Thanksgiving

We walked into a Food Lion on Sunday last, past the old man waiting for his wife on the bench just inside the door, past the lottery machines and a display of store brand soda, past a pile of pale green rectangular boxes. It was time to buy the last few provisions we needed for our Thanksgiving dinner, and I had coupons and a carefully prepared list at the ready on my utilitarian brown clipboard. Unemployment has brought out the bargain-hunter side of me, so I split my grocery trips between the Food Lion on one corner and the Harris Teeter on the other. Time is in greater supply than money, and in this way I can stretch the food dollars without adding much to the gasoline tab.

Food Lion is the unfashionable store; the grocery store of the everyman -- the first one in a fledgling town and the one that claims the less glamorous clientele once the glossy chains move in. It isn't the scrubbed-clean mega-market with shining displays of organic produce and high-end specialty foods; Instead, it boasts a comparatively impressive display of Hispanic foods and a meager smattering of representative items from each category of item you might expect to find in a grocery store.

We walked through the aisles and picked up about $50-worth of food from the list -- well, it was generally sold for more than that, but sales and coupons knocked a great deal off of the cost, and I was having fun thinking of the money we weren't spending. Cream soup cans and toilet paper and other necessities piled up in the cart, and we made our way to the line, passing cart after cart filled with cascading Banquet frozen entrees and the various pork products that seem to be the store's mainstay, along with the tell-tale traditional foods of the holiday.

One of the most shocking aspects of life in the South for the Southern California girl in me is that nobody seems to be in much of a hurry here -- ever. I watched a man at a tire shop earlier this week patiently approach the young man at the front desk to inform him that the repair job he had ordered was still not done properly... first they forgot to rotate the tires, then they didn't check the pressure, and the list went on. Still, the man, clearly frustrated but always polite, simply waited until the job was done right and chatted with me about hockey in the interim. It was that or watch a particularly insipid Judge-Somebody-or-Other show on the TV in the corner of the waiting room. We both chose sociability, and patience, over the voyeuristic pleasure of watching people humiliate themselves on television. Waiting is just what we needed to do, and far from being weird, being neighborly is encouraged.

The lines in the Food Lion are another chance for the exercise of patience, or reflection, or catching up with an old friend who just happens to be in the next line, or a friendly exchange with the decidedly-unstylish, probably overweight and pimpled checker. In this case, while I waited for my shot at the rotating belt counter top, I chose to ponder the huge water bottle on the end of the counter that was filled with miscellaneous small change and bore a hand-written sign: This Thanksgiving will be difficult for all of us. If you can spare anything, we'll make sure it goes to the needy of our community. I looked at the meager offerings in the jar, and at to my cart as my mind wandered up the street and into our refrigerator where our turkey was thawing. I bought it early in the season while smallish birds could still be found. I realized then that even though I was jobless and our shopping was budgeted rather carefully, I didn't have to worry about whether or not we could pay for this food. Not one bit.

I thought back over the last year -- the miscarriage, our job losses, the move I didn't want to make, all of the uncertainty about the future -- all of the things that scared and pained me. Then I looked at the selfless, kind husband who had agreed to accompany me to the store when I know he would have rather been almost anywhere else. I soon found that my eyes were starting to burn. There was this amazing feeling that washed over me, something I had never felt so clearly. It was gratitude. I felt so incredibly blessed, because through His mercy God has seen to it that we haven't have to worry about the basics of life through any of it, and I have love and family and friends and health and so much to be grateful for.

When it was our turn to check out, the checker looked at the box of store brand stuffing (backup in case my scratch stuffing doesn't work as planned or something to add to a future dinner in a hurry) and sweet potatoes and other goodies destined for our table, and she reminded me that I had forgotten the turkey. I smiled and thanked her and told her I had one thawing in the fridge.
Then the checker turned to have a quick exchange with the box boy about the pale green boxes we had passed in the front of the store. "Have those been purchased?" he asked, motioning to the large pile that formed the display. "No," she replied, and she straightened the box in front of us and asked us if we wanted to buy one for five dollars. I looked at Daniel and he shrugged. "Yes," we said, and she thanked us asked the box boy to fetch a replacement from the big pile and added our one box to a very small pile behind the counter. The box contained name-brand thanksgiving fixings sufficient for one person for one meal. Suddenly another feeling washed over me... shame. Ours was such a small gesture, such a tiny offering that doesn't begin to address the real need of those in my neighborhood. I had an urge to buy the whole pile, but that was checked by the reality that we cannot afford that, as much as I would like to.

My imagination started working. Who would get that small box? How would they feel to open it and eat the contents? Ashamed? Grateful? If so, perhaps we shared in the same feelings as well as the same humanity and the same geographic region. I was ashamed as I looked at that five-dollar box and thought of the hundreds of dollars I spend in ways I can't easily account for when so many go hungry around me. I was grateful that there was something I could do at one of the leanest times in our lives together that would fill another belly for one special day.

We walked back out, and the old woman joined her husband. We grabbed our bags and packages of paper goods and waited for a man, and then a woman, to come in out of the cold. We set off through the bracing wind to fill our car with good things, and I fought back tears as we started the short drive back home in relative silence.

I don't know how to say thank you. I don't know where to begin. I do know that this Thanksgiving, my heart is as full as our small family table will be, and I am truly grateful.