find yourself  somebody to teach you  how, so you can do make up like Alicia Keys.” T commanded.  

When the DVD was over, I found out that Wheelchair Rambler was right.  My colleagues hadn’t grown up listening to the Rolling Stones or even the radio, for that matter.  But they have other fine qualities.

Even though it was her first time Kristyn fell  into the rhythm of the night immediately. 

Caitlin is a native New Yorker but the buddies think she looks like a California surfer girl so,  she is destined to endure beach boys jokes they’ve practiced all month.

Boris is the favorite among all my buddies because of his patience and perpetual smile.  Wheelchair Rambler and T can’t wait for Boris to arrive every month so they can tease him relentlessly.   I can only empathize.

The anecdotes and very personal monologues that the buddies shared last night were hilarious and  as raw as sushi.  They’re comfortable saying just about anything to  me, but sometimes I worry about new volunteers.

“There ARE ladies present”  I cautioned T.  “You want us all to come back, don’t you?.”

“I know YOU”RE coming back” he said before questioning the others on their plans to return.  He was  happy to hear that they’d enjoyed his stories.

On the way out I told the buddies that I’d back on November 11th. 

“Can’t get rid of you”,  T said sarcastically as I headed toward the lobby door.                

Not all senior citizens have Alzheimer’s.  There are other forms of dementia listed in the DSM-IV.  While some octogenarians are as sharps as tacks, it is possible that others choose to forget as a way of denying their depression.  The greatest challenge of aging is not the degeneration of the mind or body; its  loneliness.   

I’m far from being an expert on the subject of the elderly.   My experience with this age group is limited to monthly volunteering at Methodist Hospital and my role as primary caregiver to my mother.  

People are always quoting that old cliche about our parents turning into our children for me.  That idiom was coined to advise us  about the corporal aspects of caring for our families.  Yet, those words ring true when observing the quirky ways the elderly command our attention.

When  greeting  volunteers the male patients are chatty and  inquisitive.  The women are demure.   In seconds you can tell if  a woman has raised a family or not.   Women who’ve spent their lives alone  initiate the conversation.  They scan our hands for wedding and engagement rings and keep the conversation light, rarely alluding to the personal.  There may be evidence of a failing memory, but these women never  lose the people skills they acquired by going  solo to  social gatherings.  The mothers in the group are shy and inevitably need the most cheering up.  It is easy to gauge how long its been since a mother has seen her child by the height of the pedestal she puts him on.  The greater the distance between visits,  the stronger the idolatry.    

  Last Sunday some of the patients got up on the wrong side of the bed.  A beautiful Latina was frustrated because she wanted to wash her face and brush her teeth before receiving her guests.  My heart sank when I realized that her attendant didn’t understand her.  I quickly translated and she was whisked off to freshen up.  When she returned she was like a new woman.   During brunch she was animated, witty and the center of attention at the table of Spanish speakers I’d attracted.   

I admire this woman’s vanity and I understand why she wasn’t dressed and ready for us.  This woman is just   like my mother.   She  waits until the last minute to put on their party face because  she’s not sure anyone is going to show up for a visit.        

For several years,  I’ve watched my mom get all dolled up to go to a sibling’s house for  dinner.    I usually leave her  sitting on the sofa with the phone  on her lap and I go off to a soup kitchen.   When I return she’s still  in the same spot waiting for the phone to ring.  When I offer to take her out she refuses because she doesn’t want to miss her call.  Eventually,  the phones  ring  and her other child  offers a flimsy excuse, without apology for standing her up.    

 It always reminds me of the visiting day  scene from that old Judy Garland movie, “a Child is Waiting,” where one boy is left sitting by himself. That image haunts me every month as l leave the hospital.

 When I’m staying good-bye, I  make it a point to tell the patients  the date and time of my next visit.  It doesn’t matter that  some of the patients will be released before I return.  I just want them to know that they won’t be forgotten.   

The Number One rule for volunteering at Movie Night;   if you’re late you have to tell a joke.  Of course, I conveniently leave this out of the  e-mails that I send to my  New York Cares crew, just in case I’m the one who is stuck in the subway at 6:45.    

This month’s  volunteers, Boris, Julie C., Maria and Stacy, arrived in party mode.   They  embraced my buddies as if we were all old friends.    We started the night with a documentary about RUN DMC.    Clearly, not the kind of music any of the volunteers would download, but we all got caught up in the enthusiasm of the clients.  As soon as the credits rolled,  I yelled out “Who remembers where they were the first time they heard RUN DMC?  and my volunteers just naturally attracted clusters of  clients ready to reminisce about old school days.   It turned out that most of  us are Aerosmith fans.    Under the assumption that everyone knew the words to “Walk This Way”  we attempted a sing- a – long.   This proved to be a new way to torture volunteers and its more fun than putting them on the spot for a corny joke.

I was walking down Ludlow Street on Sunday evening, enjoying the rain when a bat gently touched down on my blouse.  It stared at me like a jealous woman and flew off in a huff.  I was relieved, because now I had story to tell my buddies at our monthly movie night at Rivington House, an AIDS specific health cared residence on the Lower East Side of New York City.

My buddies, are the patients, or as I prefer to call them, clients of Rivington House.  Although the median age her is 48, they act like kindergarten kids trying to get the teacher’s attention at the  clack of my stilettos echoing through the lobby. 

“Where were you?  I thought you weren’t coming” calls a gray-haired client from across the room.  As usual, I am an hour early.  The movie isn’t scheduled til 7, but my buddies are  in desperate  need of conversation.  Of course, they get visitors, but the nature of their illness and ambiance of a residence makes some guests feel awkward.   My bat anecdote is just the thing I need to break the ice.

“Girl, you are so batty!  It probably thought you were its mother!” quips a curly haired buddy as he turns his wheelchair in a circle for emphasis.  Ten minutes of puns and bat jokes ensued.  As each of my volunteers arrived, a different buddy retold my story, adding their own commentary on what I must have looked like, or what the bat was thinking.  Getting the clients to laugh is the most important part of the night.   It doesn’t really matter to the residents what I show, as long as they can talk about it later.  I usually  show a comedy and plan a theme for the evening.  When the movie “Wedding Crashers” came out, I got permission to bring in some finger food and a fancy, white sheet cake.  I asked my volunteers to dress as if they were going t a reception.  We toasted my ability to put batteries in the remote control with ginger ale.  When the movie was over we entertained ourselves for a few hours, by reminiscing about the best and worst weddings we’d ever attended.  All the women had stories about ugly bridesmaid dresses.  The men  tried to recall the dumbest joke they’d ever heard about nuptials.

Inevitably, I get a new volunteer every month who is clueless about how to treat a buddy.  They mean well but they treat the clients like babies, or agreed with everything they say.  They are always surprised at the way my buddies  crack jokes  and debate over silly things, like who was the best James Bond.  Most people assume that volunteering with AIDS  patients is depressing and draining, but to me, it’s a party.