10:
“Do you have a spare?”
My tire exploded 20 minutes ago and already a Caltrans worker is here to help get me off of this goddamn bridge.
I’m impressed.
My tire is in pieces. I stare at its frayed rubber and thread edges and I just don’t fucking care anymore. Standing on the bridge’s narrow shoulder, I look over the railing to the swirling green waves below. I have to step up on the ledge to really get a good look. The wind thrashes against my face and I feel so light that even gravity can’t catch me, the mania of possibility itching behind my ears.
I’m ready to float away- my car, my problems, my responsibilities providing more strangeness than anchor, and the whole not being more than the sum of its parts.
“Where were you headed?” Caltrans interrupts. He’s young and in a good mood. His brown Volcom sweater underneath the neon safety vest is something I find I really like about him. I smile sheepishly.
A half hour later, I’m in the tire shop drinking their coffee and eating their leftover pizza.
“Do you guys still have a box of the Samoas?” I ask the good-looking kid filling out my invoice. He smiles and I smile and he sends me home with a free box of cookies.
What is life if not a series of events.
21:
“I don’t want you to be unhappy.”
…
Looking back, you now realize you spent the first year of it dreaming and the second year living. Your hair was red, then brown, then yellow, then pink. You changed it around to figure yourself out. Then you changed yourself to figure him out.
After a year, the people in your life started to fade like old photographs. He had moved away by then, and took your focus with him. Now you had to go too.
And who could blame you? This is it, you thought to yourself then. This is why.
You packed your car and said goodbyes. This is so much love, you swelled.
…
Years later, a different boy in your bed, you casually mention the days you lived in the desert.
“Why did you move out there?” he wants to know.
For a boy, you say.
11:
Oh yes baby. Yes.
16:
5,000+ dollars of medications dispensed
1,000 +/- villagers served
38 volunteers
16 hours on the plane
8 cold showers
6 bottles of Chilean wine
5 tooth extractions witnessed
4 beautiful roommates
3 steroid shots witnessed
2 nicknames
1 baby kissed
0 mosquito bites!
04:
“What can you do in only a week?”
[After boarding my flight tonight, I am going to be in Honduras until next Monday with a group of thirty-plus volunteers from Global Medical Brigades flying down to provide basic health care, supplies, and education to Honduran villagers.]
I got asked this question after talking excitedly about participating in GMB’s efforts. Volunteering abroad has been something that I’ve been interested in doing for a while, in part to contribute to worthwhile causes, but mainly to learn. I look at these experiences as great learning opportunities, and so when I got asked that question, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty, thinking that maybe I wasn’t doing enough. Instead of staying one week, I should stay ten. Or twenty. Or, hell, just stay for years.
I told one of my good friends about this question and its potency on me. Her response: “Everything we do has to be for ourselves first. If you can help someone else in the process, that’s even better.”
I went home thinking about the nature of volunteerism and when a volunteer can consider their contribution enough (or I suppose, not too deeply lacking). Most of the time, I feel as if it’s never enough. But at the same time, I have myself to work on as well.
Currently, I serve as a volunteer medic at the Berkeley Free Clinic one to two nights a week. I’ve joined groups to build houses in Mexico. I’ve served sandwiches on Skid Row. Each experience has taught me something about compassion and simplicity and giving and frustration and inequality and insufficience.
I am grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to participate in each; I’m glad I was a part of each.
This year, I am devoting 1 week to Honduran villagers and 51 to myself, but I hope that my contribution is still worthwhile.
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