I have many gifts, but looking at a person's body and translating their size and shape into numbers or small-medium-large is not one of them. It’s not the yoga way really...but that’s another letter to you...
The hardest volunteer shift for me at the Catholic Respite Center (CRC) in McAllen, TX was in the clothes closet.
Typically here is how the system went:
- Donations come in bags and boxes.
- Volunteers sort clothes and shoes into Men’s and Women’s, Children and Infants.
- After one-half to one-third of the items are sorted, volunteers leave.
- Clothes and shoes sit in piles.
- New volunteers come in, see the chaos, and begin sorting.
- New rules applied: no tank tops or spaghetti straps, no inappropriate logos, no used underwear, no holes or stains (Restoring Dignity, y’all).
- Volunteers leave.
- Traveling families arrive and stand in line for clothes before taking a shower.
- Volunteers arrive and ask, “How can we help?”
- Staff directs volunteers to clothes closet. Everything is in piles that made sense to the previous shift of volunteers.
- New volunteers have 2.5 minutes per family to determine size and fit and send them to the showers.
- Volunteers are taught the words: Pronto! Pronto! Eso o eso? Más largo? Más pequeño?
From the families we learn the word for “belt” and “hat” and “sports bra” and “boxers not briefs.”
Dignity, Señora. Where is it? It was not in the last load of donations.
It was hot and stuffy in the clothes closet. Boxes and bins were brought in and shoved out. Twice on Saturday, some amazing volunteers brought already-sorted-by-size, brand new clothes in labeled bins. These volunteers had been at the CRC the day before and recognized the wasted time in sorting dirty donations. They had raised thousands of dollars on social media and then shopped for appropriate clothing.
One (of the many) hard things was when a volunteer wanted pictures of the children’s faces as they received their new clothes so they could thank the donors. AWKWARD. That’s "torpe" in Spanish.
My first sorting-clothes shift was with Maria and Chema, a mother and son team who lived in the area. Maria spoke only Spanish and Chema, both English and Spanish. They taught us to weed out the XL and XXL since the current group of families were petite sizes. We were throwing clothes into boxes to refold and in a bag to go to the Salvation Army. I held up one shirt to Maria and asked her which category this shirt went into? She said, "UGLY."
I had a good giggle over the only English word she said. I think she understood the Restoring Dignity part the best.
Senora, do you remember how big the marching band was at the high school in the '90's? My son will be a freshman there this year, and the band is still big. He and I went to size his band shoes the day before I flew to McAllen. When he tried on those huge-looking, white patent leather lace-ups with thick white soles, my eyes got teary with excitement and pride, and my mouth grinned at how ugly they were. Out of context without the whole uniform, Maria would have put them in the Ugly Box.
Saturday night, after working at the CRC all day and preparing to do the same on Sunday, I had a dream.
I dreamt I hired a babysitter to play with my kids, then I took my minivan to an empty parking lot to sort all of the donations in the back. Someone had donated multiple bags of shoes and I needed some time and space to sort them. A friend arrived on a bicycle with her two children and they crashed into a tree, then stood up unharmed. They walked over to my bags of shoes. Together we brainstormed how to quickly organize and label them so we could pass them out to those in need. We decided to rubber band the shoes together with the soles facing out, then we would write with chalk "M" for mujeres and "H" for hombres, then the number size of the shoe. We could line them up numerically and distribute. We high-fived each other at our brilliant plan!
We leaned over to open the bags of shoes and out poured only huge-looking, white patent leather lace-ups with thick white soles. My friend and I looked at each other, looked at the white shoes, then looked at our hands which were holding only white chalk. Plans thwarted, all to the Ugly Box.
The first time a woman came in the clothes closet with an ankle bracelet strapped above her foot, I couldn't stop staring. I had heard about them, seen pictures of them, knew in my head they were real, but my heart, mi corazón, could not make sense of seeing it in person. My brain kept saying, "This is real. This is real."
If you are wearing skinny jeans, or tightly tapered jeans before getting an ankle bracelet to track you, how do you change your pants? You cut your jeans.
If the only available pants in your size are skinny jeans or tapered, how do you get them over the new ankle bracelet? I don't know. I couldn't watch.
Señora, this is real.
The fevers, the crying, the coop-ed up children, the mischievous tweens, the bored and tragic teens, the worried mamas, the vigilant dads - it's all real. And in my dreams I only have band shoes and white chalk.
I miss you, Señora.
Con amor,
Mollie
***A list of items to send to the Catholic Respite Center coming soon. They need a bigger facility and are currently accepting donations towards the building so they can serve more people in need:
http://sacredheartchurch-mcallen.org/immigrant-assistance/donate-now/
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