Senior Birthday Club

Location: Judge Fisher Apartments

Date: Tuesday, October 01, 2013; 6:30-8:00 pm

I had not signed up in advance for any projects, and so was looking at options on the Chicago Cares calendar in the afternoon.  Every project this evening was full barring this one, which I had never heard of.  I signed up anyways, and took a long train ride up North.  Not being in a familiar neighborhood, I once again reverted to my old habit of walking in the wrong direction Luckily, I corrected just in time to arrive at a building, which had a small fountain on the exterior.  I was impressed by this and walked in to find that Rosie from Chicago Cares was there with some volunteers.  She said that today was the very first session of this project, meaning I was one of the very few to be present at the inception of a new Chicago Cares program.  Well, it was something I could brag to Wilson about.

One of the volunteers looked familiar and he was Jason, with whom I had worked at Lakeview Pantry.  Well, it had been a busy time for us that day, as we had to sort and stack plenty of cans in the back room of the pantry.  He mentioned that he was in fact the new leader for this program and the reason Rosie was here, was to get him set in his ways.  Besides him there were two other volunteers, Alissa and Tiffany and one other gentleman who was bagging candy.  We joined him and Jason asked if he worked for Rosie.  He replied in the affirmative and then added, “I am her father”.  First time I had met Rosie at 'Game Night At Pomeroy’,  she had brought along her two brothers.  Now it was her father.  If nothing else, Rosie was extremely skilled at recruiting family members for the projects!

The gentleman, whose name was Emmett, told us to pick assorted candy from the pile, and bag about 11 pieces in each of them.  These bags were to be handed to the guests as party favors when they left and we were making them as festive as possible, with colored tie wraps tied around the open ends.  While we did this, the other volunteers were blowing balloons and putting them all over the room.  This was after all a birthday party!  As we finished the bags, Emmett realized that we had forgotten to open one entire bag of candy.  So the three of us reopened all the bags, poured the candy back into the pile and integrated the new stuff into this mixture.  Then we started bagging 10 candies per bag.  Hold on.  Something doesn't add up.  We had found a bag of extra candy and were subtracting one candy from the original count.  Am I missing something here? Emmett said that the idea was to make additional bags. With this new count and repeating the earlier process, we soon finished with the candy bags and were ready to move on to the next task.

Birthday treat

Jason and I went inside the kitchen to prepare the birthday cake – butter pound cake to be precise.  This was a boxed cake from the grocery store, but with some fresh bananas and whipped cream on top, Voila!  It was a whole new dessert. Emmett showed us a sample plate and it was quite straightforward. While Jason cut the cake, I chopped the bananas and started arranging them in a nice pattern on the cake.  Emmett looked at it and said that there was no need for a design and I should just pour it on top.  Well, it would be a dessert all right, but without ‘Michelin’ quality presentation!  With this raw technique we were churning out cakes rapidly as the women served them and very soon all the residents had received a plate of the cake.  We went outside just as the evening’s main activity was about to commence.  Rosie asked if anyone in the room was celebrating a birthday in October and one of the gentlemen raised his hand.  Well, that was enough for us and so we sang him a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ and some of the residents joined in as well.  After that, it was Bingo time. 

Our Bingo Board

Being the first ever project at this site we had some difficulty in locating things, but managed to find the Bingo balls and the rotating drum.  However we were missing the board on which the balls are placed once they come out of the drum.  That would be a problem since we needed to see which numbers had been called.  Emmett had an easy solution to this.  He took a piece of paper, made 5 columns and wrote B-I-N-G-O on top, with one letter in each.  Now as the numbers came out, all one had to do was write them down in the appropriate column. Brilliant!  With Bingo set to go, Rosie and Emmett left and now it was up to us.  Tiffany was going to call the numbers and I was going to write them down on the paper.  Tiffany was putting the balls on the table as they came out and soon the inevitable happened with them going flying all over the place.  I got her an empty box and all she had to do was drop them in there once they were out.  It was fun to improvise.

As the game proceeded, I noticed that one gentleman was missing a lot of numbers.  I indicated to Alissa that she should sit with him and help point out, and soon he was on his way.  Another gentleman who was sitting across from me was not winning.  He kept waving his card as a hand-fan and said that with his luck, this was what the card was good for.  I told him that he should not give up and I guaranteed that he would not leave empty-handed.  Alissa was now calling the numbers and the gentleman in front had a new card, and neither changed his luck!  Then I realized why he wasn’t winning.  He was dozing off periodically and missing some of the numbers.  He would then wake up and start complaining.  

There were the usual Bingo prizes, with dishwasher soap and laundry detergent being hot commodities, whereas kitchen and bathroom roll were left for the end. Time was running out and so we did a lighting round for 8 prizes, all of them these paper rolls.  Even then it was taking a long time and so we just gave out the prizes to those who had not won.  The gentleman in front seemed to have a lot of friends in this place since many gave him their extra prizes.  Before he left I handed him the goody bag with the candy and said that as promised earlier, I was ensuring that he would leave with something.  Then I went in the kitchen to wash-up and clean the dishes.  I wished Jason luck for this program and said that he should make a permanent Bingo board and use chips to put on the numbers.  This way he would not require more paper.  It had been a wonderful evening that had taken away my stress from the day.  Birthday’s for me are special and need to be celebrated. My mom always ensured that mine was memorable, and later I have been fortunate to have had friends who have done the same.  Our seniors deserve the same treatment, if not more. Wilson once told me that we never know if any birthday celebration may be the last one for some of these seniors. We owed it to them, and to ourselves, to throw them a fantastic party. So what if the boxed cake wasn't real. Our intentions and efforts most certainly were.