Close your eyes. I invite you to picture a kitchen. Maybe it is your kitchen at home or your dream kitchen that your best friend has. What does it look like? What does it smell like? Now, I invite you to picture another kind of kitchen. A soup kitchen. You can open your eyes. Did it look something like this? If it did, that is okay. It was certainly my idea of a soup kitchen when I grew up volunteering at one as a child. My mom, twin sister, and I would go there often.
Not because we were food insecure, but because my mom wanted to teach us a thing or two about serving others. We would drive downtown, walk inside. Nancy, the woman in charge, would give us a couple of canned goods to make for lunch that day. Then, at eleven, we would serve the food to the line out the door. I grew up serving there. It was in this experience that I began to notice several things, as any child would.
One thing that always struck me for strange was why I was the one serving this food across the line to a kid who looked just like me. We would scoop out whatever we had prepared that day, sometimes chicken, sometimes pork, and serve it to a kid that looked just like me. This was unlike any dining experience I had as a child; not even my elementary and middle school cafeterias felt this way.
We ended up at my favorite Mexican place a lot. Years went by, and I transitioned to college. I started volunteering and eventually working for a day shelter working with people experiencing homelessness and poverty.
At this day shelter, I got to know so many incredible people, some of the kindest people I had ever met. I got to know their hopes, dreams, and stories, and they got to know mine.
