Location: Breaking Bread Ministries/LaSalle Street Church
Date: Wednesday, November 6, 2013; 5:45-9:00 pm
Here I was again, walking over
for this project the first Wednesday of the month. Thomas from Chicago Cares had once again
inquired if I was able to lead today and I had said yes. I sent a welcome email to the 3 people
who had signed up and fortunately there were no cancellations. I arrived a bit early to find that Keith was
looking a bit flustered, so much so that he didn't recognize me. I reminded him who I was and while there was a vague
recollection, it seemed that he had a lot on his mind. He was sending everyone to the clothing room
since the food preparation seemed to be under control. Two of my volunteers – Harpreet (Happy) and
Tiffany had arrived and I sent them over to help sort the donated clothes into
various piles. We saw that several
volunteers were already engaged in that activity and the two of them joined the
group. I was still waiting for the third
Chicago Cares volunteer to show up and thought that my presence would be
required in the main kitchen. Plus, Keith was certain to find some task for me over
there.
Sure enough, he needed someone to
chop the tomatoes for the salad and just as I was about to do that, my final
Chicago Cares volunteer, Aysha arrived.
I appointed her to the tomatoes duty, while I started helping another
regular volunteer Hannah, in peeling cucumbers.
I have seen her every time I have been to this place and when I learned
that she was in 8th grade, I was floored by her dedication to
this project. Having peeled potatoes for a prior
cooking project, I wasn’t looking forward to this task, though cucumbers proved
to be easier to manage. We then handed
the cucumbers to Aysha to include in the salad, while I started looking for the
21 bowls that we would be using to serve.
As I started removing them from a cabinet, one of them slipped and with
a sound that only shattering glass can make, spread all over the kitchen floor! As I went to get the mop, Keith came to see
what the racket was and said that he was going to give me a hard time over
this. Then for the rest of the evening,
he kept referring to me breaking bowls. “Bowl”, I would correct him. “Singular”.
.JPG) |
| The desserts for this evening |
The sorting room people were done
and they joined us in the kitchen, meaning we had a full house. Most of them were dispatched to help with
distribution of the desserts on 21 plates.
Today we had a lot of cakes and cookies and Keith wanted to get rid of
everything. Besides the 3 Chicago Cares
volunteers, there were 2 other girls – Mikelle and Brittany – who were
helping out and seemed to have identified me as a leader. With Marianne missing, someone had to take
charge and it might as well be me. I
handed them 21 plates – taking care not to break any – and asked them to
distribute evenly. We had dessert in
excess and I told them that rather than piling the plates up high, we should leave
some of the dessert out for people to take home when they came for
seconds. This would not only help the
guests out, but also prevent wastage since any uneaten food has to get thrown
out as per the law.
Keith then called everyone to
order and prepared for his usual speech.
He mentioned that Marianne was out for a doctor’s appointment and so it
wasn’t surprising for me that he had looked a bit overwhelmed at the beginning. For the new comers benefit he told us about
the ‘LaSalle Street Church’ and the ‘Breaking Bread Ministries’ and then for everyone’s
benefit, repeated the fact that the people coming in for dinner were our guests
and that we needed to treat them with dignity and respect – two words that are
often repeated in this place. When the
duties were assigned I said that I would serve juice along with Brittany and
she said that she would follow my lead. We
started doing that and it was the most crowded that I have seen this
place. It took us a long time to do our
rounds and by the time we returned, dinner had been plated and ready to be
served. Tonight’s menu was Chicken, Mixed
Vegetables, Rice and Gravy. As the
volunteers started delivering plates, I took over Marianne’s task of pointing
at the tables that were to be served next.
With this system we were done shortly and no sooner had we returned back
to our station, than it was time for seconds and clearing of bowls and
utensils.
As people stood in lines, it
seemed that clearing tables was a relentless and never-ending task, including
gathering of the salt and pepper shakers and the central artificial floral
arrangement. With the clearing, stacking
of the chairs and pushing away the tables, we were all exhausted at the end and
it seemed like it had been the most labor intensive time at this project. But none of us were complaining and I for one
felt proud of myself since I had felt like a real leader today, taking charge so
much so that volunteers followed my lead and asked me questions. As we packed up, I thanked my 3 volunteers as
well as Mikelle and Brittany, while pitching Chicago Cares to them. I walked back part of the way with Brittany
and she talked about the challenges that she was facing, deciding between doing a PhD and going to medical school. She said that she did not want to have
regrets later and I said that rare is a life without any regrets about the
past. What matters is that the past does
not lead to one having regrets about the present. I told her not to put her life on hold as she
debates this, and to go with what she truly wants. Tonight had been a tough assignment. But with a good team, we had overcome it and
delivered a successful project. Well, successful
minus one bowl. I think that even Keith would
give me a pass for that!
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