Hugs

Today, I met with one of my participants for our last day of Job Readiness Training. On Friday, we met to work on interview questions and through her broken English and my over-enunciated so-called care-taker speech we worked out some answers that she could give to questions like, "Tell me about yourself" and "Why should we hire you?" On Monday morning, she went to her interview at a resort in Atlantic City for a housekeeping position. Monday afternoon, her case manager told me she'd been offered the job and we had a small celebration in the hallway in front of her office, her on her way to another meeting, me on my way to my office via the copier.

So this afternoon, my participant came in for our last day of Job Readiness Training and as she got herself settled at the worktable in my office, I said, "Congratulations! I heard you got the job!" She looked up at me and sprung from her chair and hugged me around my midsection. She was all smiles and in that moment, it didn't matter about language barriers or provider-participant boundaries because she was happy and I'd had the opportunity to play a small part in that happiness.

Twenty years from now, I don't know if that girl will remember today; more likely than not, it will fade into a tangle of days labeled "first days in New Jersey" or "first few years in the US" or "just out of high school", but I think I will remember. Or at least, I'd like to.