Adding a Little Sunshine

February 1st: There’s no better pick-me-up than helping someone else and today I needed just that.  A sympathy letter composed today to my recently widowed best friend is the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to write.  Afterwards I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach, winded by the grief of also having lost a dear friend.  I carried that feeling with me throughout the day, even dreading fulfilling a commitment I made to serve dinner tonight at our local homeless shelter.  I just wanted to curl up under the covers and wait for the day to blow over, to start anew tomorrow.  But a commitment is a commitment and off I went.

Volunteering at the shelter is something I’ve only recently started doing.  I work the dessert table, serving desserts donated by our local grocery stores.  Pies, cakes and cupcakes of all varieties.  Donuts, cookies and pastries.  An SUV full of sweets; heaven for those with a sweet tooth.  The dessert table is hard work and messy because almost everything needs to be sliced and put into single serving dishes while keeping up with a fast moving line of several hundred people.  But I love it.  It’s a treat when someone who’s having a difficult time spies a favorite dessert they haven’t seen in a long time, a dessert that may make them think of simpler and better times.  Some come through the line, eyes lighting up as they select a big piece of cake and share that yesterday was their birthday, a day that probably went unrecognized until that moment.  I love saying hello, giving them a big smile, and treating them like they were a customer in my bakery.   And they respond in kind.

It’s hard to know why there are so many on the streets.  Some are there because this is no longer an affordable place to live and there is nowhere else to go.  Some are there temporarily, moving through a short hiccup in life, and others are there indefinitely.  Some are there because life has continually pushed them down and they just don’t have what it takes to get back up and others are there by choice.  But all of them are people just wanting to be acknowledged.  My job, while I’m there, is to add a little sunshine to their day.  And they, in return, without even knowing it, add a little sunshine to mine.  For this, I am grateful.