I am a little too fat. I am a little too generous. Both traits I am oddly proud of and reluctant to lose. I think I know why.
Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart
I was five years old when my mom took off with me to the coast. We were starting over, she said. Starting fresh with no belongings, no toys, no furniture; empty hands so that we could catch new blessings. We also had empty pockets. She had no job; she'd gone and drank herself into a Rabbit Hole, which evidently, ends in a tiny beach town called Rockaway, Oregon. She was running from Sin, running to Salvation. Hoping the Ocean would catch her tears and loose her chains.
My mother loves the Ocean. She is the most at home, she is more herself, when it is nearby. She believes that it moves and that it feels. She believes that it sees and that it knows. She loves it because it inspires in her a feeling of wonder and fear, and an uncertainty that it could become angry at any moment and take lives at its will. To my mother, the Ocean is God. "Don't you ever take it for granted, Krissy," she'd say, "When you look at that Ocean, remember there's always something bigger than you. Respect her."
Summer had just ended and the little coastal town had begun to fold up. We found a small cottage, a motel room with a kitchenette, really. We called it only as we knew it, not a place that was our home, it was Number Six. My mother paid the first months rent, and bought us a sack of potatoes and some ketchup. She enrolled me in the kindergarten a block away, and we began our new life.
I don't remember being excited for school. I only remember that it seemed so frivolous. I should be getting a job, I thought. "I could get a paper route," I told my mother as we walked back to Number Six, coming home from the pay phone. She'd called my dad, begging him to send the $75 child support check. He promised he'd send it as soon as possible, but I knew the potatoes were running low.
My mother continued to look for work, but there were only two or three restaurants within walking distance of Number Six. The car we had blew up almost as soon as we got there so she gave it away. She didn't want to get a job in a bar because she was still trying earnestly to stop drinking.
A few weeks passed, and still no child support check. No money at all. I sat at the kitchen table one night, watching Walter Cronkite deliver the evening news with his objective attitude and journalistic integrity. He said something like, "Here is the news at this suppertime..." I remember because I was so surprised by it. His words were otherwise so dry, so metered, but his mention of it being dinnertime was almost... friendly. Could he see us? How did he know that it was time to eat?
My mother was staring out the window with her back to me, but I said to her, "Well? He's right, it IS dinnertime. Right mom?" She let out a sigh. Without turning around she said, "Do you see that out there? Those people have let their garden grow over. The cabbages have gone to seed now. They'd never know or care if I just snuck over and took one for you."
The quivering in her voice scared me. She turned to me, she wiped her eyes, and with a look so cool she could have been mad at me, she said, "If I were a thief I would go over there and steal those rotten cabbages for you. But I am not a thief."
Without another word she passed me, opened the front door and walked out of Number Six. She left the door open and I followed her. She walked down five cottages, and knocked on the door to Number One, a larger cottage where an old man and his wife lived. They were our neighbors, but we had no idea who they were. The old lady opened the door and I wove around my mother so I could see inside.
"This is my daughter, Kristine. We have no food, she's had nothing to eat but potatoes for a month and now we don't even have any of those left. I don't care about myself but could you please give her something to eat?"
The old woman was short and fat, she had dark skin and black hair twisting around her head. Her name was Anita Vanover. Her husband was a tall white man, who was just called, Van. I could see inside Anita's cottage; the smells coming from it made me drool. Her table was set and she and Van obviously were just sitting down to eat too. I don't remember Anita saying anything to my mother, or even asking her husband first if she could give us something, but I do remember her packing up her table. The pot roast, the carrots, the gravy... and the potatoes, she handed it all to my mother.
They had friends who owned one of the restaurants mom had tried to get a job in earlier, Anita talked to them and they hired her, while Anita and Van became my caretakers in the evening.
Quite literally, they saved my mother and I.
In that moment, I don't think Anita and Van thought they were saving lives, or changing forever the path of a little one. I think they thought they were doing what they were supposed to do-- when a woman with a little girl comes to the door and says they need to eat, what more needs to be said or done? They probably figured, its just food. Anita gave so effortlessly, so quickly, she could not have anticipated the impact of her actions.
But that one moment taught me a lesson about giving that I have never forgotten. Thirty years later there came a day when I'd pass that lesson on to my own children.
My daughter's school had a food drive, and she was excited to collect food for it. Even at ten years old, she had a strong sense of community. She wanted to be a police officer so that she could help people. She wanted to be an astronaut so she could protect the planet from wayward asteroids. So many little girls want to be ballerinas, but we have to keep our daughter from watching the news because it moves her to the point of tears. Her heart breaks for the human condition.
She went to our pantry and started bagging up the canned and dry goods. She said to me, "Oh, I'll put in the green beans, I don't like those... I'll save the Kraft macaroni and cheese we can give them some Flavorite..." Right then I realized that my daughter, as generous as she already was, as kind as she already was, as GOOD as she was, she knew nothing about giving. I had taught her nothing.
She didn't know about Anita and Van, she didn't know about Number Six. She didn't know that she could see the face of a hungry child if she'd looked long enough at her own mother. So, I told her about my mother. About the Vanovers. I told her that my kindergarten teacher thought I was retarded because I was so hungry, I didn't perform well in school and was always slower than the rest of the class. Anita could have just gone to her cupboard and made me a peanut butter sandwich, and my mother and I would have been so grateful. But she didn't. She gave the best that she had.
The biggest problem with poverty is the shame that comes with it. But when you give the best you have to someone in need, it translates into something much deeper to the receiver.
It means that they are worthy.
If it's not good enough for you, it's not good enough for those in need, either.
When you give the best you have, it does more than feed an empty belly, it feeds the soul.
Make sure someone you don't know has a happy Christmas. http://feedingamerica.org
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