My Giving Challenge: Food, A Bag and Thanks

Day 5: Dish Bitch

I have never struggled with food insecurity. I have never gone hungry lest by my own choice. I have never stood in a food line or looked into a bare pantry. I have also never volunteered my time to serve those who know what it feels like to desperately need a hot meal. There have been many times when I have donated to food banks, given cans of food to the Boy Scouts and added a buck at the grocery store register for a local soup kitchen. Those things are well within my comfort zone. Seeing it firsthand...not so much.

I had the opportunity to volunteer my time this week to serve at a soup kitchen and I signed up without really thinking it through. That's the only way that I knew I wouldn't be able to flake out. When the time came to leave work and make the thirty minute drive, I was moody and  I didn't want to go. I only knew one person there, I wouldn't know what I was doing, there would be no parking, they wouldn't need me and on and on the story went. There were few times during my drive that I contemplated turning around, going shopping, stopping at a coffee shop or faking an illness to get out of my commitment. This was way out of my comfort zone, which is exactly why I showed up.

When I arrived, I was greeted by Russ, the person I knew, and immediately introduced to everyone else. There was a large LDS youth group, a few regulars, some employees and a man with blue bandanna and a Jersey accent, John. He was harassing Russ and when it was time to get started, he began recruiting for dish duty. Russ had wanted me to be on the line filling up trays, but the larger volunteer group had that area covered, so I raised my hand.
"I'll be on dishes with you guys."
John didn't look too thrilled to have me on the team and when I volunteered for pots and pans, I thought he was going to have a coronary.
"I don't let ladies in my dish pit, I just want you to know. It can get real crazy back here."
He was tough on the outside, loud as a motherfucker and pretty good at intimidating people. It would have worked on me, except my dad could be his evil twin. I grew up with that shit, so I let him know what was up.
"I've been doing dishes since I could walk and you don't scare me."
The other two guys in the dish pit laughed.

The first group let in to eat are the families and the disabled. As I watched a young woman strap her baby in a highchair and get her three other children trays of food, I imagined her standing outside in the sweltering heat waiting for a chance to feed her kids. I can't imagine what that is like. There were older men in wheelchairs and young men with mental illnesses, there were women with all their belongings in a backpack and teens who looked too young to be away from home. To say it was humbling would be an understatement. Then there were the amazing people who work at this soup kitchen and start their day at 6 am, while I am still sleeping. They begin prepping for the meals that they will serve before most of us are getting up for work and the majority of them are volunteers. They show up every single day to serve this community.

Back on dish duty, I was scrubbing the shit out of the pots and pans, throwing them in the sanitizer and cleaning my area as I went along.
"She's pretty good, huh?" Russ nudged John. "You ever have someone detail your sink in the middle of a rush?"
John came over to check out my work and to remind me, once again, that he doesn't let ladies in his dish pit.
"Only my wife's been back here, but you come back whenever you like."
He thanked me numerous times and patted me on the back. We posed for a cheesy photo, covered in soapy water and dinner leftovers, all of us grinning from ear to ear. As we were leaving, John reached over and gave me the biggest bear hug I have ever lived through.
"I best be seeing you back here in my dish pit, you got it?"

Oh, you can bet your sweet ass I'm coming back, someone's gotta scrub those pans.

Day 6: A Bag and A Card

We went grocery shopping yesterday and as we were grabbing veggies, I spotted a lady in a wheelchair heading straight for us. I was pushing one of those fucking carts that moonlights as a race car with my 50 pound kid twisting and turning the fake steering wheel. These things are harder to maneuver than a semi truck on a sheet of ice. I stayed put, as to not injure her any further, while she reached for a bunch of broccoli from behind me, barely able to pull it off the shelf.

(A little side note before we go any further, I don't offer help to strangers. I am afraid that they will be angry and yell at me, or that they are ax murderers who want to kill me, or that I will have to make small talk about weather and cute kids during the transaction. It makes me uncomfortable.) 

Against my better judgement, I asked her if I could grab a bag for her broccoli, since the store designers seem to think that only people who stand at 5'9 or above deserve the luxury of a plastic bag.
"That would be great, thank you."

As I was walking away with my bag of broccoli, she began talking to me again. Initially, I was concerned as per my side note above.
"They have a deal right now where if you get one of these white bags, you can fill it with all the produce it can hold for just $10."
I feigned interest initially because I thought she blowing smoke up my ass and then I noticed a sign giving me the exact information she had just offered.
"Thank you so much." I smiled as I grabbed my white bag and began a competition in my own mind for who could fit more shit inside of it.
(Another side note, I fit fifteen pounds of produce in that bag at a total cost of ten dollars and the checkout lady seemed as impressed as I was. Winning. I'm the winner of that fake contest.)

I also wrote a card to someone in my life whom I love very much and haven't had much contact with recently. This will be a reoccurring theme during my giving challenge, because I want to train myself to send love and gratitude via snail mail on a more regular basis. There is nothing sweeter than finding a brightly colored envelope addressed to you, stuck between that bullshit magazine you never read and the water bill you want to hide in a vat of coleslaw. Handwritten cards are where it's at, bitches. Tell a friend.

In the book, The 29 Gifts, the author talks about how when you begin to give consciously, you will begin to receive. You can call it what you want...karma, good juju, or just chance, but it happens.

Here is a list of what I have received this week.

-Cookies and a card from my neighbor who I rarely talk to. (In the card, she refers to herself as "weird and anti-social". Just my kind of peeps.)
-Two meals paid for by my dad. (Who hides money under his mattress and claims to be broke all the time.)
-Eight dollars off my grocery bill.
-Five days of feeling grateful, happy and stress free. I haven't done laundry and my sink is full of dirty dishes, but I am so fulfilled.

It's fucking weird.


If you haven't checked it out already, here is a link to my article on mariashriver.com.
http://mariashriver.com/blog/2013/07/what-i-learned-from-the-end-of-my-parents-29-year-marriage-mandy-brasher