I volunteered at an emergency evacuatation center

Never Done: I volunteered at an emergency evacuatation center

When I woke up on Sunday and realized that there was no flooding in the basement of the house where we live, and that no trees came down on any part of our house or car -- although there were plenty down just 1/2 block away -- so it could have happened) and that there was really no chance of any flooding whatsoever in my neighborhood (I live in one of the highest points in Brooklyn) ... once I realized all that, I knew I had an entire day ahead of me, to do as I wished. One thing I wished was to watch episodes of Friday Night Lights, my new TV rerun obsession. I also wanted to get out and explore my neighborhood in the wake of Irene. But I also -- partly because I had just written about thinking about others during the storm -- wanted to spend some time actively thinking about others, and so I went to the Armory YMCA, which is my wonderful gym, to see if they needed non-Red Cross volunteers.

They did. Sort of. Not really. Josh and I walked over together. First, there were police and National Guard stationed outside, keeping people from getting in and people from getting out. I realized immediately how hard it would be to be in one of these centers. We asked if they needed anything, and the cops did that body positioning thing, where they block you without saying they are blocking you -- without saying anything actually -- until the shelter coordinator came over and said they wouldn't turn away any volunteers. It was an ambiguous answer to the question of whether they needed volunteers, and we soon found out why. But first, we went in to a table set up on the running track, and signed in. We were then sent to talk with the operations coordinator -- a nice woman from Borough Park who had just arrived that morning. Her message to us was that there was really nothing to do. This shelter was for people with medical and developmental disabilities, and so most of the help needed was medical. Nobody was allowed to give out food unless they were medically trained (in case someone was diabetic or had other medical food needs/issues) and they had tons of National Guard guys there for the heavy lifting, so she was not sure what to do with us. But while we stood there talking with her, a Red Cross volunteer came over and asked if any of spoke Russian, because there was a 92 year-old woman in the shelter who barely spoke English, and couldn't fully describe where she lives. The Red Cross volunteer got a degree in Russian 10 years ago, and spoke passably but not fluently. Josh speaks some Russian, but figured it would not be as much as Red Cross woman, so we apologized and declined.

As we were on the way out, it occurred to Josh that maybe the woman spoke Yiddish. We went back over, and were brought over to the woman, and Red asked, but no -- she was not Jewish. But once over there, we discovered that there was a question about the woman's ability to know where she lives -- and maybe not so much a language barrier. We went out again, and Josh again had an idea -- we have plenty of friends who are fluent in Russian, so we called one of them, and reached P while she was at Yidish Vokh (Yiddish Week.) Again we went inside, and again we went to the woman -- and this time explained that we had someone on the phone. This is when the most amazing thing happened. While she was waiting to talk with P, this woman gestured to her cot and to the little plastic container of pudding and apple sauce that the shelter had brought her -- to offer us a place to sit, and something to eat. The gesture was full of grace, and reminded me what it means to be human -- fully human -- to offer something when you have little, potentially not even your complete faculties.

As it turned out, P and the woman spoke, and they got a little than anyone else did -- they got her street corners, but not a house number or apartment number or whether it's a nursing home or a private home. I could tell that it gave a great level of relief and peace of mind to the woman to speak with someone who understood her -- her whole face changed; she felt cared for. When they got off the phone, she thanked us, and once again we left -- for the final time. In the end, this might have been the most important thing we could have done -- to bring comfort, communication, and peace of mind to an elderly woman who was far from home and disconnected from her people. If I ever find myself in such a situation, I hope there are people who can do that for me.

I watched Friday Night Lights

Never Done: I watched Friday Night Lights

Two people have told me (Justine in person, and Jennifer in a Facebook update) how much they love Friday Night Lights. I didn't even know what it was, but I respect both of them so much that I decided to watch it cold, with no prep -- not even knowing the topic.

So imagine my delight when it turned out to be a sports show. High school football in Texas, to be precise. Which had a number of plot elements that were surprisingly relevant to my own personal life. Speaking of which ... I don't know exactly what I'm going to write about in this blog post, but I feel pretty confident that it will contain spoilers, so if you don't want to know what's in the 2006 pilot, stop reading now.

The show follows a coach, several members of the football team, a cheerleader, their families, and community as they head into a season in which its (for some reason) really important that they make it to the State Championships. We see them on Monday, and then on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday and Thursday, and finally at the big game on Friday. One of the players is a drunk, one of them takes care of his grandmother, one of them is African American and touchy about his deceased father. The star quarterback is dating the head cheerleader, and has also been close to the coach since he was a Pee Wee. We get the sense that this team, and this season are particularly important for the coach, but we (at least I) don't yet understand why. From the cinematography and a little of the plot, we get the clear message that this is going to be about race and class as much as it's going to be about football. Also, there's something up with the relationships between the girls and the boys that makes me think it might go deeper than the usual who's dating who.

However, even considering all it had going for it, I spent the first 30 minutes wondering how this show got made, because at its core, it just seemed like another high school sports show. And then it happened. In the middle of the big game, just when we thought the tension was about whether their second half slump was going to result in a loss, the star quarterback -- the one the Notre Dame scout said is the best high school player he'd ever seen, threw a wobbly pass that got intercepted, and when the opponent ran it down the field, he (the quarterback) was the only guy around to block him, and he went down. Hard. And didn't get back up again.

That happened to me too. I wasn't a star, and I wasn't in a big important game, but I was a completely dedicated high school basketball point guard, and I was good. I wasn't amazing, but I was good. I worked incredibly hard at it, and I was playing Varsity in my sophomore year, and I was taking a jump shot, and something happened and I went down in the most pain I had ever felt. I didn't know it at the time, but I tore my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and both meniscus, and also my quadriceps tendon. I was a mess. When I saw in the show that the ambulance was coming for the injured star, and the way that time stopped, I was immediately thrown back to the moment of my injury. I just remember a couple things. I think I screamed fuck and was later made fun of for that, and I remember that nothing really mattered to me except that I was very hurt. I knew a game had to go on, but it wasn't my concern. My concern was that I needed help, and I couldn't move.

My classmate Bruce Maisel took a photo of the moment (which if I were home I would try to find, scan, and post) -- with my left leg splayed out on the floor, and the school nurse Betty Bergendahl tending to me. I've actually found that photo incredibly helpful over the years -- it reminds me of the stillness that I felt in that moment. The stillness that was captured beautifully in Friday Night Lights. One young man's life completely changing; everyone slowing down to care for him, but only long enough to send him elsewhere for care, and then the game must go on.

The other image from the show that brought up a very deep memory was the image of the doctor screwing a halo brace into this young man's head, to stabilize his neck after his spinal cord injury. You know what the halo brace is -- it's the one that sits on the shoulders, and is screwed into the head. My father had one after he had cervical disc surgery. Again, I wish I were home and could scan the photo of him dancing at Claire's wedding with a halo brace screwed into his head. (That's love, Claire.) I wasn't in the room when the halo was put on -- they do that in surgery -- but I was the one who took my dad to the doctor to finally have it removed, and I think it might have been the most vulnerable I had ever seen my father, all because the doctor decided to make a really dumb joke.

The thing is literally screwed into the skull with a cordless Makita drill. I was a carpenter at the time, and used my Makita all the time, so to see something that quotidien being used in such a delicate medical operation was a surprise. But the greater surprise was that after my father had been warned for weeks that one false move, and those screws could enter his skull too far and injure his brain, the doctor "joked" -- as he revved up the drill -- that he couldn't tell which was was forward and which was reverse.

The rage and powerlessness that flashed in my father's eyes were heartbreaking to me, and at the same time, this was the first opportunity I ever had to stand up and protect my father. I took it. I told the jovial young doctor that this was not a moment to joke -- to please remove the screws immediately and with great care. He did, and we left, and my father, though shaken, put the incident behind him. But that moment sealed something between us, and although we never spoke about it over the next 15 years, I know that the fact that I witnessed his vulnerability was a deep part of our bond.

And so I'm hoping that Friday Night Lights might also be about personal vulnerability, as well as racial and economic vulnerability. I have to finish Battlestar Galactica and keep watching Breaking Bad, but I think I'm hooked on yet another show.