Another weekend another food bank. This one's at my former boss's church. I know this will be painful. If it were just my suffering I was seeking to aleve I'd skip it. But with a wife and two kids, with food running low I don't have a choice.
My consolation this time is I've talked my wife into going to visit her parents with the kids. I'll rise and depart before the sun rises, alone. I'll wait in line with the wretched and the poor, alone. I'll face the humiliation, alone.
This time the we're allowed to wait indoors in the auditorium. It's almost like we're human. No bitter cold or cramped spaces, while jockying to make sure I'm not cut by someone hungrier and more desperate than I. A nice, roomy seating area. It's a mere three hour wait this time. I find myself wishing I'd brought my iPod to listen to. But then I realize if I had, I'd be too embarrassed to listen to it. The signature white ear buds would announce how quickly I've fallen to everyone around me, and some would question if I'm really needy.
I sit and wait, talking to no one. Talking to someone, being friendly, means accepting my position in life. I can't accept it. I can barely acknowledge it exists now, let alone in the future. I sit, alone. After about two hours, the trucks arrive. Two semi-trucks full of discontinued and expired food, and the church volunteers start unloading and organizing it. I look around and breathe a sigh of relief. There's no sign of the man who decided my fate six and a half months ago.
I watch the volunteers unload, and stack and part of me feels like the least I could do is help. I want to help. I'm on the wrong side of the table. I should be over there, not over here. My life's so hard now that I have to take joy in the few little luxuries I do have. This is as close to having a waiter wait on me as I get anymore. Plus, god forbid someone mistake me for a real volunteer I might not get my crate of food. No, I'll stay in my seat and wait for the lady passing out bananas to come by.
FUCK! ....
FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!
The banana lady is my former boss's wife. While the rest of the volunteers work up a sweat unloading box after box from pallet after pallet, she has the job usually reserved for weak and infirm. Wheeling around a cart loaded with six dozen bananas, offering them one at a time to the patiently waiting. She starts down each row and the last thing I want is to be noticed. It doesn't take her long till she's starting down my row. I put knit cap back on, as if somehow that'll make me unrecognizable.
I start intently on the expert knot work I had used earlier on my shoes and I see her shadow slowly approach out of the corner of my eye. "Do you want a banana?' she asks person after person. She pauses briefly to converse with the person sitting directly in front of me before turning, "Do you want a bana..." she trails off as if my pathetic knit hat disguise had worked right up until that word. I barely move my head in the affirmative and weakly raise my hand to take the yellow fruit. I'm hungry, but the thought of eating that banana makes me sick to my stomach. I shove it in my pocket to take home to my daughter.
An hour later they begin passing out food, and the line moves. I look to see how painful moving through the line will be. She's near the end of the tables, passing bags of bread, Panera of course, to a very obese but cheerful woman who then gives it to the needy. Again, she's taken the easiest job, god forbid she might break a nail. I know I should just acknowledge her act of charity and let it go, but if she's anything like her husband, which I imagine she would be, she's not helping out of kindness, or charity, or even civic duty. She's helping to be seen that she's helping. She doesn't go home with a warm feeling in her heart from having helped people. She goes home with a warm feeling in her heart because someone important saw her going through the motions of helping someone less fortunate. I take the tiniest joy at the obvious discomfort she's in having been paired to work with the least attractive and most obese person, on their side of the financial aisle anyway.
I shuffle through the line and as near the tables I see the object of my disgust putting her heart and soul into her cell phone conversation, as she struggles to keep up with her partner passing out bread. I say "struggles" but that might be too strong a word. "Struggles" implies effort or disappointment in not keeping up. She didn't even seem to notice she was behind. I know we're all pathetic begging for food here, but have a little respect. At least she had the decency pretend like it was "too loud" when I neared her area and she stuck her finger in her ear and turned around, you know ... to hear better. I wanted to thank her for not making me feel completely humiliated, then I wanted punch her in the face for being such a douche bag.
Christmas is days away. The good news is the kids are taken care of. My wife, during much more prosperous times had paid to join a play group. They had their holiday party and apparently the weather kept most people away so they wound up having an excess of goodies, gifts and give aways. My wife came home with five garbage bags of toys and gift. Many duplicates, so even the kids in the extended family will get toys from us. We even had enough to put some away for birthdays. Granted the gifts weren't anything we'd buy if we had the money, but they were gifts none the less, and having gifts to give away helps hide to our families how poor we are.
I had to go to my extended family's Christmas without my wife. Just me and the kids. She had to work, and it broke my heart to go without her, but I know at least my family and the kids were happy they got to see each other. My wife calls after her shift and tells me about a co-worker. Her husband had just lost his job and they had a house fire the week before, or something like that, between a bad phone connection and kids screaming all I could really gather is they had less than nothing for their kids for Christmas. My wife wanted to know if it was already with me if she got some, not all, of the toys we'd stashed away for birthdays and gave them to her. I couldn't believe she'd ask me that. You don't ask questions like that, you just do it, because it's the right thing to do.
We're good people. We don't deserve to be here, but we are. We've lost a lot, and I imagine we'll lose a lot more before we're done. But I don't want to lose that.
This is my life now.
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