Of pimento cheese and a pint of hope

On the morning of Friday, May 23, I rode my bike uphill to the church and donated blood.

The process couldn’t have been easier.

When I checked in, I perused the snack table. Since I had ridden my bike (I live less than a quarter-mile from the church), I felt I needed a spot of sustenance, so I partook of a triangle of a pimento cheese sandwich and a small cookie.

And because rehydration after “exercise” and pre-hydration before giving blood is important, I drank a bottle of water.

At the table where they took my blood pressure, my pulse rate was slightly elevated, what with all my morning exercise. “It’ll go down while you fill out this survey,” the woman at the desk told me.

The survey spiked my blood pressure a little because the Red Cross asks a bunch of questions related to having unprotected sex with strangers and sharing needles. I checked “no” in those survey boxes.

When the Blood Mobile came to the church I previously served in Greenville, S.C., I signed up to donate. My family was new to town, so I didn’t know the flock yet.

I bumped into a parishioner. He had just given blood. I had just finished the survey. We chatted amiably. He asked me, straight-faced and loudly so the whole bus could hear, “Have you paid for sex lately?”

“Not lately,” I said, trying to be a wise guy.

He said he paid for sex every time he shopped with his wife at Talbots.

When I finally got the joke, laughing comforted me. I was feeling claustrophobic in the small Blood Mobile, and I’m just a little nervous around needles.

Gene and I became fast friends, and we gave lots of blood over the years.

At Waldensian Presbyterian Church, the blood drive happens in the spacious Pioneer Hall, and I wasn’t nervous at all.

The survey took almost as long as giving blood: Have I recently had Malaria? Have I taken certain cancer drugs? Have I traveled to exotic places in the last three months? I checked No, No, and Morganton.

When it came time to give, the kind and efficient technician asked my name three times and from which arm I wanted him to draw my blood. I said left. He said you’ll feel a prick. I said ouch. Thus began the process of getting blood from my arm to the awaiting bag.

Time flew while I waited.

We seldom sit still in this frenetic life. I fiddled with my phone for a moment. I prayed. I rested in the room, washed in summery light. A church friend dropped by. We chatted. It felt good to be doing good for the world. I got a little emotional.

The technician caught me wiping away a tear.

“You okay?”

“I’m good,” I said.

And I was. Giving blood made me feel taller, stronger.

My friend Scott’s sister suffered a leaking artery in her stomach this fall. All told, she received 140-units of blood during her harrowing, touch-and-go weeks in the hospital. Her entire blood supply was replaced about seventeen times.

Scott calls her recovery “miraculous.”

But he is similarly astonished by another miracle: dozens of strangers from all walks of life had taken 45-minutes and given a unit of blood for a total stranger. They were gay, straight, Muslim, Jew, agnostic, atheist, religiously other, old, and young. They were left-leaning and right-leaning political nut jobs. But they gave without thinking about whether or not they shared any affinities with Kami. They cared only about life.

And they freely gave it.

After giving blood last Friday, I found myself back at the snack table. I hoovered another pimento cheese sandwich. And because the cookies were homemade, I ate one of each kind just in case they were baked by three different cooks.

Pastors can’t show favorites, and the church women chatting at the table were watching me. I took a water bottle to go.

Three cheers and my sincerest salutations to the person who one day will need my O-positive blood. We’ll never know their name, only that they were a neighbor in need. So, we helped. That’s what neighbors do.

The bike ride home, all downhill, was glorious.