The Circle of Life

Elizabeth Molyneaux 

 As a student in Ontario, I was required to complete 40 hours of volunteer work throughout all four years of high school.  As a student at a Catholic school, all 40 of those hours were required to be ‘Christian service’—they had to help the community in a Christ-like way.  

    That was what led me to be at church at 5 o’clock on a Wednesday night.

My palms tingled with pinpricks of sweat as I walked through the church doors.  Mother Mary was staring at me from her pedestal, babe in her arms and melancholy in her eyes.  She gave me the chills.  Her gaze followed me down the stairs to the church basement.

    When I got to the basement, I saw a veritable assembly line of short, wrinkled Italian ladies, ladles in hand and hairnets on their heads.  They glanced up simultaneously as I stomped down the stairway, and each gave an identical flicker of a smile.  I smiled back and then, when they didn’t speak to me, walked down a small hall to a large all-purpose room.

    There was a stage at the front of the room, basketball nets on either side, and tables and chairs leaning against the walls.  I was the only one in the room, so I sat in a corner and texted my friend.   I’m so bored.

    Soon other students started trickling through the doors, until there were about ten of us amassed in the kitchen-gym-theatre-basement.  One of the Italian kitchen ladies came to see us, and told us that our job was to unfold and set tables, fold napkins, butter rolls, and get drinks ready for the 80 people who would be coming to eat in an hour.
 
    It was my job to pour tomato juice into 80 clear plastic cups.  I worked meticulously for half an hour, set the cups on a trolley and waited.  For 30 long minutes.

    The first diner to show up was a lone man.  He looked to be about 50, with greasy grey hair reaching to his shoulders, and a mouth that looked as though it had been in too many hockey games to count.  I smiled civilly at him and gestured towards a table.  

    Within about twenty minutes, our makeshift restaurant was at full capacity.  The hall and the kitchen were buzzing with activity: people talking, the sound of smacking lips, dishes clattering.

    I did my job dutifully, but did nothing beyond that.  I carried full plates to whoever needed them, refilled empty glasses, and took dishes back to the kitchen.  Mostly, though, I observed—listened, watched, learned.

    Our program was a program for anybody in my city living below the poverty line to come and eat once a week.  I saw people from all walks of life.  Families with three, four, five children.  Old men, middle-aged women.  Pregnant women.  And one group of youths.

    In my mind I made up stories for everybody who was there: they had grown up well-off, maybe, but had squandered their money on gambling or drinking.  Perhaps they had always been poor, had grown accustomed to it.  Maybe they were starving artists.  Idealists with no money for reality.

    But what I found in all my made-up stories, and in the eyes of every person who ate at the church that night: they were all like me.  They had families, friends.  They had jobs.  They had lives.  Maybe they had made mistakes in their lives.  Maybe life had merely dealt them unfair lives.  But they were human, and they deserved to be treated as such.

    The entire night, I didn’t get one complaint, even though I was far from an expert hostess.  The people we served were truly kind.  They were beautiful, and sweet, and funny, and smart.  They were amazing people.  As they left, many of them thanked my fellow volunteers and me.  I could feel myself blushing each time they thanked me.  But I appreciated their thanks, as they appreciated my work.

    When all the patrons left that night, us volunteers stuck around to pack up the tables and wash the dishes.  We even had our own meal together.

    The patrons of the church soup kitchen taught me how connected we, as a society, are to each other.  Without the people at the church that night, I never would have realised how important it is to help fellow humans.  Because as the patrons thanked me, they fed me.  As I had fed them with food, they fed me with gratitude.  And that’s what’s important in life.  Co-operation.

    As I left the church, I texted my friend.  You should come next week.