I signed up for some volunteer work today, with the induction slotted for next week. It's called "Santropol Roulant", named after a restaurant that I remember as a haven of plants and warmth and deliciousness back in my McGill days. I believe it was the first fully vegetarian restaurant I had come across, and I can picture thick seedy bread, odd sprouting greens and guacamole. I could not afford to eat in restaurants then so it had the exotic allure of something out of my reach.

The restaurant still exists, and is quite near to where I am now, although it is much smaller and less leafy than I remember. It's odd how memory works. However, they have expanded their services and now offer community support through urban gardening, bike repair and meals on wheels (hence the 'roulant').

Volunteer work is something that gives back far more than it demands, and yet I have always found it difficult. I remember, as a teenager, being volunteered to work with cerebral palsy children on my own in a pool. I was uncomfortable, didn't know what to do, and ended up trying to avoid it. But I feel that was the fault of the system, or the organisation, rather than me. I was such a shy child, and there was no explanation, just an expectation that I would 'get on with things', as if I had an innate understanding of the disorder and knew how to interact with these often non-verbal children. This uncomfortable situation would have compounded my shyness: I felt inept, which just made me withdraw more. But then, this was the 1970s and there was a lot less hand-holding.

God, I hadn't thought of that in ages. What is it with dredging up the past? Having cleared my surroundings of domestic clutter and made space for opportunities to appear, I find instead that annoying regrets pop up to pester me with their unanswerable questions. "what if...?" or "if only..." or "why did...?" Utterly pointless thoughts. Perhaps this is part of the clearing out of the mental attic, a riff on the Rumi poem posted a while ago. 

I shall look for humour in my disappointed nostalgia and let it fade in importance; turn instead to celebrate my independence, my accomplished children and my good fortune to have this year stretching ahead of me.