Preschool for Grown-Ups

Every week I volunteer at the senior center near my house. My partner and sixteen-year-old daughter go too. Sometimes we go together, sometimes on our own. We all love it. Since COVID hit, the center has been closed for day programming and reconfigured to make and deliver hot lunches to homebound seniors. 

The work is incredibly monotonous but surprisingly satisfying. Each day we lay out close to two hundred lunch bags and hot food containers. Then we dollop out the meal for the day. Chicken in one compartment, potatoes in another, broccoli in a third. The meals vary day to day according to what donations have been provided to the center.

The volunteers push the different food items on individual carts, scooping in their particular item until the food container has a full meal. Then we go down the lines of food-filled tables and close the containers. When all of the containers are closed we put the hot food containers into paper bags with a few more goodies such as a piece of fruit or some cookies. Once all of the lunches are bagged we put them in carts and wheel them outside for another set of volunteers to load into a van and deliver door to door. 

From start to finish it takes about three hours to get the meals prepared and set up for the following day. This morning as I was scooping potatoes with another volunteer who was scooping bok choy, we started chatting. I don’t even remember what we were talking about, only that every once in a while one of us chuckled. She was going down one side of the aisles and I was going up the other. We were back to back so weren’t looking at each other.

I thought to myself, this is the perfect kind of socializing for me right now. It’s like parallel play in preschool. We’re both doing our own thing and coming back together periodically to check-in. Around the big room, other people were behaving similarly. 

At the long table where we cut fruit and cake into individual servings and prep ingredients for the main courses, one volunteer was chopping onions at one end of the end of a table and another was putting little pieces of canteloupe into containers for lunch tomorrow at the other. As they worked they’d chat periodically and I could tell that, like us, they were smiling beneath their masks.

We were all happily, independently working but also in community with each other. It’s kind of like pre-school for grown-ups. We all gravitate towards the tasks we are good at and enjoy. Tina seems to always find her way to chopping onions. She likes it. Today when I teased her about it she said, “I like knife work!” 

Troy breaks down all of the boxes. He has a Swiss Army knife on his belt; it’s perfect for him. He breaks them down and neatly lines them up in a corner. I like to put all the different parts of the lunch in the bags and fold them into tidy little bundles. The supervisor likes us to put the bags into groups of ten. I happily count them out and pause at the end to admire the finished product of our group handiwork.

Working at the senior center is one of my favorite activities of the week. I take a break from my workday on Wednesdays and sometimes Fridays and run over there for an extended recess. I realize that this level of socializing — in masks, while doing my own thing, not getting too deep, is exactly what I am capable of right now.

We’ve all been socially isolated for such a long time that regular human interaction can feel strained and awkward. But at the senior center there is no pressure. We all have something to focus on and when we do talk or engage, it is light and easy.

I remember when I used to work at my daughter’s preschool and the kids would often be doing their own things. One playing in the kitchen while close by another built with legos. Maybe the kid playing with legos would bring a creation over and put it in the pot on the stove and the kids would share a moment. They might exchange a few words or laugh at how silly it was to put a dinosaur in the soup. 

In preschool, the kids were never made to sit and have forced conversations. That would never have worked. There would have been four-year-old anarchy. To stay calm, engaged, and productive, they needed to focus on their own interests. 

As we move through life, from preschool to kindergarten, through elementary school, high school and into adulthood, we are socialized to entertain others, not ourselves. That’s where social pressure comes from and that’s why, when we’re out of the habit, we can’t figure out how to socialize.

Working at the senior center is my happy place, my preschool for grown-ups. I’ll definitely keep working there after the pandemic. Who knows, it may become all the socializing I need.