September 8, 2016

Edmund and I bonded over food. One week it was baloney and Edmund told me all about his childhood memory of frying baloney over a hot stove and eating it right off the fork he fried it with. We hovered over the baloney for quite some time while Edmund reminisced and tucked away more and more packages of baloney into his bags. We were all set up for the Friday Food Pantry and had eaten lunch and all us volunteers were collecting food our own needs before the throngs of shoppers showed up to fill their bags with the potluck of foods that happened to be dropped off by the Food Shelf that morning.

I can’t say I have a fondness for baloney and never touch the stuff but it was a huge part of my childhood school lunch memories. I watched my mother make 4 lunches each morning and often it was peanut butter and butter sandwiches for me but every once in a while when there was money for meat, it was baloney and then it was baloney and mayonnaise on wheat bread. My mom was one of the early converters from white bread to wheat bread probably due to the fact that my eldest sister was already in college and heavily into the whole foods movement and she probably convinced my mom to feed us wheat bread although the wheat bread we ate was soft and gooey just like the white bread and since it wasn’t very expensive I’m guessing that it was white bread disguised as wheat bread with food coloring and other chemicals and preservatives that rendered it as unhealthy as the white bread we shunned. But, some days there was baloney between those slices of not-so-healthy wheat bread and it was glorious. My favorite was when she would purchase a large chunk of baloney from the meat counter (it must have been on sale) and she would shred it then mix it with mayonnaise and pickle relish to make a sandwich spread that tasted even more special than plain baloney and mayonnaise sandwiches.

One day at the Food Pantry a whole lot of bok choy arrived and I was assigned to pass it out to the shoppers as they circled the altar filling their bags with fresh produce, bread, canned goods, dry beans, and sometimes other treats like baloney. Edmund knew his limits—he said to me, “I aint passing out the bok choy cuz they will want more than one and they will argue with you and you will have to say no. I hate doing that. Uh uh…no way…I’m glad it’s you and not me.” He was right. It was a hard job. Bok choy was the most popular item that day and almost everyone that came through the line wanted more than the one-per-person limit. I had to be tough; I had to deny people their request for food—something that goes against my nature of loving to feed people, loving to freely give from my vegetable garden. To expedite the line we hand out food and expect the shoppers to take it and move on. The bok choy was a bottleneck that day as I had to argue with people to take what I handed them rather than pick through the five-foot high pile of the tender and easily bruised delicacy. Edmund was right, I hated that job, but it did force me to buck up and be tough, to say no and shoo people on to the next stop in their shopping adventure.

I hate denying people food and this experience with the bok choy begs the questions, “Why can’t we all have the amount of food that we need for our sustenance?” Why can’t I give out as much bok choy as each person wants?” Of course I know the answer to the second question—so that everyone who comes through the line gets bok choy. Before we begin passing out food, Elena carefully assesses each item and based on the amount that was delivered decides a daily limit for each food item. My limit that day was one-per-person and Elena was correct because at the end of the day we only had 4 or 5 heads of bok choy left over. But, despite knowing all this rational and logical information, I still wanted to hand out as much bok choy as each person wanted. The loaves and fish story just popped into my head. What would have happen if I just kept passing out bok choy, would it have multiplied to feed the multitudes as much bok choy as they wanted? Oh how I wish!

The following Friday I was assigned to hand out peaches, which was a close second in popularity to bok choy. Of course many of the peaches had spots and bruises on them but were still edible so I picked through them as best I could and offered the allotted two peaches to everyone that came up to me. One man argued that he didn’t like them because they were bruised and wanted different ones and when I tried to explain they were all that way he dropped his peach at my feet in disgust and walked on. He rejected my gift of food and I felt insulted and hurt and angry that he was being so picky about free food and then guilty for judging him. Maybe peach duty was harder than the bok choy. I clearly had a lot to learn about negotiating the ins and outs of the Food Pantry or maybe I needed to learn from Edmund, who clearly knew how to set limits.

I began to wonder if they handed out the hard jobs to the newbies as a test to see if we could handle the pressure. I’m sure this wasn’t the case but still the thought did cross my mind. When I learned to make tamales with my husband’s family, I was assigned the onerous task of washing and picking through the corn husks because this was the worst job and considered a rite of passage before I got to learn and perform the other more important jobs. As I stood at the kitchen sink for hours it became less of a privilege to learn the art of tamale making and more of a lesson in attempting to control resentment. I was an adult after all, capable of running a business as well as cooking a gourmet meal for my family, so I’m sure I could handle following a recipe and spreading masa on hojas (corn husks). As I stood with my arms elbow-deep in water washing corn husks I became more and more convinced that my soon-to-be mother-in-law just didn’t want to divulge her secret family tamale recipe to me, the outsider.   Instead of learning anything I walked away resentful that I had wasted so much precious time doing something a five-year old could have accomplished. What did I learn? Give people meaningful work and they will want to come back and do a good job.

Maybe Elena wasn’t giving me the hard jobs to test me but was giving me the hard jobs because they were the most challenging and she knew I could handle the tough interactions I might have with people and maybe, just maybe, if I felt valued enough by being given an important job, I would want to come back and work again. The day of the peaches I stood next to Orlando who handed out the baked goods, another popular item that took a tough personality. Orlando said, “I have to watch them closely and cover up most of the bread or they sneak behind my back and take more than allowed.” Sure enough, I saw several women try this but Orlando was on to them and put a stop to it. Joe, the go-to man who broke down all the boxes and was right there before we asked to help us lift a box or replenish our crates with the food we handed out, often talked about how difficult it was to suspend judgment when someone took more than allotted or when someone argued or when someone took the food and sold it on market street for cash. He talked of a years-long process of letting go of judgment and trusting that most people were there because they needed food and his job was just to be there and make that happen. All of this made me sad. Why were we regulating the amount of food that hungry people could take? Of course I know the answer to that question—so that everyone that came through the line had food to take home. But why didn’t the shoppers think that way when they were coming through the line? I can’t answer that question and I’m not interested in even trying.

In his book The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, John D. Caputo spends time talking about Derrida’s concept of gift. According to Derrida, a gift is not a gift unless the giver expects nothing in return and the receiver of the gift has no thought of returning the gift-favor. In other words, a true gift is given without expectation of gratitude or expectation of giving back. According to Derrida, our culture has created a closed circle of gift giving where we give and then expect a gift in return and this cycle perpetuates itself ad infinitum. Thus, we live in a system of what Derrida calls “economy” or a system that expects and gets something (money or gratitude for example) in return for goods (gifts) given. A true gift breaks this circle open. Yet, we live in a system of economy and until we can break this cycle open we can live in the hope of a coming of the gift, a new way of being with each other, a new way of creating justice with and for each other. In the meantime we can do what Derrida recommends: “Give economy a try.”

Are we really offering the Food Pantry shoppers a gift if we limit the amount of food they have or if we expect them to say thank you or if we expect them to behave and accept the amount we have allotted? No, those are not gifts, yet there was a system that allowed everyone that came through the line to take home food and it was a good amount of healthy food that fed them and their families for a week or so. This system is equitable, and we needed to work within this system so everyone got fed, yet this system is not just—it does not provide a way for all these hungry people to provide food for themselves and it does not create a world where all people have access to healthy food. YET, as Derrida would say, “We need to give economy a try.” The Food Pantry is giving economy a try, giving it a run for its money even. And, this is incredibly selfish on my part, if the food pantry wasn’t there I never would have experienced these rich personal interactions—I would not have talked about baloney with Edmund or laughed with Orlando as the little old ladies snatched bread, or had to dig deep and say no to someone’s desire for bok choy. Yes, I do want to live in a world where everyone is fed an adequate amount of healthy food each day, but selfishly I don’t want to lose those funny, poignant, and tender interactions with strangers. I wish I had some profound insight into how my selfishness helps humanity but I don’t. It’s just selfish and yet I still want to work for justice, I still want to give economy a try, and I still want to attempt to give a true gift even if it is a peach or a package of baloney or a head of bok choy.