GOT JOY?

       Where to start? Sometimes I feel as if I did almost nothing on Sunday mornings, and other times I wonder how I did so much. Today it was much, and our CW station kept us revved up with the best of the best.
        As I came in this morning, the gatekeeper was happy to announce that Joey was using the new can opener. At least three of us there feel like "our" can opener was something of a coup.
      We made the soup, again, and served hot dogs with it. Joey spent most of the morning in the dining room, mopping, refilling utensil cups, cleaning windows… the kid knows when to make the best use of extra hands! And we had extra hands: a new community-service "volunteer" showed up around 11, and I put him to work finishing the 2 dozen sack lunches I'd started. Then Joey trained him on the PBJ sacks… It was nice being able to stand over the soup pot, cook some bow-tie macaroni to add to it, and use the tongs to put the dogs in their buns. My apron had a special official glow today.
       Joey made a 99 on last week's vocabulary test—let's hear it for perseverance! He's still throwing "redundant" around like a pro—makes a mom so proud.
       We served more people today than on any Sunday in months. The vegetarian family was there, but the child who wanted a hot dog last month did not ask for one today. His mother asked if there was meat in the soup; I allowed as how there was a little chicken in it; she turned up her nose. Then I offered her three left-over cold plates of cheese pizza. She took them. Later, the child came to ask for milk. I should have taken yogurts and fruits, but it had begun to feel so useless that I stopped. That was wrong.
       "Angry child with blitzed mom" was happy today: his mother did not come to lunch when he did. Joey thought the child wouldn't like that, but I assured him that the child was quite content to not have his mother there to embarrass him. He sat with several adults and I thought he looked at peace. When he came to the counter, I sneaked him two little packets of gummy bears and told him to hide them. He slid them stealthily into his pocket. We had us a secret…
       Got a new pre-release who bears my personal family nose, and I told him so. "I have ancestry with that nose," I said, "my grandfather, my father, my son, my grandson…"
       "Jewish?" he asked, smiling.
       "No doubt," I said, "but it hasn't been claimed in many generations. Still, we cannot deny our 'bergs, Hoovers, and 'steins."
       He sensed that we had a bond—his enormous smile said so. And he's chronically ill, so he couldn't eat what we had prepared and was waiting for his wife to bring his lunch. HOW do these dear, intelligent, loving, people get so far off track as to spend a long time in prison? Why?
       And our young "volunteer" today… just an average American boy… college, capable, and caught. Maybe he'll get a clue from meeting the pre-release folks who weren't smart enough to stop with a little community service.
       As if on cue, the 3rd-floor social worker (Mr. Huggy) came for some lunch just before I left. Got a hug. He had a long report of what he's accomplished in the 2 weeks he's been gone—on the coast, working with hurricane victims.
       There's enough joy to go around… and then some.