The Miranda Rights of Second Helpings, and other Food Rules I Have Known

I served a hot meal in a theater lobby to 30 hungry teenaged actors last night, an activity that involved planning a menu to include vegetarian, gluten-free and dairy-free options. Since I was paying for this repast from my own threadbare pocket, all provisions were secured at my new favorite sub-bargain haunt, Aldi. I’m proud that I’ve overcome my anxiety over the hostage-release situation they’ve got going on with the shopping carts (hint: never leave home without a quarter) and have embraced the joys of browsing endless stacks of about-to-expire jars of sauerkraut, shipped directly from the headquarters in Mülheim an der Ruhr.

After all the planning, cooking and endless schlepping, I had, last night, finally arrived at the moment when everyone was tucking in and filling their pie holes, so I began to mingle. “Mom, they’re confused,” my daughter told when I walked by. “They don’t know if they’re allowed to go back for seconds.” I was struck dumb. Did these adolescents not understand the very nature of a Julie Kendrick Meal Production, in which seconds are strongly encouraged, as are fourths and twelfths, not to mention doggie bags to take along for a little nibble on the drive home?

I turned to one of my daughter’s friends, a girl who has eaten many a temporary-price-reduction toss-of-the-dice meal at my home. “Tess,” I enjoined, “You know that I never serve anything without first declaring there’s plenty more where that came from. It’s like the Miranda Rights of eating at my house.” Tess, who is no mere “yes” woman, not even to a crazypants like Mary Katherine’s mom, pondered this assertion. “That’s true,” she said, head tilted to one side. “Unless you tell me it’s the last Clementine and I have to eat it right now so you can put the bowl in the dishwasher.”

She had me there, did little Tess. My highest hostess accolades go the guest who Finishes it Up, thus saving me the battle to find a matching Tupperware lid and elbow out some real estate in the refrigerator.

As I dragged all the dirty dishes up the back porch later that night, I thought more about our discussion of Food Rules. Everyone has them, especially the truly batshit people who claim they don’t have any. I am a 20-year child care volunteer at the Crisis Nursery, and if you want to see some truly rigid Food Rules, ones that make a rabbi at Passover look like a Unitarian ordering a bacon cheeseburger,  then spend some time eating meals with preschoolers. No touching. No mixing. Nothing funny looking. Ever. Preferred color of food? Tan. Preferred method of serving: Plain. And more plain. And even plainer than that.

We have such lovely volunteers at the nursery, and many of them gather with co-workers, church groups or friends to serve meals to the kids. They work so hard to make things special, but they often forget that for the six-and-under set, “special” is simple. We had a volunteer this past Sunday who brought in a giant bowl of strawberries and a box of graham crackers. Alice Waters has never received such accolades for her swanky fare; our kids could not get enough of this lady’s snack.

Volunteers who forget the “simplicity” standard do so at their peril. A few months ago, the nursery had an enthusiastic volunteer cooking group from a local food company. They had clearly scoured their test kitchen recipe library for Fun Foods for Kids. They arrived with “pizza muffins,” a concoction in which pepperoni and cheese had been placed in the hollow of a biscuit, then baked in a muffin tin. In case you aren’t grasping the full horror here, it was All Mixed Together. The children reacted as if they were being served pig cheeks, with the pig head still attached. The volunteers were crestfallen. But kids don’t change their rules for anyone, not even the company that invented Lucky Charms.

In addition to my child care work at the Nursery, I get together with a group of friends four times a year to make Saturday night supper for the kids. Our menu, which has been honed to perfection over the years, never varies: turkey meat on Hawaiian rolls. Carrot sticks and dip. Veggie straws. Clementine sections. And then, just to show that simple doesn’t have to mean dull, we roll in our big finish – chocolate pudding cups with – oh yes – squirts of whipped cream delivered straight from the Reddi-wip canister.

Sometimes on Saturday nights, as I watch the kids’ delight as whipped cream is squirted to their exact specifications, I think about the many people all over the world who are enjoying fine meals at that very moment. They’re sniffing corks, asking for a few more shavings of truffle, or setting up their camera for an Instagram shot of course number three-out-of-thirty. But, watching those kids smear their entire faces with our simple-but-worth-it dessert, I doubt that anyone is enjoying their food more than they are, and that’s the only Food Rule that really matters, at least to me. 

I Miss My Mom

I’ve been volunteering on and off at the Crisis Nursery for more than 18 years. I’ve dealt with happy kids and poopy kids and kids with felonies in their future and kids who want to hear “Cat in the Hat” seventeen times in a row – in other words, the works. Some shifts are easy, and some are hard. And there is one thing they tell me that breaks my heart, every time.

It always happens the same way – never shouted, always secret. They whisper it to me, when no one else is around, as if it’s a longing so strange and rare that it can only be confessed in complete privacy. The child sidles up to me, or pulls down on my neck during story time, or leans in close to let out this great heart-held secret: “I miss my mom.” It is always said with urgency, and a measure of despair, as if admitting such a thing is to admit to a great and unfixable weakness of character.

It’s hard to know what to say in those moments. After all these years, though, I’ve got a standard routine that I trot out for just such occasions. “I know you miss her,” I whisper back, right away, aiming to turn that shame-filled confession inside out, to let it air itself in the sunlight, so that we both see it as the most commonplace desire in the world.

And then, because I’ve thought a lot about what it must be like to be a kid whose life is so fraught that a mom needs to leave for 72 hours, I list a few of  the things I can imagine my confessor might be missing the most: “When you sit on her, it feels so good, doesn’t it?” I ask, and I feel a little nod on my neck. “And she smells just right, doesn’t she, just like a mom should? And when you rub her clothes, they feel just perfect, don’t they?”

I usually stop there, because I always think that if I go on much longer, we’ll both cry. After my sensory tour of Momland, I always try my best Mary Poppins imitation, 90% brisk and 10% loving. “She misses you, too, and she’s thinking of you, and you WILL see her again,” I conclude. And then I introduce some new topic, usually my probably-stupid-but-helpful-in-these-situations color-changing wristwatch, which allows both of us to get our minds somewhere else for a minute.

This past week, the confession came from a bony little guy in an orange shirt, who whispered it in my ear as I was wiping peanut butter off his face. “I know,” I said, and I started in on my Praise of Your Mom routine, all while I was helping him clean up his breakfast things. I didn’t break stride, almost.

Even though I’ve heard it so many times, I still remember the first couple times it happened. In both cases, the kids were eldest siblings, trying to hold it together for the sake of the little kids, and that made their grief especially hard to witness. The first was a skinny little girl, maybe just six, at the nursery with a toddler sister. We were at the breakfast table, and I watched her looking around at all the happy kids, shoveling in Cheerios and loving life in a place with heat and beds and regular meals. She lifted a spoon to her lips, putting on a good show for the little sister, and then she just lost it. The spoon fell to floor, and her little hands covered her face, so that no one would see. Six-year-olds don’t usually do that; they want the whole world to know when they are sad enough to cry. But she wished she could stop herself, among all the other things she was wishing at that moment.

In what would become a long string of my many Crisis Nursery transgressions over the years, I broke the rule-of-the-moment, which that week was that we-must-all-sit-in-our-chairs-at-all-times. Screw that, said bad volunteer, and took this little sack of worried bones, with her limp hair and skinny lips, right into my lap. We sat there during breakfast, a modern pieta, and we didn’t say much. I rubbed her back a bit, and whispered what was my then brand-new routine in her ear, until it was time to get up for the next damn thing, and I had to let her go. 

And I remember that boy. He must have been just about at the age limit, almost seven, and there were two little siblings with him. Funny that I can’t remember them, but I can still see his face. I can see dark hair, and beautifully dark and deeply worried eyes. We were all playing some board game, something that allowed for half the pieces to be lost without affecting the experience, which is what all the games at the Nursery are like. As we were rolling dice and collecting cards and he just stopped and looked right into my eyes, as if he were the man of the family and he had to tell me this or die, about how much they all missed her. But he didn’t crumple up right away, not until I hugged him. And then he did, for a long time.

One thing I notice is that the kids never, ever say “I want to go home,” because home, for a lot of these kids, is a fluid sort of concept. Mom is the constant, at least as much as they can have one of those. When my daughter Emma first started coming along to volunteer with me, she was eager to read the kids’ charts, which we were told we could do. We did it exactly twice, and then even Emma, for whom too much knowledge is always just the beginning, had to stop. The shelters and the battering and the jail and the evictions … it was a lot to know, collectively, and we made a silent agreement not to do it anymore.

Instead, I try to spend my time with them in the absolute purest sort of now, with no knowledge of their past and the brightest sort hope for their future. Now you need your nose wiped. Now you need your shoe tied. Now you need to be restrained from smacking that other little boy. Now you need to sit on my lap while I read you a story, and then you need to pull my head toward yours, and you need to pour out the secret of your heart to someone who seems willing to listen, and to care.

I always listen, and I always care. And that, Sunday after Sunday, is all I can do, and I just hope that all I can do is enough, at least for now.

Wipe a Nose, Write a Check: What “Service” Really Means

I celebrated our National Day of Service one day early, with my regular volunteer shift at the Crisis Nursery. Dr. King, in his time, organized boycotts, led marches and gave stirring speeches. For my contribution this year, I wiped crusty noses, mopped up drool dribbles, and spoonfed mashed carrots to a toddler. I helped Purpess and Promiss get settled for their naps with a warm bottle and a few stories, and then I went home.

Compared to the accomplishments of a martyred civil rights leader, it seems a little light on vision, achievement and sweeping change.

The MLK Day of Service has been in place since 1994, and it’s the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service. The organizers call it "a day on, not a day off." As someone who volunteers regularly for a number of organizations, I love this idea and I wish it would catch fire in our collective national consciousness. One day a year, couldn’t the malls be closed? Or could schools require that students show up and work in the community? What could all our government's employees, together, accomplish in one day?

If we really embraced this holiday, hands could get dirty and eyes could be opened. As it is, efforts still seem a little weak. Considering that and wondering why, I thought about my own volunteer efforts and the organizations I support.

What I Don’t Do: Write Checks. I have noticed that charities often seem more eager for my cash than for my time. I understand this. I serve on a couple of nonprofits boards, and things are increasingly tight financially. But I also think that the reason I am more often asked for money instead of effort is that volunteers can be more trouble than they’re worth. To have volunteers, you have to have clear, definable jobs for them, and you have to deal with all the things they might be bringing to the endeavor, like sloppy work, loud opinions or a generally poor representation of your organization. They have to be trained, supervised and often praised excessively. Checks, on the other hand, just have to be cashed.

What I Do: Show Up. The last time I looked, I seem to have misplaced my trust fund. I don’t have the economic resources to pony up a lot of cash, but I can give an hour or two to a worthy cause, if they ask. I go the Crisis Nursery and wipe noses. I show up at my local public high school and help kids with their college essays. I write press releases for a youth theater company.

What I Wish I Could Do: How much time have you got? Maybe it’s all for the best that I wasn’t born with a big comfortable pile of old family money. For one thing, I never would have left school, and I’d currently be working on my sixth Ph.D. For another, I’d think that writing checks was enough. I’d go to galas and balls and charity dinners, dressed in swell duds, and I’d outbid everyone else for the silent auction and be the honorary chairwoman at a couple fabulous events every year. But I’d miss out on the nose wiping, and the spelling help and the chance to sit in cramped meetings with people who are passionate about their issues, and who desperately need just a little bit of practical help.

I realize that, in many ways, I am far from the ideal nonprofit supporter. Showing up to work, on time, is great. But funding the Julie Kendrick Wing of Whatever We Want would probably be better. Still, I do what I can, even without that honorary chairmanship to the charity ball. And all I can do, as I often tell myself, will have to do, at least for now.

There are the people who lead the march on Washington, and there are the people who give Promiss a bottle before her nap, and I think I know which kind of person I’ve turned out to be.

Beautiful Sunday

Waking up on what might be the last beautiful Sunday for the next, oh, seven months or so, I have to admit that, as I thought about my morning, “spend a shift at the Crisis Nursery with all my under-age-six pals” was not in the top ten on my wish list. Not in the top 100, to be honest, and I tried to avoid thinking about all the wonderful life choices I could otherwise be making with such a lovely day. I attempted to wrestle the self pity to the ground and stuff it into my back pocket, and then I donned my extra-dorky “Volunteer” t-shirt and even-dorkier name-tag lanyard and hit the road to Golden Valley.

By the time I finished my shift that afternoon, Clifton (age 5, going on 50) was sucking his thumb and sleeping. In the next bed, Tristan (age 3, perhaps perpetually) was wide awake and thrashing a counterclockwise perimeter around his tiny twin bed, wearing out a crop circle on the Sponge Bob sheets.

I signed out, turned in my name badge, and headed back into a world that was just as lovely as when I’d walked in. See there? I told myself. And just what would I have done with that chunk of my day, if I hadn’t spent it as a volunteer? I answered both sides of the question:

I could have lounged about. Doubtful. I would have thought about lounging, but would have observed dirt and chaos all around me, then dealt with it, repeatedly. Even the very angry toddler at the nursery who, during a long crying jag, managed to drip quite a bit of, um, bodily fluid, all down her front and generously onto my dorky t-shirt,  was not remotely as disconcerting as a house full of misplaced items and dog hair. 

Point goes to: Volunteering

I could have achieved nirvana in a yoga class. Possibly. But no meditation labyrinth could have been nearly as restful as the slow shuffle I took across the playground field with a very quiet two-year-old. As a bonus, we stopped halfway across and played a rock game of his invention. I still got to enjoy the sunshine while I was opening my waiting palm, receiving a rock, then solemnly closing my fingers around it. Then, and this is the great part if you're two, I opened up my hand and showed him that the rock was still there, ready for the taking. His solemn pleasure at this game, and his diligence in the repetition, had to be better for my body than a thousand upward dogs.

Point goes to: Volunteering

I could have had a long, deep conversation with a friend. Not gonna happen. My friends talk about two things:  how their children are driving them crazy, or how their boyfriends are driving them crazy. (Or, with some friends, both, and that gets a little extreme.)

None of them ever reveals a secret worry that the emergency light in the bedroom will actually do some scary, unnameable thing (Clifton), how the nursery ID ankle band is so tight it actually prevents sleep (again, Clifton) or how anxiety over his mother’s safety kept him up all night (again, my main man, Clifton). We talked about some real stuff in that half hour before he fell asleep for nap yesterday. He misses his mother so much he could gnaw off his arm in misery, and all I had in my arsenal of comfort was a squishy lap, a mom-like demeanor and a willingness to offer some remedy.

So I thought very hard, and breathed very slowly, and tried. I explained about the emergency light, even offering a hands-on demonstration of its safe qualities. I persuaded the staff to provide him with a new ID band that I promised would be “the unscratchy kind.” I told him, over and over, that his mother was fine, that she loved him and that she was coming back for him, soon. I’ve never had a conversation with any of my friends in which we covered that many important topics in half an hour, and I’ve certainly never offered anything close to such direct and sincere relief. At least, not enough relief that they felt comfortable enough to suck their thumb in front of me and fall asleep, exhausted.

Point goes to: Volunteering

So I drove home. Surprise, I still had the rest of a day. And I spent it cleaning the chaos, going to yoga, walking the dog. Not one thing I did was as important as the time I had spent at the nursery. 

My better self was right (she usually is, when I stop whining long enough to listen to her). There will sometimes be beautiful Sundays, but there will always be children who need a little help in letting go of their worries for as long as it takes to fall asleep.

Seventy-five Seconds of Fame: Six Thoughts on being in the Newspaper

Everyone knows that Andy Warhol said, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." But he said it back in 1968.  I figure that time has compressed considerably in the intervening 42 years.  Having a story about my family published in the local newspaper has convinced me that 75 seconds seems to be the right fame formula these days.

Here are six thoughts I've had since the article appeared yesterday:

Thought one:  People my age actually USE Facebook?  Based on all the comments from my aged chums via this forum, I suppose so.  And here I thought it was just a way to stalk one’s teenagers.  I resolve to enter the 21st century with all my pals, forthwith.

Thought two: Grainy newsprint does a lot for one’s overall youthful image. In my picture, I look like a dewy 47-year-old. I love that old-timey media. The Internet may be speedy, but it's not wrinkle-reducing.

Thought three: The particular volunteer gig on which the interview focused was, hands-down, the easiest one I’ve ever done. Interview me after a day at the Crisis Nursery, when I’m covered in precious bodily fluids from the tiny tots, and I’ll have a different yarn to spin.

Thought four:  The photographer told the girls to “sit on the kitchen counters; I’m sure you do it all the time anyway.” They were nonplussed. The counters are high, cold, and usually very sticky.  But because he had a press pass and a camera, everyone immediately complied. Later, Mary Katherine quoted from one of her favorite obscure films (Drop Dead Gorgeous), “If he tells you to take your top off, get the money first.” 

Thought five: Yesterday, Emma and her friend Rebecca decided to try sitting on the counter again, just to see if it felt any better.  I blame the pernicious influence of the media.

Thought six: Recycling works.  I sent the reporter a link to blog I’d written about volunteering, and he pretty much quoted it verbatim, as if we’d had a three-hour lunch in the meat-packing district or something. That’s okay. I sound better when I have a chance to edit.

Here's a link to the story:  http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/111279379.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUvDEhiaE3miUsZ

Keep Calm and Carry On

I imagine what it must have been like, spending the night in the London underground during a Nazi bombing raid, then trudging up those high stairs at the sound of the all-clear. First light would be breaking, and, as I adjusted my sensible hat and pulled on a pair of gloves, I would notice a poster across the street, plastered to the only wall still standing on what had been a building the night before. Keep Calm and Carry On, the poster would say. Checking quickly to see that the dome of St. Paul’s was still in one piece, I’d clutch my umbrella to my side and head off briskly down the street, determined to do just that. My upper lip, and my resolve, would be perfectly stiff.

But it never could have happened that way. It turns out that the Keep Calm and Carry On poster was created by the Britain’s Ministry of Information early in the war. It was the secret propaganda weapon that was going to be plastered on every available surface in the event, which seemed horribly likely at times, that the Nazis actually invaded the island nation. The poster, happily never used and eventually forgotten, was rediscovered in 2000 in a secondhand bookstore in England.

Why it chose to make itself appear more than sixty years after it had been put in reserve in case it was needed to keep people from freaking out, after that “fighting them on the beaches” thing had failed to do the trick, is one of those great mysteries that always surround why things turn up when they do, like the wedding ring in the fish’s belly, found twenty years later. I like to think that the British people didn’t require one smidgen of extra bucking up in 1940, but that we need it now, and plenty. I certainly do. A copy of the poster has a prominent place in my office, and if I weren’t such a cheapskate and a baby, I’d get a tattoo of it on my bicep, just like a sailor. It evokes, for me, everything I admire when I read about the people of wartime England -- determination, energy and a complete lack of whining.

It’s a message I’ve been summoning up in my head quite often lately. I used it this past Sunday afternoon, when I was working at the Crisis Nursery. It’s my bimonthly volunteer gig, done in partnership with my eldest daughter. She is beautiful and cool and all the kids adore her on sight. Eventually, I do win the little ones over, at least the snuggle-minded ones, because they discover that sitting on Emma’s lap is like lying on a blender full of radioactive forks, whereas I have squishiness on my side.

I suppose the saddest kids at the Crisis Nursery should be the ones who obviously love it there. Three meals, two snacks, a bed of their own and a Disney movie every night? Man, sign them up to live here full time! They never take a backward glance to home, which makes me wonder just what home must be like.

The kids who really get to me, though, are the ones who clearly have something to miss – a loving parent, a space of their own, something to love and love them back. We don’t have those sorts of kids at the nursery very often, but they show up occasionally, and they break my heart.

I had spent the morning with T. and his sister, and they were clearly those sorts of kids. They understood about reading books (many of the kids, pitifully, don’t). I used my squishiness to maximum effect and we tried to forget ourselves in Goodnight, Gorilla. By lunchtime, when other kids were flipping forks off tables, falling off their chairs and cadging extra muffins or helpings of dessert, T. sat and stared at his plate. His mother, I could tell, had never served anything that remotely resembled this meal. Nothing here reminded him of her, except everything. As if I were casually looking for a place to rest my hands, I reached to his tiny, laden shoulders and attempted to rub out some of what he was holding onto.

As if confessing something, he whispered to me, “I want to go home.” Kids don’t often say that at the nursery, even if they’re thinking it all the time. “I know you do,” I said back softly, which was all I could think of to say, but of course how could I know? I didn’t know about his bed or his room or how he watched tv with his older brother, or how his mom rubbed his back, or even how she smelled. I wished very much, right then, that I could smell like his mom.

We moved over to the doorway to wait for the big eaters to finish, and I held him in my lap, like a baby. He was too big a boy for this, but, clearly used to this sort of love, he snuggled right in. Two nursery veterans, age six but already hardened toughs, had tired themselves of falling off their chairs and approached us with gleams in their eyes. “What’s wrong with him?” they confronted me. “Tired,” I said, with a shrug. “Big party last night.” They drifted away, and I leaned down and whispered in the boy’s ear. I repeated the new mantra that was getting me through the day, these days. “Keep Calm,” I said, as I patted his back, “and Carry On.” He burrowed himself further into my upholstery, and, together, we made it through until naptime.