In the last year, I have realized that the location of The Kitchen is very far away from Mali, Kenya, Darfur, Guatemala, Peru and… well, pretty much everywhere but The Kitchen. Standing over the sink is certainly not the same thing as organizing an HIV prevention outreach event, and in no way does dicing a garlic clove resemble saving the world. While “sautee the onions over low heat until transparent” is not code for “meet the caravan of refugees at three o’clock”, I can – and often do – find a little morsel of meaning here and there.
Funny that lately, it’s been in the form of food. Cooking dinner is one of my greatest joys, and I put an obsessive and inappropriate amount of time into deciding a menu for just my husband and me. I close my eyes and envision a tender pink salmon filet poached with fennel and champagne. I watch it nestle happily into place beside the darling snap peas beaded with sweat. Sigh.
Ok, that was weird. Moving on.
Another food-based passion is my volunteer work at the Food Bank. Each week we stuff 150 backpacks full of easy to prepare or ready-to-eat food, plus fresh fruit. These are distributed to local elementary school kids who, for one reason or another, don’t have a stable food source. I found a call for volunteers online (VolunteerMatch.com is great) and this nearly broke my heart.
I happily began my time at the Food Bank two weeks ago and reported this to my mother-in-law, who has an itchy need to know what the hell I do with my time since I’m not calling or seeing her every ten minutes. In addition to catering hand and foot to *gasp* her spoiled rotton yet wonderful son, I informed her of the food program for kids. And then she said something that made me realize yet again that for all of her incredible resources, her Gucci, her Hermes and her Botox, she will never be anything more than typical:
“You’re sure it’s going to the right place?” she asked.
This is the odd thing about charity. My husband’s parents have given literally millions to (already fancy) hospitals, foundations, country clubs, you name it. This is the woman who told everyone she was going to volunteer in the newborn nursery, and then quit after one day. Her veiled explanation translated to one of being that there weren’t enough “white” babies to hold. Yes, this is the woman who asks me if FOOD is going to the right place.
It took me longer than usual to respond, as I was suddenly taken by the mental picture of a man in an Armani suit filling his pockets with cheese. He has a wicked grin on his face and is salivating. He has a thought bubble over his head as his hands manickly swipe every plastic fork in sight: Today, pretzels; Tomorrow, the CARIBBEAN! I mean, fuck. A person has to try REALLY HARD to embezzle applesauce.
At any rate, it’s funny to see people’s reactions toward public aid agencies. Everyone has a political chip on their shoulder, bitching about how their tax dollars are feeding, god forbid, the hungry. Then they get in their Benz SUVs and drive home to their estate to boss around the nanny.
Please god, you there, past the telephone wires and up in the stars and airplane lights, don’t ever let me be so ignorant.
The Bewildered Housewife 