Clare and I had been talking for years about helping out at a homeless shelter. So one year we decided that it was time to stop talking about it and just DO IT! Her kids were long gone and those of mine still left at home celebrated the holidays with their dad. No more excuses. No more procrastination. This year we would volunteer to serve Thanksgiving dinner in a homeless shelter.
We approached our local women’s shelter with our idea and, lo and behold, they offered to pay for the meal as long as we chose the menu and shopped for the items. We were ecstatic. We had planned on paying for the whole meal, so the fact that the shelter was offering to purchase the food was a bonus we hadn’t anticipated. We were off to a great start!
On our first visit to the shelter, Clare, a musical genius, discovered a piano in the lobby and offered to play Christmas carols for the residents after we shared Thanksgiving dinner together. I would bring along a box of t-shirts in various colors and sizes to present to the residents as parting gifts. I thought the shirts might empower them, because emblazoned across the chest were the words, “I think; therefore I am…a woman.”
We had finally done it and we were so proud of ourselves. We could now consider ourselves to be bona fide volunteers.
Early Thanksgiving morning, brimming with enthusiasm, we carried up the narrow flight of stairs that led to the shelter a massive turkey, along with fruits, vegetables, stuffing ingredients, spices, cookies, desserts, drinks (including hot chocolate for a warm and cozy after-dinner delight around the piano), and a gigantic box of t-shirts.
For some reason the shelter housed only five families that Thanksgiving, and only three of those families were present when we arrived. We didn’t care. Even three families were enough to fill us with that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing we were giving to a worthy cause. These families not only would be able to enjoy a queen size mattress, finally having a place to put down their heads but also a nice homecooked meal.
Children scurried through the long hallway of bedrooms, stopping occasionally to peek at what we were doing. We smiled knowing we were doing something very special for those families and we would be providing so many leftovers, the entire household could eat again and again and again.
We peeled pots full of carrots and potatoes and made vegetable casseroles. We created pasta sensations, spiced up the turkey, made the gravy, mashed the potatoes, prepared the desserts, and coordinated our time so that everything would present at exactly the same time.
As we prepared the mammoth meal, we reminisced about our own lives. Had it not been for our parents, the two of us and our children might have met the same fate. We were single divorced parents who struggled to raise children with very little (and sometimes no) money. We too might have found ourselves looking forward to eating Thanksgiving dinner in a homeless shelter had it not been for those very special people in our lives. We considered ourselves fortunate that we had families who helped us to raise our children in a home environment. We thanked God for never having been in that situation – for never having to eat dinner in a homeless shelter on Thanksgiving Day.
Residents of this women’s homeless shelter left us alone in the kitchen to find utensils, pots, pans, and dinnerware needed to make their delicious meal, and it wasn’t long before the aromas drifted through the air and found their way into the rooms that lined the hallway.
But something was wrong. Something didn’t FEEL right. At one point Clare and I looked at each other questioningly. She had raised five children. I had raised four. NEVER was our home this quiet.
We walked down the long hallway searching for the residents, and after finding none of them, decided we must have been involved in some kind of prank. The residents were obviously hiding from us. We went downstairs to look for them, and when we couldn’t find them, we walked back up the steps to finish preparing the meal. They would probably return when dinner was ready.
Several hours later, when none of the residents had returned, and it appeared unlikely that they would be joining us for dinner, we sat down at the table and filled a couple of plates with the meal we had prepared for the residents. And as we were giving praise and thanks, we looked across the table at each other. The moment our eyes met, the two of us burst out in fits of laughter at the absurdity of the two of us actually sitting in a homeless shelter – by ourselves – eating Thanksgiving dinner.
The residents never came back even after we finished our meal and cleaned up. We forgot about our anticipated picture-perfect moment at the piano where we thought a comfortable group of strangers would sip hot chocolate and sing Christmas carols. We wrapped everything in containers, stored them in the refrigerator or on the counter, and drove home. When we returned to our individual houses, I relaxed in front of my TV and called Clare.
“Turn on Channel 7,” I told her.
There, on our television screens were camera crews at various locations throughout Chicago showing numerous volunteers and hundreds of homeless men and women enjoying Thanksgiving dinners prepared by loving volunteers.
“Why didn’t we invite those news crews to our homeless shelter?” I asked. That’s all it took for us to roll with laughter again, the kind of laughter that causes your stomach to hurt and your eyes to water.
And then I remembered the huge box of t-shirts I had left behind at the homeless shelter.
Most of the families had returned by the time I got back to retrieve what was left of the t-shirts. The five women who lived there decided to use about 50 of them as Christmas gifts for their female friends and family members.
Oh well, the point was to give. And we had given.
But we had also received – enough laughter to enrich our lives for many, many years and a lasting memory that reminds us about our hilarious outburst as we both ate Thanksgiving dinner alone in a homeless shelter.