Food for Thought

I don’t spend much time volunteering in the schools as of late, with my youngest in the seventh grade. In his youth, I was a reading tutor for years, helping other students in his school develop the same sense of joy that he now enjoys, reading through pages of the latest fantasy fiction or sports novel.

Back in September, during PTA sign up week, I checked off November food drive, thinking that was far enough away for me to not have to plan for it in the present. There were no dates to mark down, so I tucked the notion away.

Following Halloween, a pleasant e-mail arrived, gently reminding me of my commitment. It was also a quite lengthy e-mail regarding all the volunteer opportunities that existed to serve one single purpose, using the Loveland students and families to help stock the pantry for Thanksgiving.

Each classroom and grade was given specific assignments for boxed rolls, canned broth, bags of stuffing. Each volunteer was asked to take on one or several of many roles, including sign maker, box bringer, children organizer, hot chocolate money collector. I speed read through the list of wants and needs, offered to make signs and committed to being there on the day of, to collect the food staples and stack them high.

When the day arrived, I showered, had my coffee and literally felt as if I were going of to work. The space for the food pantry drive was the gymnasium of a church I once considered attending. Because I liked their music, because I liked the time of their services and mostly because I could sit in the back, with Davis in the Sunday school and contemplate my life. Space to be at peace.

So it was I the same building, where children snaked through lines, sometimes missing the right pile, placing canned fruit in the canned broth section, or mistaking stuffing mix for roll mix.

But my favorites were the muffin mixes instead of roll mixes, creamed rice as an alternative to what, I don’t know. The expired labels on canned goods, the non readable labels on canned goods – how do manufacturers get away with that one? The beef broth instead of chicken broth and the gallon cans of golden yams. I have a family of six, but had no clue they came in these hefty sizes.

The group of volunteers mixed and matched canned veggies until I would later see the labels in my sleep – aftereffects of a Kinkead Ridge Red and Jeff’s BBQ in Landen. The tables were late in arriving due to power outages, so first, we stacked the goods on the floor, then we boxed, then we stacked again on tables.

As I began to make my way through he myriad of vegetable offerings, a chill traveled up my spine. I began to consider how often I had donated to food pantries in the past – rather nonchalantly. I would simply peek inside my cupboard, too tired to drive to Meijer – only a ½ mile from my door – places where I have walked to in the past. In the past, I might have been the contributor of the creamed rice, or certainly, being Italian, provided canniloni beans or chi-chi beans. I would have donated beef broth, because it was what I had. And yes, some blueberry muffin mix, instead of the rolls. And while I think the patrons of the pantry would appreciate the variety and my intentions were always clear, my mind was not.

In that space, when that thought occurred to me, I was rather embarrassed of my past actions when I hadn’t taken the time to check expirations, when I might have been in a hurry in the grocery store and perhaps picked up pork –flavored stuffing for the turkey or muffin mix instead of roll mix. Or even bought the generic jellied cranberry sauce instead of Ocean Spray, because it was closest to the cart.

I don’t discount any of the offerings or donations made that day by students who were participating in the activity with some sense of understanding of the predicament of the homeless and the hungry. Clearly, there are students in the district that may visit the pantry later that week, with a different purpose. They will be the client who gets to choose which canned vegetables they want – even if it is baked beans- or pick out pancake mix, instead of bread mix. Who knows, the pilgrims probably served some version of them!

But I will think clearly next time that this food passes from my hand to that of someone else in need and even if the ink for the expiration date rubs off on my hand as I pass it on, I will know its safe.

AJW
11/22/2008

After my recent stints of sales person at Kenwood for my sister's business - Golf-Chic Boutique - I was reminded of how hard retailers work for such little reward. I want to be mindful of that fact this season when sales are down and so are spirits. This is my ode to such.

Selling Ourselves

Look busy Father and Uncle would crow
to employees
toiling in the shadows
of 26^th and Broadway
beneath the banner of Januzzi’s Shoes.

Together they paced the aisles
before Father returned
to the back office space
to pore over “the books.”

We would be dispatched to our stations -
Brother to the store room to unpack
the cartons delivered by the man in brown.
It would have been like Christmas,

if Brother had been me,
caressing each style

before pricing and stocking.

Sister would slowly wind her way
towards the counter
to stand stoic

beside the rigid cash register queen

who scolded her when wrinkled ones and fives

were turned opposite of tens and twenties.

Grandpa, founder and mender,
would retire to his repair stand
where the musk of newly-shaped leather
mingled with the scent of cobbler’s glue.

Customer names were recorded on cards
kept in a metal cabinet.
Filing the recently pulled or
pulling the filed always fell to me.
I would make it a game
see how fast I could order the stack
or search for the cards
of boys with whom I was madly in love,
later to be stung by their betrayal
of wearing of new loafers
bought elsewhere.

Tension lingered in the air
on the days of sales
causing the aisles of shoes to quake -
the children’s section leaning into men’s boots,
rows of nursing whites

holding back women’s heels,
and ice skates teetering on the top

shelves above my head.

Retail was never easy
even before big box stores
swallowed up ideas and families.

But the business had been blessed
by the presence of the mill, the hospital,
and those who needed orthopedic shoes.
As if the store was a ministry itself -
serving and fitting -
and that purpose fed the family,
not the money collected
and carefully counted at day’s end.

Yet customers were never completely content

with the price, style or fit.
Ladies prattled

and squirmed in green vinyl chairs
squeezing bones into shoes too small,
waiting for us to admire their toes
in the slanted mirrors.
We could never lie to them,

we could never tell the truth.

We only knew that the odor of unwashed feet
would cause us
to seek out Grandpa’s shoe glue

or steal away to the store room,
relieved for a moment
from the duty and pride

of selling the shoes, the business, our selves.

Becoming Mom

The evidence is above my head. Old t-shirts from Davis’ basketball teams, old hand towels from my first wedding, a Loyola shirt that someone has grown out of, leftover t-shirts from charity events hosted. All these sit atop the wire shelves in my laundry room, in plain sight, pointing to my guilt.

Each day, a new piece of evidence appears. Just last night, I rinsed out a carry home salad container from the pizza parlor to store with my Tupperware. And when my friend Leigh and I are out for lunch and she offers me lotion, I watch as she squeezes the lotion out of the tube into her palm, while I flip my hand over and nudge a little lotion onto the top of my hand, then rub both bony tops together.

My sighs are heavier now, my worries a little deeper. I have set laundry days and usually threaten that any remaining items in the laundry will be donated to Goodwill. When did this begin, this becoming my mother? I ask and laugh to myself.

Surely, I have always been her, in some fashion. But now, I want to bake more of her cookies, try my hand (again) at ravioli, create my own sauce from homegrown tomatoes. I sink further into this writing chair knowing it is because she is slipping away.

Were I to survey my friends, my cohorts, would they reply the same? That “becoming their mother” occurred when they noticed she was not really available to them anymore.

There has been no official diagnosis of dementia, but even if there were, my mother would forget that she had dementia anyhow. If it werent so sad, it would be quite a funny running dialogue about her either forgetting to take her meds, or not wanting to all because she forgets she has the disease!

Oh sure, mom still answers the phone. Oh sure, she still makes cookies, better than I ever will. But for Fall, she iced the cookies with Easter colors. When asking about the stepdaughters’ birthdays, two of whom were born in November, my mother cannot understand why the third daughter’s birthday does not also appear on her November calendar. I answer quietly, “If you flip to April, Mom, you’ll see her name there.”

As we speak over the phone, I envision her scrutinizing her calendar. She mumbles back and forth about this April birthday and that, while in my mind, I am wishing, “I don’t want you to go, mom. Inside your body to a place where none of us can find you. I know you will be safe there. I know it is a good place to be. After all those years of fighting back the arthritis, which I swear was caused by the stress of your worries, you are lighter. The telling is in your face, your oh so youthful, almost angelic face. Your soft cheeks, not yet hollowed all the way out. You were and are the original Ivory girl. There was never a need for a Sephora in your life. No cosmetician ever asked you to sit in her chair. There was no need, they could not have sold you on any product that could soften or lighten your face and cheeks.”

Her actions, her quirks, her ideas are now lost in a jumble of neurons. As of late, I have been telepathing them, almost intentionally performing actions that define her as Mom so as to hold on to her as she was. Her thriftiness that she displayed by saving all the old tees and towels for rags, I too am coveting, as if there are stories attached to each piece of fabric or rag. Stockpiling peanut butter, when it’s on sale or not, though it is the cheapest lunch item by far in my grocery cart. I leave my shoes at the foot of the staircase, when I go up the carpeted steps to the 2^nd floor. When I descend, I put those shoes back on.

I find myself shopping less, because I know she doesn’t anymore, considering more duties in the community or the writing center. She was a committed person, who taught first grade CCD every Saturday morning for ten years. Who could blame her for choosing the first graders, they had to be so much cuter than we were at 14. And too, she had been trained as a teacher for the young ones, she was at her best, reading the Bible stories, emphasizing the Ten Commandments, she was never deep, but always firm. And then, immediately following her classes, she would rush us off to bowling leagues.

Her energy I have never duplicated, but I also recall her naps – and am prone to my own – on the couch when we came home from school, her daytime attachment to General Hospital – I guess that’s no different from my attachment to West Wing or 30 Rock.

Just last night, I looked up from my post at end of the kitchen table and was caught off guard by my reflection in the sliding glass door. I may someday fear looking in any mirror, seeing myself actually age into my mother. But for now, I observe a woman who saved the world- the world she lived in - through photos, dinners, traditions and green stamps. I am trying to become a little piece of that woman.