The Gift of Volunteering

I earned a badge last week when I bared my arm and took the second coVid shot. 

That's me during my timed wait and see period when a volunteer ushered me to a socially distanced chair after the shot was administered and set a kitchen timer for fifteen minutes. While I waited I watched the flow of humanity coming and going like clockwork, and it was clockwork! After weeks of daily shots, these workers had the immunization process down to a science. 

The week before and a few miles away, I had gone to the county health department with my ninety-four year old aunt for her second shot. Same story. Efficiency plus. Caring.  I talked with a few of the workers about why they were there. The majority were on loan from their usual medical practice associated with the particular systems administering the clinics.

And then there were the unpaid volunteers. 

They didn't have to be there, and for that fact, neither did I. I could have passed, but I felt like I was doing my part to end this horrid plague. The volunteer workers did, too. I told the young twenty-something nursing student who volunteered and worked with my aunt, that fifty years from now, she would still remember the details about her time volunteering during the pandemic.

I know that for a fact because she was me, many years ago. I grew up during the tail end of the polio epidemic when mothers put their children to bed at night, fearful that the loves of their lives would not wake up the next morning. We even learned the "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer. "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." I can't even imagine. Neither could my mother because she prayed with me instead of die before I wake, "Guard me through the night and wake me with the morning light."

By the time I was in fifth grade, the Salk vaccine had been invented and life as we knew it was being restored. I joined a Girl Scout Troop and one of the badges I earned was for volunteering at a Salk vaccine clinic. There I was at the elementary school library, holding trays of sugar cubes dotted with the precious antidote serum. My memory tells me purple dots on the white cubes. Maybe, maybe not. But my memory hasn't dimmed the lines of children picking the cubes off the tray, popping them into their mouths. Did their mothers whisper prayers of thanksgiving like I did the moment the shot went into my arm?

When I wrote my first book, Lessons Learned, I uncovered more about the polio epidemic and the community response. Children were quarantined. Schools were cancelled, as were all activities involving children including baseball games, swimming in pools, movie theaters and Sunday School. Sound familiar? And all this with no internet to entertain bored children. Interesting fact, the librarian at the county library assured the public that the germ was not passed through the library books brought by bookmobiles. At least books were available.

I interviewed many people of that era. They remembered it vividly even a half century later. Newspaper accounts reporting the vaccine clinics added to the story as I wrote. 

The lessons we learned about the polio epidemic no doubt contributed to many decisions made during this latest pandemic. The lessons we are constantly learning about the coVid pandemic will likewise contribute to what comes next. 

I pray nothing of the sort comes next, but I stand firm in my belief that volunteers will be there in the thick of whatever, dedicating themselves to make the world a better place to live.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

One Tree in Time

As trees come and go, this one, a poplar, wasn't one to write home about. It was just always there through the more than forty years we've lived in the house. It was steadfast. It observed the seasons and was faithful in its yearly duties. It serviced the bees in the spring with its tulip shaped blossoms. It offered shade to the house under the scorching summer sun. It fed the squirrels in the fall with its helicopter seeds. It entertained my children when they were old enough to climb trees. My son and his friends propped their bicycles on its trunk to use as a ladder to reach the first limb. From their post in the higher limbs they spun helicopter seeds hoping to land them on car roofs as the neighbors drove past. 

Sigh.

When we cut it down last week I felt I betrayed its goodness. If the tree could have talked, it would have been saying, "What did I do?" That answer is its downfall. It was being a tree, doing what a tree does, growing. Sad thing, its outer limbs had the beginnings of spring leafing. 

We first noticed our driveway cement cracking over a decade ago. We ignored it. Several years later the cracks became larger and the source became apparent. Tracing the hairline fractures to the edge we determined the roots from said poplar tree were infringing on the driveway. How interesting, we thought, but still we ignored it. Eventually the roots pushed up from under the cement, pushed, pushed and pushed seeking the rainwater for its thirsty soul. 

Life got in the way and the order of priorities brought cutting the tree lower than other more necessary purchases. Big mistake. The cement bent upward, like a volcano rising from the depths looking for a place to blow. Last week I almost turned my ankle stepping on the crack. It wasn't quite to the level of "Step on a crack, break your mother's back," but I could see that in my future. I knew then something had to give, and it wasn't going to be the driveway any more.

So with our covid stimulus money, and a whole lot more, we called the tree cutting company. They arrived Thursday morning with their cherry picker truck, chainsaws, wood chippers and leaf blowers. By lunch, the outer limbs had been transformed to mulch and hauled away. By midafternoon, the trunk was scooped off the ground into a waiting dump truck. Cleanup was quick. Soon only a stump was left to say this tree in time ever existed. But by late afternoon, even that stump had been ground into mulch and left for us to use. 

The men and their machines left, money in their pockets for a job well done. 

A pile of stump mulch remained and next day, my husband set to work spreading it over our backyard "natural" area. Then he set to digging the offending roots from under the cement. 

The tree might have been erased from our yard, but it had the revenge only a tree could give. Those roots that so forcefully pushed up from the underworld and cracked our driveway to pieces were formidable, to say the least. Sturdy. Thick. Determined to sustain its above ground self. 

Sigh.

There's a lesson in there, although my husband with his sore shoulders and arms isn't in the mood to listen just now. And I'm still sad over what had to be.

Next summer, when the unforgiving sun heats the air, there will be no shade tree blocking the rays.  With no tulip shaped blooms luring them, the bees will have less reason to seek out the little garden in our side yard to pollinate our future vegetables. The squirrels will look elsewhere for nourishment. Our children are long grown away from tree climbing, but what about the grandchildren! 

When a tree falls in the side yard does anyone hear it? 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen