“We have a nursing home run by very kind people. People who are overworked and underpaid. They do the best they can and they do it because they genuinely like their jobs. Or because for them it’s not a job, it’s a calling. But there’s always a good deal of work and they can’t seem to keep some of their staff or volunteers. Probably because they can’t pay much and volunteers find the work difficult, sometimes tedious, at times heart wrenching, but all the time constant. They called a few days ago, saying that a volunteer had quit in order to go back to college and another one simply stopped showing. They asked us to keep a look out. I’m going to help until they find some people to do so and do it regularly. But if you have time and don’t mind hard work, they could use your help.”

I had time but I didn’t know if I minded hard work. I’d never had to do any. Growing up, we had actual live-in maids and cooks and the like. The rest of my life, I’d had services take care of everything.

There were times when Conrad and I would move, before I found cleaning services, that I did the cleaning, and right then, new to Magdalene, I’d been doing it at Cliff Blue and I liked it. I didn’t want to do it for eight hour days, five days a week, but it wasn’t terrible. And it felt nice to accomplish something.

No, it felt nice just to do something. Something needed. Something real.

And I’d never thought of senior citizens but I didn’t have an aversion to them. All my grandparents had loved me, so had Conrad’s. They’d really, really loved me. In fact, anytime we were together, I’d always end up sitting with them or off somewhere with them, talking, sharing, joking, laughing. I liked my grandparents and Conrad’s a whole lot better than my own parents (and, incidentally, Conrad’s) and I’d been devastated as, one by one, we’d lost them all.

Maybe that was something else I had a talent with.

Still, I said to the pastor’s wife, “To be honest, I would need to discuss what was needed of me but I can clean. I can cook. I can talk. I can tidy. I can organize. I can look after people. And I like doing all of that. So I’d like the opportunity to discuss it.”

Her eyes slightly narrowed, not in an unkind way, but in a speculative one when she said, “I wouldn’t like to introduce these people to a volunteer who isn’t interested in helping out how they need it, and just as importantly, for the long haul.”