Thursday, December 06, 2007

first writings about Ronald McDonald House

Sunday was my third volunteer session with Ronald McDonald House. The House sits only six blocks from my San Francisco crash pad, and I enjoy the walk despite it being along busy streets.

Volunteering has exceeded my expectations by far. It gives me mental clarity, somehow. Sometime during the three hours of vacuuming, laundry, picking up free Starbucks pastries, cleaning the fridge, and other sundries, life comes into focus. Decisions become easier.

My friends do not empathize.

"Do you even do these errands for yourself?" they say.

"No," I say, "I hire housecleaners."

"So you're probably not even very good at doing them. I could just hire housecleaners for Ronald McDonald House, and it would be more effective than you volunteering."

I find something awe-inspiring about being around the families. The House consists of ten bedrooms, one for each family. To qualify, the family must have an under-18 child in the hospital, and must reside over 50 miles away. The House provides them a place to stay, since it's impractical for them to drive home daily. Since this House is close to UCSF, most of the residents are new parents with prematurely born babies. These babies often weigh only a pound or two, and stay in Intensive Care for weeks.

On Sunday, two volunteers from Deloitte cooked a pasta dinner, and three families came down to supper. We ate at square tables, over quiet conversation. I sat with one couple, whose son has a dangerously weak immune system.

There is an impressive quality to these families. They talk about their baby in the hospital, the surgeries, logistics of where they're staying. They throw out medical terms about maintaining this-or-that above 400, or inserting a tube to drain the something-something fluid. They ask where I'm from and how long I've been volunteering. They make jokes.

Through it all, they are calm. There are almost always two of them. A young couple. A teen girl with her father, or her grandfather. They often have relatively low income, and are going through one of the biggest crises of their lives, but their unwavering support for each other is clear to see. They have each other's backs. It's inherent in the way they sit together, talk, eat. It's so ingrained that it's taken for granted -- and not in a bad way.

It is really nice to see. It's a welcome change from the glitz of Silicon Valley, with the gold-rush mentality and dissatisfied multi-millionaires and geeks-turned-players and hype and glory and excess.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice!
Ronal McDonald House in Barcelona is just a few steps from home, but i could never imagine that they'd take volunteers, i think i will go and take a look at this :))

Anonymous said...

Two thumbs up

Unknown said...

This is a great post. Contemplative, insightful and thoughtful.

"'We receive but what we give,' Coleridge write, but I'm not so sure. I have tried to give, not in order to receive in my turn, but simply to give, for I learned long ago that there is no quid pro quo in life, no fair exchange of grief for good fortune, of sympathy expended for comfort received."

Responsibility to respond, What one friend owes another
By Diane Cole
Excerpted from M.S. (Dec. 1986)
Utne Reader, Sept./Oct 1993, p. 84-85.

Anonymous said...

Yeah yeah, whatever, so easy for you to say with your millions in the bank.

Aren't YOU exactly one of those dissatisfied multimillionaires?

Anonymous said...

I'm glad that you enjoy volunteering. It reminds us that the world is made up more than that depicted in "Here Comes Another Bubble".

N said...

Pedro, if you decide to volunteer for the Barcelona Ronald McDonald House, come back and tell us how it went. :)

Anonymous said...

Niniane, Thanks for removing the second instance of "awe-inspiring". It was bugging me and I was going to point it out yesterday but I'm glad you noticed it too. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Be nice....

Niniane is struggling with the questions of life like all of the rest of us.


Fun to read anothers adventures.

KwangErn Liew said...

Cool. :)

The right perspective with the focused perceptions is so important these days. It separates two types of people in this world - the closed minded and open minded.

You are an open minded person. :)

Anonymous said...

This post gave me chills and then brought tears to my eyes. I too have been too caught up in the hype of making millions in Silicon Valley. Thank you for your insightfullness.