I'm stuffed! I ate way too much, and I ate every bit of what was on my plate. It was the best meal I had all week, and it was free! Did I mooch off family or drop in on friends? No. I just did a volunteer day over at The Community Table in Eau Claire. If you've read my earlier posts, you know that the volunteers and staff at The Community Table cook and serve the meal, eat with the community members who come for the meal, and then clean up the mess after. It's pretty much like working a potluck in the basement of the Lutheran Church; but the menu is planned, it is on the first floor, and there are members of all religions and traditions working and being served.
By the time I got there, stations were set up in the kitchen and different projects were happening in different areas. One station was working on chopping vegetables for the Ramen noodle salad, a station was working on cleaning and drying lettuce for tossed salad, and one station was busily dicing eggs for the egg salad. I was quickly dispatched to make the dressing for the ramen noodle salad and was given a young helper named Zach to be the ramen noodle master. His job was to open the packets of ramen and bust up the noodles. We called it "rage against the ramen."
There is no time wasted and no food wasted in that kitchen. Kim guided us through the recipes, the serving and the cleanup with minimum fuss. We even had some time to prep some fruit for the Sunday meal and clean some potatoes for the Monday meal. Between sharing the labor, we shared a lot of laughter. The mouths were moving as fast as the hands--it was like preparing a meal with an extended family of strangers.
There was a man who played the piano in the corner. He came with binders of music and went from one song to another without taking much of a break between them. At first, I thought there was a radio in the dining area, then I realized it was just one man. He was fantastic! He must have played for about an hour. Then he just packed up his music, got a tray of food, and sat down to eat. Another man took his place at the piano and started plunking out a blues melody. It was wonderful!
After the line dwindled down to stragglers, a few stayed to serve and the rest of us caught our meal. That is when the reality of The Community Table sets in--you get to see where we as a nation are failing people. I discovered that poverty has no race. It has no age. It has no gender. Poverty can strike any one of us. I sat there thinking that if I didn't have insurance, I would be one health crisis away from being on the other side of the counter. What if I had a condition that manifested itself behaviorally and I couldn't afford my medication? I could be the woman saying, "Don't talk to me! Just trouble! Just trouble!" I could be the parent there with my cognitively disabled child getting her a healthy meal.
Without a decent job with decent insurance, I could be the person who had just finished my meal, brought my plate back to the counter, packed up all my worldly belongings, pulled my hood back over my head, and went back out in the rain.
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