As Bloomsburg Shovels Itself Out, Attention Must Be Paid

I am a trained and experienced counselor, so after the disaster I volunteered to be a crisis counselor at Agape, a church in Bloomsburg that is one of three centers where you go to get help. Help in the form of dry clothes, drinking water, food, cleaning supplies, blankets. What I have to offer can't be seen but hopefully it will be useful anyway.

Today I got a call to go there so I pried myself out of my kitchen and showed up. Attention must be paid (one of the last lines of the play Death of a Salesman) to so many people; the ladies who work behind the front desk for a start. After watching them for a while, they reminded me of the Hindu God (or Goddess?) Shiva with six or eight arms. Ringing phones, piles of papers, the Xerox machine spitting out copies of forms. Dazed-looking people wander in and know they need help but they are not sure of what kind; all sorts of people come in who want to give help so badly it tears your heart. Somehow, these ladies behind the front desk consult their lists and find jobs for the people who want to help. Little pieces of paper with telephone numbers fly through the air, numbers of doctors who will give tetanus shots for free, a name of a place that is donating mountains of rubber boots, except that they need someone who has a truck to come and get these boots. The pieces of paper don't get lost and the information is saved and passed on. Just as if one of Shiva's hands lets go of something and another hand catches it.

Attention must also be paid to our local businesses who are giving, giving, giving; boxes of doughnuts, bags of pretzels, hotdogs and hamburgers. The churches in Bloomsburg have sponsored clothing donations, free meals, along with plenty of teenagers who carry heavy boxes, make sandwiches, and (very carefully) ladle hot soup into plastic containers--and make sure that the lids are snapped onto the containers tightly, as they were told to do.

I was able to use my counseling skills three times today and for that I'm grateful. I realize that further down the line support groups might be needed, and I told the lady in charge that I'm ready for that also.

A tall, pretty girl came to Agape today with her mother. The girl stood still, looking down, while her mother asked the lady behind the desk if her 13-year-old was too young to volunteer her services. I could tell; the lady behind the desk really wanted to say yes, 13 is too young to handle heavy loads of supplies and answer the continually ringing phones. But something in her face moved and changed and lightened in some way and she smiled. Of course the girl could help. There was a small mountain of donated clothing in the warehouse that needed sorting. The mother was relieved and the girl, still looking down, smiled.