I shared with you my “joyful” experience at the sheltered workshop, but now let me tell you about one of the volunteer sites that I loved. I don’t know what it’s called in other states, but here in New York, it was called adult daycare. a place where the elderly came for the day while their loved ones worked.

My job was simple: keep them busy. In my first week, all 30 of the people were excited for me to come in. Fresh meat meant fresh ideas. I noticed right off the bat that at this small round table sat one woman who was alone and was “branded” as mean, and to not push her to engage with others. The table was facing a wall and had magazines stacked up on one side. My heart wasn’t ok with that. I asked the other workers what her deal was, and all they said was she just is miserable and only likes to look at and cut out magazines. They couldn’t even get her to tell us what she wanted for lunch.

One day, I asked if I could sit and eat my lunch with her. She said, “No talking, Miss Tish.” My thought was great, another place I couldn’t talk. For weeks, I ate my lunch with her in silence. She watched me like a hawk, trying to figure me out, which was exactly what I did to her too. A month of eating lunch with her, and she finally spoke! She asked me if I could color with her if she brought in a coloring book. I said, “Of course.” The other staff looked shocked when she came in with a huge box of Crayola crayons and 2 notebooks of Disney characters. She gave me a picture from the movie Bambi.

When we first started talking, it was because I shared a memory of my dad taking me to see Bambi in the theater. She had taken her kids to see it too. We bonded over Bambi, of all things. I remember seeing her look at the wall with this distant look in her eyes, but just as quickly as she let me in, she shut me out. I said, “Miss Margeant, what can I do to help you be happy here?”I can’t explain the look she gave me, but I felt like it was a look of disbelief, like she didn’t trust me to care enough to ask that. She held up all her magazines that had become scraps because she had cut out nearly every picture. I checked the date, and it was from 2 years ago. When I got my next paycheck from the sheltered workshop, I went and bought every type of magazine, from muscle cars to teen magazines to Better Homes and Gardens. Walking in the next day, I dropped the whole stack of them on her table. She looked confused, and when I said, “These are for you,” she smiled and cried and said, “You listen,” that began our friendship. That point on, I was her person, the only one she would talk to, and we laughed a lot over shared memories and my crazy dreams.

When I asked my mom to bring her karaoke machine in and sing for the daycare. Miss Margeant lost her mind when Mustag Sally was sung, and I lost my balance because she pulled me to the middle of the room to “Jitterbug.” (Fyi i didnt know how to jitterbug, and I still don’t.) My only thought was, God, please don’t let her slip and break a hip. But she didn’t. We danced to every song til lunch. Margeant said that it was her best day ever, and that made my year! We became even closer when I had my son and brought him in to see everyone. Miss Margeant held him the longest with the sweetest smile. Giving me tons of tips and suggestions was a daily thing from all the women in the group.

I also learned a valuable thing from my time there. BINGO is a serious business to these people. Women would get into arguments for the dollar store prize. Guys would yell across the table, “You cheated!” or “You can’t even see the letters.” It was wild!

I loved working here, but I left when Miss Margeant died. It wasn’t the same; her little table was moved to a different spot, and the other people didn’t seem to care or even notice. But I did. She was a woman who just wanted to have simple pleasures in her life. My only hope is that she knew how much she meant to me.