Last week, I finally got a chance to come and make dinner at the ODS. This is another year of turbulence, and after my last visit there in June, when half of the ingredients were not purchased at all, and the other half were wrong (like frozen salmon pieces instead of a never-frozen half -fish), nobody answered my emails. I decided that that’s it, and there is no reason for me to even keep trying, at least until I retire.
Apparently, I was wrong, and people were still waiting for me, so I gave it another try to schedule, and finally, on September 9, almost three months after last time, I was back in the familiar kitchen. And people who remembered me were still happy to see me! Almost all residents were new, and some of them didn’t want to talk to me in the beginning, and the salmon was frozen again. However, I thought on my was there how I could deal with frozen salmon and decided to give it a try. It was definitely not a perfect solution, but Ms. N. exclaimed: “What did you do that time?! ” It ended up much better than in June:).
It was way better than my previous experiment, and mashed potatoes were pretty much flawless. And most importantly, after the dinner was ready, and after everyone who wanted to eat had eaten, we started talking. That’s something you can never predict: whether it will work that time or not, whether someone will decide to open up to a stranger, whether you will hear another heartbreaking life story or not.
I left feeling very good, and emotionally nourished, and later, Ms. N. and I exchanged text messages about how good it felt. Sometimes, one conversation is what a person need to keep going 🙂
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I keep coming to early morning clinic escorting shifts, because the situation there is dire. I don’t know what else to say. I hope that when I will finally figure out my life, I will start coming there more often; now it’s just one morning a week. I am glad however, that I can do at least that!
Hettie's Reflections 