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Earl Lawson, Rainbow Center, Bellingham This summer, the author and other Rainbow Center consumers staffed the Samish Park Rainbow Treats concession, operated by the Rainbow Center in Bellingham. Here is an account of their experience. Rainbow Center, subsidized by the good folks at Whatcom Counseling and Psychiatric Clinic and the Whatcom County Council, is an equal opportunity employer. As a result, we became more than consumers of mental illness treatment services. We were also candidates for the employment opportunities at Rainbow Treats, involved in another kind of consumerism: Hot dogs, ice cream, step right up! The first day, we piled into the big Ford van for the commute to Samish Park. The van had just been serviced to make sure it would get us back and forth to Samish Park all summer. We arrived at an old lodge, made mostly of windows-dirty windows. Our first job was to spruce up for a season of tourists and locals. We broke out brooms, sponges, and cleaning agents, and Mike started washing the windows. Soon they were sparkling windows on the world. Suddenly we could see what a beautiful, marvelous world it was! Light danced on the water. Children giggled and shouted, ran and swam. And there, an eagle soared against the blue of the sky and the deeper aquamarine of the lake. Excitement broke over us as the sun’s light broke over the waves on the sandy beach. On the way back, on the freeway, the just-serviced van broke down, but Steve got out and fixed it—a loose coil wire. When we were all back, we agreed that it had been a great first day. Regular shifts began. The cash register whined and protested as we made mistake after mistake. But the customers were very patient and friendly. Some even gave us tips. And the managers matter-of-factly and compassionately reviewed the procedure after each sale was made. Could such a complicated machine really be so simple? Apparently so! Still, it took me a good month before I routinely pushed those keys in the right order. Later, I learned others figured their own way to tabulate the orders. (We did it our wa-a-ay!) Every day, at every shift, something new was added. Brownies baked at the Center arrived, with a price to be memorized. Roy concocted a new ice cream dessert, and it, too was added to the menu. Something else new was that we now had something more in common than just being consumers of mental illness treatment services. Now we had something to talk about, and we could even pat each other on the back for jobs well done. One day Roy, Marisha, and I worked the whole shift without supervision. It was one of several overcast, cold days when business was relatively slow, and there was no need to wear our professional masks. We started a fire in the huge fireplace. I played guitar. Peggy and her daughters showed up, and they applauded, too! That same day a little girl ran in to tell us that her friend had been injured, but we handled it. Roy went with the little girl to her friend’s aid. I fetched the Rangers while Marisha got the food back into the refrigerators. Everything was under control. We were a team, a professional partnership. Heck, we were merchants, just like the ones who eyed us uneasily when we stood too near their shops. “Move on,” the policemen had said. Then, we were the troublemakers: lazy, shiftless indigents. Incompetents. But now we were merchants too, with our full measure of respectability. Not that we’re indignant or require any apology. We require only the basics, only the same right to dignity as any human being. We’re just people who’ve run into problems, who lacked the social skills to communicate with the world, because we’ve been hurt, even traumatized by it. But Rainbow Treats communicates love for us and faith in us. It holds out to us possibilities far beyond any we found before. This is a new protocol—a prism changing the dull light of fear and hatred into a light fantastic, a rainbow’s center. It reflects love, understanding, dignity, truth, compassion, and empathy. The cooperation between merchants, civil authority, and those of us who could use a hand are like the colors of the rainbow. That rainbow is our bridge to the future and the pot of gold. |
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