Small Miracles – Foodbank Tales #2
On Wednesdays my husband Jack and I do a run together for Miracle Food Network. We cram our small pickup truck full of food boxes, milk jugs and take-out pizza and drive to a trailer court north of town. There are 55 to 60 single-wide mobile homes and trailers. Busted windows, sagging stair steps and decks are part of the scenery though many residents also have small gardens, potted plants, holiday lights or some other touch that turns a house into a home. We deliver to 11 trailers, approximately 28 adults and 20 kids, most from Central America or Mexico.
Shortly after we started this gig, I began to clear out my grandchildren’s leftover animal toys and action figures. Remembering my own childish anticipation of a tiny toy buried like treasure deep inside each new box of breakfast cereal, one day I dropped a plastic animal in every food box, two for trailer # 2 which houses 7 kids and 3 adults. My dentist donated some outdated tubes of travel toothpaste, which also went into boxes the following weeks. Ann, a dedicated volunteer for the city library, donated some picture books, and we began to distribute those too. In what I came to think of as my own income redistribution scheme, I haunted Little Free Libraries in established neighborhoods across town culling a small selection of books from each and eventually returning others.
Slowly we learned the children’s names: Mariela, Sofia, Flora, Gabbi, Iris, Alan, Karen, Carlos, Diego, Leslie, Juana, Rodrigo, Tristian, Reina. They would come to the door when we knocked or occasionally follow us around the trailer park on their bicycles. I learned most – though not all – of the kids spoke English and preferred English language books, but I needed to speak Spanish to the parents. Some spoke an indigenous Guatemalan dialect, so we communicated either through the children or with smiles and brief greetings. One fine summer day I showed two little girls the latest books I had on offer and was rewarded with a big smile and a response I still treasure, “Me encantan los libros!” (I love books!)
I passed that commentary on to Ann, and she rewarded me with more books. Slowly I began asking which books kids preferred out of my stash, then more generally what kinds of books they liked. Shy at first, they warmed up and showed up. One day at trailer #15, Juana asked me if I had any chapter books. I realized I needed to recalibrate and offer more than picture books. A retired middle school teacher posted a notice on Nextdoor, and I collected three free grocery bags of chapter books! Princesses, super heroes and unicorns were poplular.
As we completed our delivery that day to number #42, the last on the loop, Jack glanced up and saw 4 of the little girls reading their new books together, shoulder-to-shoulder, on a swing in the back yard. The following week Miracle Foods added a new family, and we learned that Diego lives with three uncles and likes sports books. At some point I got the impression that my book selection was, perhaps, kind of lame. Maybe I needed to look for graphic novels and include comic books. Ann suggested coloring books. My friend Sally dónate 6 boxes of brand new crayons, color coordinated with sharp points. This seems to be an intuitive sort of process as I record impressions and reactions in English, Spanish and Mam, a Guatamalan Mayan language, which of course I do not speak.
Who knows where this will lead us? Fantasies of a future summer day find me sitting on that porch swing reading to Juana, Iris and Sofia in person. Jack thinks about taking Builder Boards – https://woodshop4kids.com – out to the trailer court and setting up a hands-on adventure. No matter. For now, families get food, kids get books (and toothpaste) and we get the satisfaction of knowing and serving a previously unknown part of our own back yard, a small miracle all its own.