spynotes ::
  June 15, 2006
I want you

Although I think about it a lot, I've never been much for volunteering. That's not to say I haven�t done it -- in college I worked in the local homeless shelter. I occasionally help out my college with recruiting. I get involved in AJ's school when asked. But I don't tend to seek such opportunities out.

It's not that I'm not interested -- most of my jobs have revolved, at least in part, around improving conditions for children without resources to help themselves. But I have a couple of problems with volunteerism. The first is that women, at least in my circle, tend to be expected to volunteer, as if their time isn't worth paying for. The same requests/demands are not made of their husbands, despite the fact that in many if not most cases, both husbands and wives hold demanding jobs. The second problem, though, is more personal than philosophical -- many volunteer jobs demand the insertion of a level of bureaucracy into my life that I have worked quite hard to avoid. AJ's future elementary school, for instance, only takes volunteers who will give at least 4 hours every week. Many of us would like to help, but can't devote that much time, especially people who work. A group of four parents got together and offered to function as a single volunteer, they'd organize the schedule of who would come which week for the school. The school turned them down. And yet the school continues to complain that it doesn�t have enough volunteers. Schools are not alone. When I looked into working with a literacy program here, I found them to be far too demanding about how much time (ten hours per week, a one year commitment) I would have to devote and when and where I would need to work. This is, of course, fine if you are paying someone to work. And I even understand, as a former coordinator of volunteers, why they might need to put such rules in place (training volunteers is time consuming and can be expensive, so you don't want to have to do it too often). But that doesn�t mean I wish to play by those rules.

And so I channeled my drive for volunteerism into a project of my own creation -- the renovation of a weedy piece of land that nearly everyone in my neighborhood has to drive by and that happens to be directly across the street from my house. It was a mess, with mattes of thistles growing nearly shoulder high, obscuring a long-ago planted bed of hostas and wildflowers. For the past two years, I have been the plot's sole caretaker, spending hours each week removing weeds, taking care of the beneficial plants I found hiding behind them, dividing them, adding more plants from my own garden as I could spare them. Last week, the day after I finished the latest round of weeding and the first round of this season�s planting, the maintenance staff came around and dug out the perimeter, laid down landscaper�s tarp, and covered it with dirt and mulch. I was pleased, because it will now be easier to maintain, but also a little irritated that they hadn�t gotten involved before. I checked their work to make sure they hadn't dug up any of my plantings. They hadn�t. It looked beautiful.

Then this morning, quite early, I noticed a car pulled over to the edge of the road. A woman was out in the bed I'd made, gardening gloves on, pulling weeds. I should have been happy, because really, this was a job to big for me to do myself. But instead, I was annoyed. She pops in and feels good for pulling a few weeds. Where was she when the thing really needed work? And I was convinced she was pulling up all the milkweed I�d carefully preserved for the monarch butterflies, even though it looks weedy too. After my shower, I went out to see. The woman was gone. The milkweed remained. The place looks beautiful.

I should be happy, really, because I believe in cultivating a culture of volunteerism, as long as it's not limited to one gender, one age, one group. We should all be taking care of our surroundings and each other. It's not really that hard, but the way we interact as communities doesn't always make that so easy. When I lived in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood in Chicago, which, before its current hipster-infused state was largely populated by elderly Ukrainian and Polish widows, I kept wanting to volunteer my services to help in people's gardens. Many of these women had incredible gardens but had trouble keeping them up. Why not create a network by which those of us who wanted to learn about gardening could volunteer ourselves for manual labor in exchange for an education? But I never figured out how to get past the urban suspicion. Perhaps if I'd been involved in the local Ukrainian churches, beyond being a singer-for-hire, I could have done it. A similar kind of idea that would have matched dog-owners with people who wanted to walk dogs in my south side Chicago neighborhood fizzled for similar reasons.

But the thing is, I'm also not happy. I liked having control of this project. I liked being able to decide where to plant things and what it would like it. It's not like I've lost that completely, but it's turning into something else. Ultimately, I know that what it's turning into is better. Otherwise the minute I move away, all the weeds will come back. But I'm still feeling a little cranky about it. And I won't pretend I haven�t enjoyed the occasional neighbor stopping to thank me for the work I'm doing. �You�re a savior,� one man said last week as he drove by. �I�d come down and help you, but I have things I need to do.� Now, finally, someone else has decided that taking care of the neighborhood is one of their things to do. I need to bury my ego, because really the kind of place I want to live isn't just one that is beautiful and taken care of, but one where people help each other out. And to that end, the more people involved in the project, the better.

2 people said it like they meant it

 
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