Fiction: Repairing Rita
By Rita Plush
arttimesjournal Oct 10, 2021
Though the concept of repairing the world through good deeds known as tikkun olam, had never been spelled out for me when I was a youngster, like most things I learned from my parents, I absorbed their deeds more than their words.
During WWII, my dad in his air raid warden helmet and armband, getting people in our building to turn off their lights, my pretty mom as a class mother in her upsweep and Clara Bow lips on our visit to the local fire house, how proud I was. So it wasn’t a far reach when my children were of age that I became a Brownie leader and den mother for their scout troops.
Years later, I organized a Mitzvah Day for my synagogue and sent our many volunteers to the Margaret Tietz Nursing Home, St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital, the Ronald MacDonald House for pediatric cancer patients. Students signed up as part of their schools’ Community Service fulfillment. It was satisfying to use my organizational skills and see this project to fruition. I was getting things done and motivating others, something I have always enjoyed.
As part of my community involvement, I joined the daily minyan at my synagogue never realizing how much I would need my fellow congregants to recite the Kaddish prayer when my parents died. And more recently for my son, from a long and terrible illness. Saying Kaddish gave me some semblance of control, when in truth, I had no control at all. To make it worse, Covid struck.
There had to be something more than mindless reflex buying. Something constructive, something positive to put into my life during the lockdown. Surely, there were those less fortunate than I. Couldn’t I help someone? Do something for someone, instead of filling my time and my cupboards with things I didn’t need?
And then one day I read an article about Queens Community House, an agency that offered programs and services to its citizens in need. They were looking for phone friends—people willing to commit to an hour, every week, for six months to call an elderly shut-in. Hmmm… was that something I could do? Wanted to do? Who would they pair me with? Would we hit it off? Would I find things to talk about? Would calling become a chore, something I would regret and do out of obligation instead of whole-hearted intent?
I stopped overthinking, filled out the application, submitted the references they requested and waited for my shut-in.
By the time they got back to me Covid restrictions had been lifted. I was out and about, sidewalk dining with my friends, ohming away on my yoga mat. Did I need this add-on to my schedule? But I’d said yes, gone through the interview process and the prep with other new volunteers. I couldn’t opt out now because I found better things to do. Easier things actually; I was still a little afraid of the commitment.
They paired me with Sara. In her 90s, Sara has a pulmonary problem and sometimes finds it difficult to breathe. But not to talk. In the short time I’ve known her, she’s told me about her family (two children she doesn’t often see, her husband passed years ago), her regrets (“I didn’t make enough of myself.”) and the despair she feels when someone is rude. (“Why can’t people be nice!?”) she has asked me more than once.
When I filled her in about some of my interests, she said I was probably too busy for her. I didn’t have to call every week. But I do have to call. To experience that delighted “Hi!” that put a high note into my day.
“I enjoy talking to you. I do it because I want to help someone.”
“Ah ha!!” she said. “I knew you had to get something out of this.”
Sara may have a lung ailment, but there’s nothing ailing her brain.
For some reason I’m my kindest, most attentive self with Sara. She has taught me to listen rather than fill a pause with the sound of my own chatter. Normally all mouth, I’ve become all ears, waiting for the right words to come to her.
To contribute to my community, to feel good about myself, a sense of obligation to give, are all wrapped up in my volunteering. Yet I sometimes wonder why this one-on-one with Sara has given me so much.
My children are AARP members; my grandchildren, off to college, don’t need me as once they did. Stepping outside my own life into Sara’s has somehow filled part of that space my family once occupied. Or maybe it’s my son. Those conversations we had, the bond we formed before he passed. How essential to his wellbeing I had become. Maybe Sara is putting some of that back.
Repairing the world? I think it’s me I’m stitching up—one phone call at a time.