I left my number, we said warm good-byes and I went back out to my car.

I didn’t dally in front of the church wondering if I’d done the right thing.

I drove away, thinking volunteering at a nursing home could mean anything, and a variety of those things could be unpleasant.

But I wouldn’t want to volunteer and demand that I got to read stories or oversee craft time.

I’d want to volunteer and do what was needed.

Which could mean cleaning up a number of messes, changing sheets, doing laundry, who knew?

And as I drove home, something strange stole over me. Something strange and new and unbelievable.

Because my mind was filled with all of the things that could be required of a down and dirty volunteer at a nursing home, and all I could think was that I hoped like heck they liked me.

Because I couldn’t wait to start.

* * * * *

“Praise be to Jesus!” the woman behind the desk at Dove House called to the ceiling, her hands lifted up there, her plethora of black braids shaking. She dropped her hands and her eyes hit Ruth, sitting across the desk in a chair beside me. “Call up the good Reverend”, she jerked her head my way, “and God sends a miracle.”

Ruth beamed.

“I’m hardly a miracle,” I mumbled.

“’Scuse me?’ Dela Coleman, Director of Dove House Retirement Home, asked me. “Did you just say you didn’t mind bed pans, changin’ sheets, lookin’ after dentures, wipin’ up half-chewed food, vacuuming, dusting? Not to mention folk who call you other people’s names and swear up and down for hours that you’re their own child or the girl who stole their boyfriend back in the day and they might come tearin’ at you, fingernails bared?”

“I did say that I didn’t mind that,” I confirmed.

“And did you say you could give me three days a week for three hours a day and I don’t have to lay cash on your behind?” she went on.

“I said that as well,” I told her.

“Then if you actually show up those three days a week for three hours a day and work and don’t take off and become a no show or tell me you’re,” she lifted her hands and did air quotation marks, “goin’ back to college at age fifty-six, then you…are…a…miracle.”

“People do go back to college at any age,” Ruth put in and Dela turned her eyes to her.

“Ruth, honey, I saw the woman at The Shack eatin’ omelets and suckin’ back coffees with her biddies and she did not have a laptop in front of her, workin’ on coursework for her online classes to become a graphic designer,” she stated bluntly. “Now, I got old folk attemptin’ the great escape every day, and they may be old but they are not stupid. So it’s touch and go we shut them down or we gotta go to Wayfarer’s to stop them shufflin’ down the aisles in their slippers. Loretta is not gonna be a graphic designer. Loretta was tired of cleaning up half-chewed food and havin’ Mrs. McMurphy shout at her every time she saw her to keep her hands off her man.”