Volunteering silently

I’m writing this right now in the middle of my weekly volunteering. I’m helping to run a mystery writing workshop for middle schoolers on Zoom (via 826NYC). In the midst of quarantine, volunteering with this local organization takes only 1.5 hours of my Monday, from the comfort of my own desk at home.

I’ve clearly forgotten how self-sufficient you are by the sixth grade. I keep checking in, out loud, pinging in the chat, looking at the two kids who haven’t turned off the cameras yet in our breakout room away from The Adult In Charge, and there’s truly nothing they need. My interjections every eight minutes or so are really just a hinderance.

It serves as a good example to remind me that sometimes all that’s needed to support someone is to just be there. I often forget that silence isn’t absence. My discomfort, sliding back and forth in my chair, eyes flitting between this screen with the blog and the other with the webcam and kids, is all my own.

I might want to read their writing, hear how they think, understand more than what materializes inside the Google Docs I’m spying on. It’s a bit self serving and thus not the point. They are supported. They don’t need to tell me.

It feels good to do something, even as small as this, as quiet as sitting at my desk, camera on, chat open, for not even a full afternoon, and know that I’m supporting kids in my borough, ever so slightly, to break away from school staring in their apartments to something that’s a little bit for them.

~ ~ ~

Just gave the five minute warning that we’ll be popping back to the main room to give shoutouts and wrap soon. I said I was going to write my own story too if we were going to be so chill, which I guess I technically did. They’re writing mysteries, and I am too.