Paint Your Heart Out

I'm healthy enough to begin volunteering again. Today was my first time back with the meetup.com volunteer group with which I've helped serve breakfast to the homeless, cared for trees in a regional park, and taken a hike with the blind. Today I did some painting for two low-income elderly women through an organization called Paint Your Heart Out.


I arrived at the mobile home park about 8 a.m., the appointed meeting time. I drove about but could only find a group from Target, which was also involved in the Paint Your Heart Out event. I finally located one of the homes that the meetup group was to paint and knocked on the door. A delightful Italian woman--the 90-year-old by the name of Toni--answered the door and invited me in, then made a cup of coffee for me.

Toni's story is typical of many seniors. They bought their houses years ago when prices were cheap and have paid them off, but their living expenses are barely covered by Social Security. Medicare doesn't pay the full bill, so they have hundreds of dollars of uncovered medical expenses each month. In a mobile home park, they may own the home itself outright, but they have to pay a maintenance fee, in Toni's case, it's $700/month, what I consider quite high. So to make a long story short, though she's living in a decent place in a decent neighborhood, she has no money for anything other than food, taxes, medical bills, and car expenses. The last time she had a crew come out and do the painting that we did today, she had to pay $500. So she was very grateful for our help and served us homemade chocolate cupcakes for dessert. (Pizza was provided free of charge to volunteers by a local pizza place.)

I did most of my work, however, at the home of an equally cute 79-year-old named Sonya. She did not interact with us as much as Toni did, though she too was grateful and pleasant. Minthu (pronounced minn tu), a Vietnamese woman about my age, worked alongside me at Sonya's mobile home. We hosed down the outside of her home, then primed her back railing and painted it the same color as her home, a light peach. John, Adrian, and Wiseman, the organizer, painted the eaves on both homes.

Sonya had a shelf that must have been sitting outside for decades. It was covered in dirt. She asked that we paint it. A few of us had a go at cleaning it. I even used the power setting on the garden hose. All to no avail. We left that job undone.

Since I have to be careful about dust and contaminants, I wore a mask the entire day except while eating lunch or taking a water break. I don't want to do anything to damage Pinkie, my new kidney.

At one point during the day, John and I drove to another location to help a Starbucks work group. They were at a hoarder's house, cutting down a bouganvilla bush that had overtaken one side of the house. John and I went with the woman of the house into the backyard and attempted to hide our horror at what we saw. Piles of newspaper that had been left outside for years. Mountains of empty plastic bottles. Machinery that may have worked some time in the past but were now missing multiple parts and had been rusted through and through. Too many odd things for my mind to fully grasp with such a brief look. We politely told the woman that we didn't have the equipment to do the job right now. Through the windows, we could see that stuff was piled to the ceiling. Hoarding is a not-uncommon disorder in America.

I really like the people who volunteer for these meetup events. They tend to be young and enthusiastic. I like their energy. I encourage all to get involved with their communities. It's a far better way to save the world than getting involved with politics. Isn't that the truth!