My first easter celebrations

Every year Easter, passover and other holidays comes and go. An occasional wishes in my email account or some wonderful cards. Some times I don't even notice that these days come and gone. This is one of cultural and religious thing that you wont get it when you live as a transplant. No matter how long you live in that situation, its still foreign to you. I hope one of these days I will live longer in this step-mother lather and will get used to it. Perhaps I may become one of the local Yankees. Wish me luck in that department.

This year it turned out to be a different one. Few months back I saw this ad on Craig's list looking for Volunteers for Little brothers organization. The ad asked for volunteer application for socializing with elders in Boston area. I thought it was a cool opportunity and fired and email. Promptly I got an email from the organization with an attachment. As usual the hotmail service delivered it to the bulk email and I forgot to move it and it was deleted in a day or two. Few weeks passed before I remembered. I wrote back to inquire whether they are still looking for Volunteers and the email came back quickly with the application form.

I filled in the form and faxed it over the next day. Part of the screening process, my background was screened. Everything went thru and I was invited for a orientation program at Little Brothers office in Jamaica Plain.

The orientation program was very informal, met Mindy Newman the Volunteer coordinator. She went over the mission of the organization and how they organization serve Elders 70 and above in the Boston area. Most of the elders live alone, limited income and they are lonely. This is what capitalism does to the society. The constant independent ME ME ME attitude leaves a lot of people alone. Does the society really care for the elders, yes it does. But we don't have any time for them. Visiting them once in 3 months or taking them out for dinner on a holiday is not enough. We need to make sure that we are part of their lives. Its very easy to say and done I guess. I came to know that Little Brothers organization does a food drive on Easter day. Volunteers distribute hot meals to elders and spend some time with them. I signed up for that program and looked forward for Apr 16th.

The day came with a bang. What a weekend. I spend the Sat filled with meditation class, wonderful cooking class and a party at a dear friends place. I was all ready, rested, energetic, scrubbed clean, dressed well and left for the Northeastern University cafeteria so that I can be there by 10am. The day was wonderful, sunny, warm, windy and the spring weather was great. I enjoyed the short ride from my home to North Eastern university. Spring colors were everywhere. Somehow the people got into that mood and they looked very cheerful on the streets. As usual, finding my way to the location and finding parking was bit of a challenge, but hey it wasn't bad after all. Once I found the right street, the cafeteria was easy to find by the colorful balloons and some cheerful volunteers were there answering our questions.

The cafeteria was brimming with lots of activities. People from every walk of life were there. Individuals, families, community groups, etc etc. I registered myself and underwent a quick orientation program. After the brief program I head to the section where I was supposed to choose the elders. I picked up Brighton for no reason and I was assigned two elders. Both of them women, both of them spoke English and Russian. I picked up the meals, flowers and some wonderful gift packet from Girl scouts and headed to Brighton.

I used to live in Brighton so finding my way to finding the elders was not that difficult. After a quick drive, I was there looking at the housing complex. I have driven thru that corner 100's of times and never realized that the building was a housing complex. Thought it was a condo complex. I was bit nervous wasn't sure how the situation will be. My first biggest fear was not able to get their trust and not able to give them the meal I bought. The second fear was not been able to converse with them. Let us face it, English is not my native tongue either and that was giving me some hardtimes. Well, nothing to loose, just with the hot meals in tow I arrived at the location. I was lucky that both the Women lived in the same building.

I had a wonderful time visiting the two women. They were very happy to receive me and enjoyed my company very much. In spite of some the barriers like language, cultural etc we connected at the human level. Once we did that, we perfectly understood each other. All my doubts went away. Well I am waiting to learn Russian in couple of months from one of the ladies and the other one wanted me to get married to a nice girl and have min of 2 kids.

(Leaving most of the details out for privacy reasons).

At the end of the day, it left me wondering about the next holiday.