Holiday Hunger

Food and holidays go hand-in-hand in my memory. Either Daddy was sending me to the kitchen to help Mama, or Mama was sending me back to the Living Room (or more likely "Outside") to get out from under her feet. The kitchen became a sacred hub of activity. Unfortunately in my family, this was Women's sacred space. Men's sacred space seemed to be parked in the living room in front of the t.v. or working somewhere other than the kitchen. This caused problems for me. It rankled.

Unless the food preparation had icing to squeeze through tubes into edible masterpieces or colored sugar sprinkles or edible BB's, I wasn't interested. I would rather rake leaves, weave bird's nests from fallen pine needles, climb trees, draw, write, read, play hide and seek and freeze tag, explore the woods, glue paper together, rummage through the trash can for objects to meld into some semblance of something approaching art, play football, or deconstruct my room.

The problem was compounded by my innate sense of right and wrong, of inequality and justice. I was usually sent to the kitchen with a tone that spoke as loudly as the words. The statement or implication was that because I had a uterus, I existed to feed those with penises. Being sent to the kitchen because I was a girl, and possibly because I was a child annoying a parent who wanted me out of the room, did not sit well, because it did not make sense. Not that I've always been sensible. But making sense to me, even in an nonsensical way, seems paramount, at least at times when I want it to.

But this is all a huge detour along the path of my thoughts and one to which I hope to return.

This week I learned from the Family Services Coordinator at my daughter's school that she was getting lots of requests for food for the holidays, more than last year, and more from two-parent-working families than in her memory. These families depend upon the free breakfast and lunch our school provides to feed their children and make ends meet each week. When the children are home all week, the families have to provide these meals. Many are finding they do not have the means to do so.

My daughter's holiday will probably look a lot like mine growing up, only all of us will cook, decorate, make craft projects, work in the yard, and ride the carousel. We try hard to look at everything as a matter of curiosity, a task to be figured out and mastered and not divvied up by anatomy.

I'm looking forward to my daughter being home with me for two weeks, to baking Christmas cookies with icing you squeeze through tubes into edible masterpieces, to hot cider and popcorn to eat and to string for decoration, to taking her outside to fill the bird feeder so that even the birds of the air have food when they come to our yard.

And some mother at my daughter's school is looking to her daughter's/son's holiday homecoming with bittersweet thoughts.

Sure, we can and do provide assistance to these families in many ways. But where's the root of this blackberry bush, this scotch broom, this running bamboo? How do we make the world more just, so that every parent can mark the days off the calendar with expectant joy of a child being home for a little while?

The Gospel resounds in my ears this Advent: In as much as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me... Let's feed each other and let's change the world so that all have enough without having to beg, but even if -- when -- the world becomes completely equitable, let's still feed each other.