Read This Before You Volunteer
In the spring of my freshman year at Loyola, when I was eighteen years old, I volunteered with a local organization called the Don Miller House. Getting involved with the social justice arm of my school had been my mom’s advice, she had been quick to recommend keeping myself busy — physically and mentally — when I had expressed my boredom and restlessness at college. I had decided finally to listen to her by the time January rolled around.
The Don Miller House is actually the name for a series of houses, all part of a supportive housing program available to low-income residents of Baltimore who are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS or are in the end stages of HIV/AIDS. At the time, volunteering with the Don Miller House seemed noble, like a good thing to put on my résumé, and like something that would occupy my mind with a part of Baltimore not touched by the bubble of safety surrounding Loyola and its students. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from the experience, but the idea in my head was something like this: I would sit down with a client of the Don Miller House, and they would give me a story I would never forget. I would write it down, create a compelling narrative. I would fit in with the storyteller, with the people in the house, because I wasn’t like all the other Loyola students, who were blind and sheltered and näive.
Here’s how my experience in the Don Miller House actually went: every day that I volunteered (usually Thursdays), I would knock on the door, walk through the living room with shy glances at the residents, most of whom had oxygen tubes snaking through their noses, and would end up in the kitchen, which was the last room in the house before the backyard. The way I remember it, the kitchen had small plants in shelves close to the ceiling, and an old sink that reminded me of the one in my kitchen at home, and two refrigerators. Each day, I would be responsible for preparing a salad — that was the most common vegetable that would be available to make for dinner. It was always Iceberg lettuce, sometimes tomatoes, and usually a combination of carrots, celery, or onions. The salad dressing was usually Ranch or some sort of creamy Italian. Making the salad reminded me of being at my grandmother’s house; preparing vegetables had been something I had gotten accustomed to doing with her in the summertime, when things grew wildly in her garden.
I don’t really remember much of the food we ate aside from the salads. We probably ate lasagna a few times. I’ve always been a polite eater, but not really an adventurous one. I remember the salads because I always was the one who made them, and because I hate celery but when it was put on my plate, I felt required to eat it. I distinctly remember experimenting with methods to avoid it as I prepared the salads each week — chopping it finer so as to notice it less, chopping it in larger bits so that it would be easier to avoid spooning onto my plate. Nothing worked, not really. And we always seemed to have plenty of celery.
When I look back at my time at the Don Miller House, I am proud of my involvement there — it seems like an important step in my growth as a human being, and and gave me important insight about the work of social justice nonprofits. But at the same time, I’m struck by my own naïveté at the time. I grew tired of working at the Don Miller House because the experiences took on a feeling of tedium. I was always making salad, I was always feeling awkward, the residents were always fragile, as if a single wrong question could cause them to break into pieces, like porcelain. As an eighteen-year-old, freshly released into college and an environment with my peers, I was extremely self-obsessed. I wanted the pictures in my head — the ones where picturesque waves splashed through the halls of my dorm building, and where being high on marijuana felt significant, I was experiencing something that was new and that mattered — to match up with the images of reality. I wanted volunteering at the Don Miller House to feel like watching a documentary on AIDS. But instead, it only felt like real life. It felt like chopping up celery, and engaging in the awkward conversation you have with someone sicker than you, and it felt like lighting candles for a dinner served with styrofaom plates and plastic cutlery. Sometimes the dinner conversation would be about me, and I answered questions in the dutiful but distanced way of a college freshman.
One Thursday I had to go next door to one of the other volunteer houses to ask for some extra carrots and something else for the ritual salad. I was instructed to go straight inside and I would find the volunteer coordinator, who would give me the necessary ingredients. Instead, when I walked inside I found only residents in a darkened living room with the shades drawn. One of them motioned toward the stairs when I asked about the volunteer coordinator, his name was something innocuous like Steven or something. On my way up the stairs, I saw a small woman and upon looking at her face my breath caught in my throat and I felt simultaneously terrified and ashamed of my fear. She was skeletal, clearly in the final throes of her fight with AIDS, her skin was taut and scarred and her eyes were sunken slits. When she spoke — and I’m not being facetious here— it sounded like the kind of voice an old pack of cigarettes might have; past that point of being raspy with antique congestion. She asked, very kindly, what I was doing there, and I stuttered something about looking for Steven or whatever his name was. She directed me up the stairs, into a tiny alcove with a desk and stacks of papers. Volunteer coordinator Steven saw me come in, and welcomed me with the gentle candor of someone who has worked for a while in the nonprofit sector. After I whispered my need for carrots, he whisked me downstairs, and gave me the necessary ingredients, all while effortlessly engaging in typical friendly chatter about the volunteers from my school. I wanted to ask about the woman on the stairs, wanted to hear every ugly detail of her story in a warped desire to both make myself more uncomfortable and satisfy my desire for a pornographic exposure into the deepest suffering of another’s life. But I didn’t. I simply gathered my ingredients and went back to my regular Don Miller House to prepare salad.
As all things do, my time at the Don Miller House fizzled out; eventually I simply stopped going, started feeling bad for my abandonment, and finally became preoccupied in the complicated simplicity of being a college student. But I’m grateful for the moments when I remember my time there, how sometimes it felt like being at home with my grandmother peeling vegetables, and how it didn’t always feel depressing to light candles set out alongside styrofoam plates — sometimes it felt appropriate, and so, so kind.
The Don Miller House is actually the name for a series of houses, all part of a supportive housing program available to low-income residents of Baltimore who are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS or are in the end stages of HIV/AIDS. At the time, volunteering with the Don Miller House seemed noble, like a good thing to put on my résumé, and like something that would occupy my mind with a part of Baltimore not touched by the bubble of safety surrounding Loyola and its students. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from the experience, but the idea in my head was something like this: I would sit down with a client of the Don Miller House, and they would give me a story I would never forget. I would write it down, create a compelling narrative. I would fit in with the storyteller, with the people in the house, because I wasn’t like all the other Loyola students, who were blind and sheltered and näive.
Here’s how my experience in the Don Miller House actually went: every day that I volunteered (usually Thursdays), I would knock on the door, walk through the living room with shy glances at the residents, most of whom had oxygen tubes snaking through their noses, and would end up in the kitchen, which was the last room in the house before the backyard. The way I remember it, the kitchen had small plants in shelves close to the ceiling, and an old sink that reminded me of the one in my kitchen at home, and two refrigerators. Each day, I would be responsible for preparing a salad — that was the most common vegetable that would be available to make for dinner. It was always Iceberg lettuce, sometimes tomatoes, and usually a combination of carrots, celery, or onions. The salad dressing was usually Ranch or some sort of creamy Italian. Making the salad reminded me of being at my grandmother’s house; preparing vegetables had been something I had gotten accustomed to doing with her in the summertime, when things grew wildly in her garden.
I don’t really remember much of the food we ate aside from the salads. We probably ate lasagna a few times. I’ve always been a polite eater, but not really an adventurous one. I remember the salads because I always was the one who made them, and because I hate celery but when it was put on my plate, I felt required to eat it. I distinctly remember experimenting with methods to avoid it as I prepared the salads each week — chopping it finer so as to notice it less, chopping it in larger bits so that it would be easier to avoid spooning onto my plate. Nothing worked, not really. And we always seemed to have plenty of celery.
When I look back at my time at the Don Miller House, I am proud of my involvement there — it seems like an important step in my growth as a human being, and and gave me important insight about the work of social justice nonprofits. But at the same time, I’m struck by my own naïveté at the time. I grew tired of working at the Don Miller House because the experiences took on a feeling of tedium. I was always making salad, I was always feeling awkward, the residents were always fragile, as if a single wrong question could cause them to break into pieces, like porcelain. As an eighteen-year-old, freshly released into college and an environment with my peers, I was extremely self-obsessed. I wanted the pictures in my head — the ones where picturesque waves splashed through the halls of my dorm building, and where being high on marijuana felt significant, I was experiencing something that was new and that mattered — to match up with the images of reality. I wanted volunteering at the Don Miller House to feel like watching a documentary on AIDS. But instead, it only felt like real life. It felt like chopping up celery, and engaging in the awkward conversation you have with someone sicker than you, and it felt like lighting candles for a dinner served with styrofaom plates and plastic cutlery. Sometimes the dinner conversation would be about me, and I answered questions in the dutiful but distanced way of a college freshman.
One Thursday I had to go next door to one of the other volunteer houses to ask for some extra carrots and something else for the ritual salad. I was instructed to go straight inside and I would find the volunteer coordinator, who would give me the necessary ingredients. Instead, when I walked inside I found only residents in a darkened living room with the shades drawn. One of them motioned toward the stairs when I asked about the volunteer coordinator, his name was something innocuous like Steven or something. On my way up the stairs, I saw a small woman and upon looking at her face my breath caught in my throat and I felt simultaneously terrified and ashamed of my fear. She was skeletal, clearly in the final throes of her fight with AIDS, her skin was taut and scarred and her eyes were sunken slits. When she spoke — and I’m not being facetious here— it sounded like the kind of voice an old pack of cigarettes might have; past that point of being raspy with antique congestion. She asked, very kindly, what I was doing there, and I stuttered something about looking for Steven or whatever his name was. She directed me up the stairs, into a tiny alcove with a desk and stacks of papers. Volunteer coordinator Steven saw me come in, and welcomed me with the gentle candor of someone who has worked for a while in the nonprofit sector. After I whispered my need for carrots, he whisked me downstairs, and gave me the necessary ingredients, all while effortlessly engaging in typical friendly chatter about the volunteers from my school. I wanted to ask about the woman on the stairs, wanted to hear every ugly detail of her story in a warped desire to both make myself more uncomfortable and satisfy my desire for a pornographic exposure into the deepest suffering of another’s life. But I didn’t. I simply gathered my ingredients and went back to my regular Don Miller House to prepare salad.
As all things do, my time at the Don Miller House fizzled out; eventually I simply stopped going, started feeling bad for my abandonment, and finally became preoccupied in the complicated simplicity of being a college student. But I’m grateful for the moments when I remember my time there, how sometimes it felt like being at home with my grandmother peeling vegetables, and how it didn’t always feel depressing to light candles set out alongside styrofoam plates — sometimes it felt appropriate, and so, so kind.
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