Good deed no. 312: signed up with an online shopping company that gives a percentage to school funds.
Wednesday, 9 November
Good deed no. 313: updated the Jam Jar Army website. (I’ve been sadly remiss at this, but since it boasts a grand total of two visits a day, it hasn’t made it onto my priority list.)
Thursday, 10 November
Good deed no. 314: hospitality for cousin overnighting to do building work on his renovation.
Friday, 11 November
Got caught up in the singathon at school in aid of Children in Need – with parents paying to sing non-stop for an hour. The very talented woman who does music with the kids was singing her heart out, strumming away on her guitar, but it didn’t do it for me. My mood improved when the kids came in, but I was far too sober to enjoy ‘YMCA’, complete with actions, sitting in the school hall on a narrow wooden bench first thing after drop-off. ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ was my personal low point, although ‘Alice the Camel Had Five Humps’ ran it a close second. At one point, I craned my neck to look up at the clock above the serving hatch and fifteen minutes had passed. Fifteen. There were still forty-five minutes to go and we hadn’t even reached Neil Diamond.
I have been gloomy all day, so perhaps it wasn’t all down to the singathon. This coming Monday is the anniversary of my son’s stillbirth twelve years ago, and 11 November is the day we realized he had died in utero. That’s what happens with death: it casts a shadow over what went before and what comes after. His death, his birth, Remembrance Sunday, all folded up together like a flag. All those people laying poppies for mothers’ sons fallen in battle, while we wept over a Moses basket in a maternity ward. Memories and grief.
So there I was feeling sorry for myself, and I got home and the nicest thing had happened when I wasn’t even looking: Karen, the caring stranger from Twitter whom I invited round for a cup of tea last summer, had sent me a box of bulbs – Tulip Ivory Floradale, pure white, with a lemon trumpet Narcissus Trena and the golden-yellow Narcissus Rapture. Other people’s kindnesses can make you cry.
Good deed no. 315.
Saturday, 12 November
Good deed no. 316: helped another mother’s child around a birthday party roller-disco (my own son needed taking for an X-ray after it).
Sunday, 13 November
Good deed no. 317: planted up a pot of narcissi and tulip bulbs for Stephanie (sharing the gift of spring around).
Monday, 14 November
I am still in one of my insomniac periods which come upon me every now and then. In the few moments I was asleep last night, I managed to dream I was dead. Seriously? I didn’t even know you could dream you were dead. I thought if you dreamed you died, you actually died. I was in a tall modernistic building and sat on a brushed wire rail like you might do as a child, and tipped and fell. And as I fell, I reached to grab at the floors to save myself, only for my fingers to slip off, and to keep falling. I even got to stand to one side and look at my corpse – not many people get to do that. I now know exactly what I am going to look like when I am dead. Lunacy. If I was still in therapy, my therapist would lock me up.
Good deed no. 318: bought gifts for a ten- to fourteen-year-old boy’s shoebox as part of Operation Christmas Child.
Tuesday, 15 November
On the upside, it isn’t yesterday.
Good deed no. 319: encouraged a friend to finish something she started.
Wednesday, 16 November
Catastrophically low in the wake of the anniversary. I had a good deed to do in the city, but when I arrived at Newcastle railway station I had to go into a café tucked away on the far edge of the platform and sit for a while over a cappuccino I didn’t want to drink and a toasted tuna sandwich it was too early in the day to eat. The part of me that was free of the emotional pall this year’s anniversary has thrown over me stayed outside, looking in at me through the window and shaking her head at my self-pity. The rest of me ignored her, preferring instead to stay slumped at the slightly sticky table, watching the hands on the big round station clock go round, feeling bad because I hadn’t ordered tea and because twelve years ago my son had died. I took a gulp of the now lukewarm cappuccino, almost gagging on the sweetness of the hot chocolate dusting, and rang my husband.
‘I can’t do this. I’m coming back home.’
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
‘You haven’t done your good deed, though, have you?’
There was silence on my end of the phone.
Al’s voice was patient: ‘You said you’d do it and you will, because you said you would and that’s who you are.’
I did what I was told.
Industrial estates always make me wish I owned a white van to carry automotive parts or bargain flooring away from them – it’s as if each unit is a portal to an alternative world in which I have no place. At least I had a place today, packing shoeboxes as part of Operation Christmas Child.
I stood opposite a little old lady called Enid, at a long high bench, our handbags between us, and behind each of us piles of gift-wrapped shoeboxes, one on top of the other in a mountain range of jolly Santas, snowmen and sparkling Christmas trees. We were standing because volunteers don’t like to sit. Our job was checking shoeboxes bound for Belarus, which, according to a fact sheet stapled to the wall of the warehouse, has a population of 9.7m and gained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and where a significant chunk of its rural population earn less than $38 a month. According to the fact sheet, it still suffers from the impact of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in the neighbouring Ukraine. This year, Operation Christmas Child is planning to send 270,400 shoeboxes out to Belarus from the UK, another 8,500 from Ireland and 87,965 from Germany. Last year, the Newcastle warehouse alone handled 22,000 boxes to a variety of countries, with another 6,000 coming to it from different collecting centres in the region.
It is heartening to see the thought and time and money and goodwill that people invest in their shoeboxes, with the stripy toothpaste and gel colouring pens and Matchbox cars for the children, the lids wrapped separately from the box. Professional mothers have it down to a fine art, packing the box with every item from the list provided, and while they are doing it, thinking, ‘My children don’t know they’re born.’ Others put in what they can afford. One box I open just has giveaways from McDonald’s, perhaps given again by a child. Jack (a woman), who runs the warehouse, told me that once a box came in containing just a toilet roll and a tin of peaches, and then there was the ‘dead budgie box’, all beautifully wrapped in tissue and presumably meant for burial in the garden rather than a Belarusian orphan – not even orphans are that desperate. Nobody is allowed to tip out a box to inspect the contents – instead volunteers sort through or lift out the contents to make sure there are no liquids, toy guns or anything needing batteries. (The Belarus boxes are not allowed to have playing cards, for instance, and African countries do not like wild animal toys.) On the wall, volunteers are reminded not to judge another person’s gift: ‘We are sending out other people’s Christmas gifts, not our own. If, for instance, a box does not have a hat, then that is the way it goes out. Remember, we are not judging the quality of the box by our personal opinions.’ In reality, however, although there is no judgement of the giver, the shoeboxes are regularly topped up with whatever might be missing from supplies of woollen hats and gloves and sweets and toys and toiletries to make sure ‘we don’t pay to transport air’ and that children aren’t disappointed.
I’m in a groove. Aside from the occasional query about whether something is allowed or not, there is silence among us. It’s like being a reader in a library or an elf in Santa’s workshop. On top of each box we slip the picture-half of an old Christmas card stamped with the words ‘With love from a friend at Christmas’. Enid has something even better: hand-embroidered cards. She passes me a panda she has embroidered and then crafted into a card. ‘Sometimes the children keep the shoeboxe
s even when they’re empty, and the cards as well, so I like to do something special that a child might really like to have by them.’ Later still, she pulls out of a thin plastic bag exquisitely knitted white ribbed hats, some with blue and some with yellow panels; they remind me of stained glass, of treasure. She fits a bonnet in a box as if it were nothing, as if it wasn’t hours of her life when she could be doing something for herself, and seals the box in the usual way with sticky white tape. Standing all the while. I want Enid as my granny. I want every child in the whole wide world to have an Enid.
This is Jack’s seventeenth year with the shoeboxes: ten as a volunteer and seven as an employee. A couple of years ago, she went out to Belarus on a delivery. One child in particular hung around her. She sat with him while he opened the box. In it, the giver had sprinkled Celebration sweets. Andrei worked his way through the box, his face lighting up when he saw something from the Cars movie. A cuddly toy stayed under his arm as he carefully put his gifts back in the box, apart from the sweets, and put the lid back on. ‘He went round all the volunteers with those sweeties,’ said Jack. ‘He had never been able to give anything to anyone before, and he gave all those sweets away.’ She stops for a moment in the telling of the tale. ‘He had a wee friend, and as Andrei came to sit back down, his friend goes into his box and gives Andrei the lollipop he’d been given.’ She shakes her head again at the memory.
Good deed no. 320.
Thursday, 17 November
Cryssie arrived with her idea for a longer writing project: she wants to do something on the Vikings. We did some research on the Viking raids along the Northumberland coast and particularly on the island of Lindisfarne, and talked through some ideas. She has a character in mind called ‘Goliath the Cross’ who carries a sword by the name of ‘Legbiter’, and she wants the Vikings to have sailed out of the past in a dragon-headed ship and into the modern day in search of treasure. At the minute, she is focused on the Vikings arriving at a school she visits and getting into a row with the Christian music group over who pays for their instruments. Historically, the monks were worried enough by the Viking raids that they fled from Lindisfarne with the Lindisfarne Gospels and the body of St Cuthbert (who had died a few centuries earlier), so she could possibly tie in some of that if I can only move her out of the comfort zone of her immediate experience.
I am disappointed by one thing, though. The Operation Christmas Child publicity leaflet says the UK shoeboxes (which I was helping to pack) are an ‘unconditional gift’ to kids based on need, regardless of their background or religious beliefs. But it says that ‘where appropriate’ local partners will distribute a booklet of Bible stories along with the shoebox. (Hmm.) Moreover, the evangelical Christian organization behind OCC, which is called Samaritan’s Purse, says on its website that ‘needy children who received a gift-filled shoebox, without obligation, may be invited to participate in’ Bible lessons. (Double hmm.) These twelve Bible lessons, called ‘The Greatest Journey’, include the warning that come eternity ‘those who do not trust and follow Jesus will be in hell’. Luckily the children have an opportunity to sign a ‘commitment certificate’ that says: ‘On this day I have decided to believe that Jesus is God’s Son and follow Him for the rest of my life.’ I am finding someone else to fill a shoebox for next year.
Good deed no. 321.
Friday, 18 November
Good deed no. 322: ate two chocolate brownies bought in aid of Children in Need (some good deeds are tougher than others).
Saturday, 19 November
I popped into a church coffee morning in the hall in the marketplace rather than going to a café, only to bump into an elderly couple who worship at the same Baptist church as Cryssie and her brothers, and who act as an unofficial granny and grandad to them. The man said they had been at Cryssie’s home last night for a prayer meeting and she had been full of what we were doing together, and what she planned to write.
‘Thank you for doing that for her,’ he said, and touched me on the arm.
‘I’m getting more out of it than I ever expected,’ I said, and only at that moment of hearing myself did I realize that what I said was true. Pompous, presumptuous, I expected a one-way street. I would tell her that bit I know of writing, and she would listen, and she would learn. Not true. Not true at all. She half wobbles, half walks from the car, stepping gingerly onto the paved step in the yard, not wanting to fall and break a bone. She sits down and draws the laptop to her, the muscles so paralysed in her face that sometimes I have to say, ‘Say that again, Cryssie’ when she speaks, and her long, slim fingers tap away at the keyboard and words appear, each one a small miracle – and I do love miracles. I have learned that you work with what you have got, no moans, no if-onlys, that life starts when you turn up for it. I have learned humility and learned respect.
Good deed no. 323: advised Karl on chasing up his application, what to say on the phone and to send his revised CV and letter to other stations.
Sunday, 20 November
Good deed no. 324: took someone else’s child to rugby (the mum was away and the dad was car-less).
Monday, 21 November
Good deed no. 325: helped a little girl not fall over on the train, and helped her mum off the train with the buggy.
Tuesday, 22 November
When you get old, trips to the doctor and to hospital become part necessity and part hobby. I had to go down to Leeds for a ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ deal with Mum and Dad: Dad in the morning for his results on something or other, and Mum in the afternoon ‘with her back’. Not that we could have gone without her back, or only if she slid along the hospital corridors on her belly like Voldemort’s snake Nagini.
My dad’s results were clear, so that was good. I went in with him to see the young doctor and he was busy telling the doctor that he didn’t have any pain and he was feeling all-right-really-thank-you-doctor, and behind him I’m rolling my eyes and waving my hands about like Al Jolson so the doctor realizes my dad isn’t fine at all – he just doesn’t want to be ‘a bother’. Being ‘a bother’ is akin in my parents’ eyes to being a Nazi or a crazed psychopath with a bloodlust for curly-headed tots. It’s not nice and it’s not what you do.
Meanwhile, we have been waiting eight months to get my mother’s back sorted out since she moved the TV in the garage with my dad. Because moving TVs when you’re wracked with arthritis and osteoporosis, and you have recently climbed out of your bed after a major back operation, is what you do when you don’t want to be a bother. The screaming inside my skull started when the nice Scottish doctor told us that the problem isn’t a fractured vertebra high up the spine (as we’d thought), but lower down, around the site of the original problem. In her opinion, my 83-year-old mum might well need to have an operation to take out the two – repeat, two – shunts in her spine (which, I might add, are glued there with bone cement) and shave off some bone from the spine and slip a cage of steel rods round the spinal cord. My mother, who is remarkably game for a deaf, blind woman in constant pain, is nodding along, while I am ready to shoot myself at the sheer horror of it. ‘The only problem,’ my mother says, leaning on her white stick, ‘is that after the last operation, I had a problem coming round. Will they have a note of that? Because I wouldn’t want to be a bother.’
Good deed no. 326.
Wednesday, 23 November
I spent last night at a quirky hotel in London. It was about ten o’clock when I got in and I badly wanted a glass of wine, but the only thing you could order on room service was a glass of bubbly. According to the waitress, the owner doesn’t like people drinking alcohol. Why serve anything then? Or, at the very least, let guests drink what they want but get them to sign a chit saying they are alcoholics and have a medicinal need. The hotel also appeared to be run by a battalion of young foreign women with intriguing accents and all of them dressed in black, and one of them with only one arm, the sleeve of her blouse pinned up against her collarbone. A Japanese family booked in with enormo
us Samsonite suitcases and the receptionist called through for a colleague, and when the skinny young thing came out, the cases weighed more than she did.
I was in London for a good deed. I arrived at the soup kitchen early this morning and then hid from the men hanging round the door waiting for entry. I am such a hypocrite. I shouldn’t have hidden, I should have begun an enlightening conversation with them, or at the very least chatted about the weather. Instead, when my phone rang, I slid around the corner, and by the time I came off the phone the men had gone – even the guy sitting on the chair having his hair cut by his friend. The hostel was down from the Elephant and Castle – a tall shabby building with the Virgin Mary looking down on us. The Missionaries of Charity run a hostel for forty men who get a bed for the night, breakfast and dinner, but who leave the hostel during the day. In the late morning, their places are taken by different men hungry for a lunchtime meal.
The Missionaries of Charity are the order of nuns founded and made famous by Mother Teresa, who in 1979 received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work among the poor. There are now 4,500 members of her order in dozens of countries across the world. I grew up on tales of Mother Teresa, who once said: ‘Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love … The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.’
A Year of Doing Good Page 27
