Being of Service
When Kim joined the Hidden Meadows Women’s Club, she did so because she very much wanted to make more friends in the local community. She came back from the first meeting with a positive report that she felt there were many potential new friends to be had in the Club. One of the first things she did was to volunteer to have the next meeting of the group at our house. It seemed like a great way to throw herself headfirst into the group and create a degree of familiarity that would otherwise take much longer. I was specifically not invited for that gathering and Kim asked that I sequester myself in our bedroom and not come out. I did just that, with a plate of dinner to keep me company. As I heard the laughter and the commotion taking place in the rest of the house, I became curious about the goings on. And then it occurred to me that I had five Ring remote cameras that have full two-way audio capability. As I have said, I felt like the mischievous little brother at the sister’s slumber party, but I checked out the gaggles that I could snoop in on from those cameras and found a lot of womenfolk having a grand old time chit-chatting about our house and gardens.
A little while after that party, Kim mentioned to me in passing that she had been asked to take on a Club chore, something having to do with a “Seller’s Fair”, but I must admit, I paid little attention since Kim is always taking on chores for the groups with which she affiliates. She is the primary grunt, from what I can tell, for the MAC Board (The Manhattan Association of Clubs and Cabaret) and has for years handled every menial task that board needs done from membership renewals (including hand-holding the older, less-digitally-inclined members that don’t understand online interactions and just want to go to shows for a discount) to working the gate at the annual gala. Now that Kim is out here and not in NYC, she is gradually working her way to the edges of that organizational post, but will give it up when it feels right to her. Meanwhile, she Chairs the Singnasium board (a not-for-profit) that she co-founded with her “cabaret-husband”, Lennie Watts. Her presence here in San Diego has in no way lessened her vigor for that board and organization and she still actively contributes to that cause on an almost daily basis. She is also now singing as part of the Encore singing group here in San Diego. With her next and only second show with the group, she will be doing an important solo performance, so her obligations to the group now involve two rehearsals per week and what will be an intensive week or two right before the performance. She has yet to take on any administrative duties for the organization, but it wouldn’t shock me to see that happen at some point. Kim’s nature is to be of service.
I grew up with a mother who knew nothing but to be of service. After graduating from Cornell in 1937 she went to work for the New York State Welfare Department and then in 1946 joined the Rockefeller Foundations crew of development specialists in Venezuela, where she developed and implemented programs for needy indigenous people for twelve years. She put in two more years at a Costa Rican tropical institute before going back for her Ph.D. in adult education. She spent three years serving the underprivileged women of America by setting up the first women’s Job Corps center in Poland Spring, Maine and then wrapped up her career with fifteen years with the UN, as a Director with diplomatic status working to head the Nutrition and Home Economics Divisions of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. That was an entire life of service, not even counting the service which did for me and my sisters along the way. I know that I, for one, feel I owe everything I am to her and her alone. So, to say that I am inspired and surrounded by people who are of service is very true.
I’ve put in my time in at the board level trying to be of service. I spent nine years on the board of CARE, working and traveling all around the world trying to help with their mission of relief and development for the eradication of poverty in the world. I have served on almost every board I could find at my old Alma Mater at Cornell, both in the business school and the College of Arts and Sciences. I took a board seat on the College of Staten Island, when I briefly lived there and did what I could for a school that prides itself in elevating the lives of its students, who are very often first generation immigrants. And now I have taught for thirteen years at the graduate level, first at Cornell and now at University of San Diego. I do get paid to teach, but I get paid so little that on an hourly basis I believe I would barely be getting minimum wage. I do it to be of service to younger people, not so much for the school and more for the students themselves, to whom I like being of direct service.
So, the job that Kim has taken on for the Hidden Meadows Women’s Club is to be the vendor coordinator for the Seller’s Fair. That Fair is held perhaps eight times per year in the central parking lot next to the golf club and adjacent to the two delis and the firehouse. That is the sum total of the Hidden Meadows commercial district and yet its location is somewhere almost everyone in the area passes by every day. The idea of the Fair is to provide a venue for vendors to sell their wares to the local inhabitants. Some of them are quasi professional vendors and some are just regular folks who have a craft they like to get out into the marketplace. This is not a heavy-duty fundraiser for the organization, but it does toss in a few thousand bucks per go into the organization’s kitty for events or scholarships or whatever they choose to give their money to. It is really a social event that is about community and collective spirit.
As the husband to the vendor coordinator, I am not obligated to anything, but there is a hope and expectation that everyone in the family will pitch in on some manner. In the past that help has been helping people set up or, more often, break down after the Fair is over. This time Kim asked me to take her on the Saturday before the Fair to chalk mark the vendor spots. I did that and asked if there was anything I could help with. Big mistake! I got roped into bringing first one and then another of my leaf blowers down, and then my shovels and wiggle hoe in order to clean off and de-weed the parking lot. That ended up being a solid two-hour job that made me appreciate what those $20/hour day-laborers do every day for 8+ hours. It’s back-breaking work, but someone’s got to do it and this time was my turn into the breach. But then, I always feel its important to be of service, right?
Today, Kim has just returned from the Fair and she is exhausted after 7+ hours there giving her time and patience to the cause. In the theme of “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” she got yelled at and complained at all morning by unhappy vendors who wanted to be over there instead of over here, vendors who refused to pay their $10 donation for their space on the theory that they “gave at the office”, the guy who gave them free apples (runty little things that looked bitter) only to get pissed because they were required by law to charge for them and not give them away for free, and then, of course, the vendors who simply didn’t show up and never called to cancel. Kim will spend the afternoon napping it all off just like I showered off my parking lot blues yesterday and we will both be ready to be of service yet again, because that is what responsible people are supposed to do, right? Just say “right”, please.