Safe Harbour

She walked into the same lobby she'd seen the day before. It was a large open room hung with posters, and paint chipping off the walls. There was a long desk and a different receptionist than she'd seen. She was a middle-aged African American woman who was manning both the desk and the phones. She looked competent and pleasant, and had tightly braided salt-and-pepper hair, and she looked up expectantly at Ophélie. In spite of the simple clothes she'd worn, she looked well kept and beautifully groomed, and she looked out of place in the threadbare room. None of the furniture matched and it all seemed beaten up. It was easy to guess they'd gotten it at Goodwill, and there was a coffeemaker with styrofoam cups in the corner.

“May I help you?” the woman at the desk asked pleasantly.

“I have an appointment with Louise Anderson,” Ophélie said quietly. “I think she's the head of volunteers.” And with that, the woman at the desk smiled.

“That and the head of marketing, donations, ordering groceries, supplies, PR, and hiring new talent. We all wear a lot of hats around here.” It sounded interesting to Ophélie, as she walked around the room, looking at posters and literature, while she waited. She didn't have long to wait. Two minutes later, a young woman seemed to burst into the room. She had bright red hair like Pip's and wore it in two long braids down her back, one hanging over the other. She obviously had a huge mane of hair. She was wearing combat boots and jeans, and a lumberjack shirt, but in spite of it, she was obviously pretty, and looked utterly feminine. She had a lithe grace, like a dancer, and was small like Ophélie and Pip. But she exuded energy, and kindness, enthusiasm and power. She had a take-charge style about her that suggested confidence and ease.

“Miss Mackenzie?” she asked with a warm smile, as Ophélie stood up to greet her and nodded that she was. “Will you follow me?” She walked with a quick, sure step to a back office, with a bulletin board that covered an entire wall. There were bits of scrap paper, bulletins, announcements, messages from government agencies, photographs, and an endless list of projects and names. It was overwhelming just looking at all she presumably had on her plate. On the opposite wall were photographs of people at the Center, and her small desk and chair and two chairs for visitors, nearly filled the small, sunny room. Like her, the room was tiny, cheerful, chock full of information, and blatantly efficient.

“What brings you to us?” Louise Anderson asked, smiling warmly straight into Ophélie's eyes. She was clearly not the normal profile of their volunteers, who were usually college students, or grad students accruing hours toward a social work degree, or people who were somehow related to their field.

“I'd like to volunteer,” Ophélie said, feeling shy.

“We can sure use all the help we can get. What are you good at?” The question stumped her for a minute. She had no idea, and even less of what they needed from her. She felt totally out of her league. “Or maybe I should say what do you like to do?”

“I'm not sure. I have two kids.” She winced as she said it, but correcting it would have sounded pathetic, she thought, so she didn't. “I've been married for eighteen years…or was…” She was brave enough to say that at least. “I can drive, shop, clean, do laundry, I'm fairly good with kids, and dogs.” It sounded ridiculous even to her own ears, but she hadn't thought for years about what her real skills were. And it all sounded so foolish and limited now. “I was a biology major in college. And I know a fair amount about energy technology, which was my husband's field,” another useless bit of knowledge they wouldn't need, “and I have some experience with dealing with family members of people who have mental illness.” She thought of Chad. It was all she could think of as she looked into Louise Anderson's eyes.

“Are you going through a divorce at the moment?” She had picked up the reference to having been married, and the “was.”

Ophélie shook her head, trying to look normal, and not scared, but she was. It was intimidating being here and feeling so useless and unskilled. But the woman across the desk from her was gazing at her with openness and respect. She just needed to know more.

“My husband died a year ago,” she gulped nearly audibly, “and my son. I have an eleven-year-old daughter. And a lot of time on my hands.”