Tomorrow is Sunday and a week will have passed since my arrival here at the Stony Point Center. I know most of the names now of the other volunteers. Besides a week of meetings, (the residents meeting, the volunteer meeting, the program meeting, the hospitality meeting) I am spending time with the people who head up various different aspects of the community. Some are paid staff, others volunteer. This is a new plan being tested by director Rick, designed to help orient volunteers new to the Center.
On the first day of this orientation, I spent two hours with Donna, the Food Service Manager, who gave me the cooks tour, literally, of the Stony Point Kitchen. Donna is the friendly, smiling mother of four who additionally works full-time at Stony Point Center. She was quick to tell me how much she loves her work. Her well-stocked and orderly food pantries attest to the care she takes in feeding the many guests and residents at the Center. Typically, all meals have both meat and vegetarian entrees to accommodate the Jewish and Muslim members of the community. I am to spend 10 hours a week in the kitchen helping Donna and her crew as one of my volunteer assignments. I shipped ahead of me two boxes of theology books, books on social justice and non-violence, a myriad of volumes on interfaith dialog as well as worship resources of several different kinds from my now extensive library. What I wish I had sent was my collection of cook books!
Earlier in the day I had met with Geeta and Margarita. They are the head of housekeeping and
a housekeeping staff member respectively. Geeta is from Trinidad, but her grandparents are Indian, which is what I guessed her to be, judging from her appearance. Margarita is from the Dominican Republic. I quickly confirmed the opportunity to practice my Spanish. She let me know that I would find her Spanish diction quite relaxed from the Mexican Spanish I was used to hearing, which she regarded as more precise. None-the-less, I was pleased and the prospect of speaking to her in her native tongue. Geeta has been at Stony point for 16 years. She is the only full-time member of housekeeping, which Rick says is by necessity understaffed. Both of these women work extremely hard. While Margarita is part-time at Stony Point, she holds down another job elsewhere. She is, apparently, a single mother helping to support children. I will be working with these two women in my role as "host" at the Gilmor Sloane House.
When this role was first described to me, I saw myself daintily transporting forgotten tea cups from the sun room to the kitchen, but a truer picture includes a vacuum cleaner and a bottle of windex. I am to clean up after groups and sojourners have tarnished the pristine composure of the lower floor with all it's glistening glass paneled doors, table tops and marble mantles. This is the second of my four quarter-time assignments.
The third of my orienting "visits", as Rick calls them, was with Joyce and Gary Pratt. Joyce and Gary are little people, but there is nothing little about the personalities of either one of them. I spent an evening with them at the front desk. Gary, an unabashed extrovert, loves the frenzy of a group descending upon the registration desk. He delights in the role of welcoming people to the Center and the busier he is, the better he likes it. He and his wife Joyce operate as a team. Gary, navigates the best he can in his motorized chair, but mobility is a challenge. Joyce is legally blind and is never without her faithful seeing-eye dog, Kia. Kia, for all her well-trained attention and care of Joyce, of course, cannot read! So Gary is Joyce's reading eyes and she is his feet and legs and together they register guests with good humor, warmth and grace.
Next week the visits continue.
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