The zing of my morning alarm awoke from my sleep. I lay there in the cozy warmth of my bed paralyzed by the thought of removing the covers and moving through the chill of my drafty apartment. To make matters worse, I picked up my phone to silence the alarm and braved the weather report. It was a mere thirty degrees with a wind chill of sixteen. Yeah, it was official, I really didn’t want to leave my bed. As a last ditch effort I texted Caycee, the WSCAH volunteer coordinator, to ask if we were still serving the food off of the food truck. “Yes!” I forced myself out from under the hug of my comforter, as Caycee’s reply lit up my phone. I dressed from the bottom up, finishing with my olive down parka before I entered the kitchen. I sipped my iced coffee, inhaled a few bites of the leftover apple crisp on the stove, brushed my teeth, chugged some water, and ran out the door at 9:28am. The air was crisp, but comfortingly stagnant outside my apartment building. When I arrived in the WSCAH Truck in Harlem, a line had already began to form. Caycee sent me inside the truck (where it was about ten degrees warmer) to bag the donated bread alongside another volunteer. When I walked onto the truck, the women I began to bag the bread with was communicating in Spanish with another volunteer. So, I quickly assumed she didn’t speak english. Nevertheless, when we were nearly finished with the task, I finally turned to this small hispanic woman standing next to me and asked “why are you volunteering with WSCAH today?” She replied simply, in broken english, “sometimes you just need to help.” We continued talking, I found out she was also living in the Bronx and had begun volunteering when she found out about this program through her church. On a day so cold I could not feel my toes or fingers, the people I served and served with brought a smile to my face. Sometimes you just need to help. Even when its cold and feels hard, you show up.
