Lots of folks have asked me what I am up to this summer, a summer that is proving to be one of transition and re invention or some such newness. My pat answer in grown up speak is that I am the Assistant Director of East Nashville Hope Exchange. Hope Exchange is a five week reading enrichment program for kids in East Nashville. We are located at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church at the corner of Woodland and 5th Street.
That is the technical job description anyway. The real job description is chief snack maker, sometime cheerleader, field trip coordinator, lemonade creator, Kool Aid chef, reading buddy, nurse on call, track coach and sometime pace maker, and anything else that gets tossed my way. I am learning to make Kool Aid. I need a taste tester every day almost. And always the reaction is that it needs more sugar. So I add a boat load more mix…more than any human being should have especially if they are 4 feet tall and are going to be confined for the next hour and a half. But my 6, 7, and 8 year old taste testers tell me it is getting better. I am grateful to add that to my transferable skill set.
I usually spend my time with sick kids, kids that are dying, or their parents who are grieving their loss. So this summer is an experiment in life. It has been a welcome and needed break. I have watched a 6 year old girl with fire in her eyes knock over a boy who wouldn’t let her play football. All the little girls thought her a hero of sorts. And all the big girls secretly cheered for her too. We have had our share of homesickness – the 6 year old who only sees her Dad before work in the morning and another little girl who wanted to hang out with her mom because the day was “too long”. Her mom works 2nd shift at the Fire Department. Her days are too long too.
We have read “Pig Boy”, a book about an adventurous little pig who morphs into what he needs to become as life throws him adventures. He ends up like the rest of us, wanting his mom at the end of the day. There was Sam the Hot Dog man who retired at the bakery only to open a hot dog stand and work 10 – 2 every day so he could fish with his wife. He also saved some kids from a snowstorm since his hot dog van was warm and had food. And then there was Moses who taught me and 2 others about sign language and music at the concert he had. Oh and there was the bus ride through the human body…only to have us sneezed out at the end of the day. If I had had that one as an 8 year old, I really would have been a doctor.
There are more adventures to come I am sure. We have two more weeks. My hope is that these 40 kids will gain some good reading skills, learn that life presents them with opportunities and choices to make, love with the abandon that they have now already, and they live into what they are created to be. Perhaps they might remember how it is to run with abandon to the fence and back and then do it again until they fall over or will roll down a hill and try to stand up straight afterwards. Life makes us dizzy but it passes soon enough.
Or maybe they will just teach me all of this.
