As we approach the new year (shoot me in the head), I find myself in much the same predicament I was in last time I wrote.
I'm almost 100% certain that when I awoke to the sounds of my cats meowing this morning, coaxing me into the kitchen where her bowl sat, full of food, that she was responding to the growls of my stomach and not her own.
This is the same animal who sits on my feet in the dead of winter to lend her warmth and fuzziness to the prevention of shivering. Normally, when she calls me into the kitchen in the wee hours, it's because her bowl is empty. This morning, not only was it full, there were two types of food in it. Wet and dry. And I'm now certain she was trying to share it with me.
It's been weeks since I was last paid. The last time I shopped for groceries, a friend had offered because I was visibly thinner than the last time we saw each other.
Today I got a bag of groceries from a food pantry. The line in front of the church stretched around the corner. Its constituents we're mostly elderly, black and obviously poor. As I left my apartment on the way there, I helped my neighbor lift her grocery cart up the few stairs of the stoop to her front door. When I received my black plastic bag full of cans, pasta, rice and a brick of frozen cheese, I recognized the bag as the same one from her cart just a few minutes earlier.
A woman on the line behind me began telling me all about the tricks people pull to get double the offerings.
"In the winter, some of them take off their coats or turn them inside out and sneak back to the end of the line for another go 'round."
It struck me as some sort of conflict of interest that the people doling out the food also seemed like they were themselves in need of charity. How judicious can one be when they're probably stashing food for themselves or friends in similar situations.
I sincerely hope that the next time I stand in line for groceries, I'll be paying for them.
I hope that my next interaction with a food pantry is a donation and not a hand out.
Amen.
