Soul Food

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I hope we get some meat. And some fresh produce, too, I thought. 

 

It was around 5 degrees outside. And I had about five dollars in my bank account. And as I stood in line at the food bank, I tried to distract myself from the desperate feeling that clawed at my insides, choosing instead to study the spires of the hundred-year-old Catholic Church that seemed to stab into the gloomy sky - sharp and certain like the nails driven into the hands of the crucified  Christ as depicted across the large stained glass window that faced the street.

 

Some people sat in idling cars, plumes of exhaust rising from the tail pipes as they ran their engines to keep warm. The rest of us stood there on the icy concrete.

 

One Latina woman had a little girl with her. I didn’t know much Spanish but she kept addressing her as “mi amor” as she wrapped the child in a Dora the Explorer flannel blanket. 

 

My love.

 

I was afraid of the future and resented the past. If I had made better choices, or at least different choices, maybe I’d be in one of those  corporate towers visible on the horizon that rose up the in the downtown haze like so many unanswered prayers. 

 

What was becoming on my country? I wondered. History won’t look kindly upon this time, I thought, empathizing with how the Latina women might feel, being outside like this, exposed to a world where masked men prowled the streets, disappearing people. 

 

What will become of me?

 

Would she leave me for a man that could better provide?

 

“Excuse me,” an ashen-faced elderly woman asked in a quivering voice, her gloved hands gripping the sides of her walker. “Have they passed out numbers yet?”

 

“No,” I told her before glancing at my watch. “It’s only 12:40, though, and they don’t technically open until one.”

 

“Oh please watch your step,” I cautioned the elderly woman whose white hair haloed her narrow face. She was pushing her walker right over an icy patch. 

 

“thank you,” she said, steadying herself. 

 

This just isn’t right, I thought. Our society fails the most vulnerable of us, doesn't it? Surely a senior should be provided for, such that she wouldn’t have to be out in this single-digit weather, the concrete all icy, trying to get a few bags of food. 

 

Someone lit a cigarette as a FedEx plane cut across the sky. We were just east of the airport and there had been a lot of strange lights in the sky recently. Just the night before, my girlfriend and I watched orbs of amber light hover and dart around in the sky, resembling, what I thought might be different maneuvers and configurations of drones. 

 

More often than not, I felt like an alien in my life. Someone from elsewhere. None of this made sense to me. 

 

“Have you been here before?” I asked, the woman.

 

“Yes, though it’s been some time ago,” the elderly lady said. “I was running a bit late - hard to get around these days. I was afraid that I had missed getting a number.”

 

Someone started clapping as the garage began to open and a man in his fifties, outfitted in  Carharrt coveralls and a carharrt stocking cap began to walk down the line passing out numbered cards that determined the order in which we would go up to fill out a sheet that had food options on it. 

 

The elderly woman was behind me so once our numbers - I was 14 and she was 15, so we approached the folding table together where we were handed pens.

 

“Now,” the elederly lady said to a shiny-eyed teenage girl volunteer, “If I forgo the laundry soap could I have two toilet papers? It says ‘pick two’, so can I pick two toilet papers? I need toilet paper.”

 

I finished filling out my paper and handed it to the volunteer. 

 

I walked around the building to its West side where the bags of food were passed out. I looked back and saw the elderly woman still filling out her paper.

 

I thought of my mother. And I realized that I didn’t know how old she was. I wasn’t sure what year she was born, even. Thats terrible, I thought, “you don’t know how old your mom is. Pathetic. You’re a terrible son.”

 

I was glad I lived close to my mother. She was fit, in her sixties (I knew that much) but I did worry about her. I would hate for my mom, one day, once she’s older, to have to go to the food bank like this. I would hope I would be able to take care of her 

 

I then thought of the app Faceapp that ages a photo of the user, showing him or her what they might look like fifty years in the future. I remember looking at my own face, imagined and rendered as a wrinkled, shriveled 80 year old and for some reason it made me cry. 

 

There must be something lonely about aging, I thought. Seeing myself looking old on the phone screen, when I was actually still relatively young, opened up some kind of chasm on the inside, a great rip, a tear, an empty place, an depression in the soil of my sole. 

 

And then I noticed a slender man outfitted in overalls with a round glasses and a long grey beard approach the elderly woman. When she turned and saw him, she gasped and put her hands to her face.

 

The man smiled at her.

 

“Is that really you?” The woman asked. “Is it really you? Can it be? It can’t be. Its been so, so, so long.”

 

The woman’s posture straightened, no longer hunched over her walked. In one fluid motion she lifted her walker and put it to the side and folded herself into the man’s welcoming, outstretched arms. She put her head to his chest as he was about a foot and a half taller to her and he held her.

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And there they stood, embraced. They held each other, frozen in place, contented, smiling with smiles that seemed eternal as if, now, finally, all was well. 

 

A hug that must have been in the making for decades.

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I got my food, thanking the man in the Carharrt and the teenage girl at the table, and walked past the two elderly folks who were now laughing, tears of joy on the woman’s eyes.