A few weeks ago, my wife, Shelley, and I went to the Congregational church in Waquoit to pick up our “Meals for Maui”. It was a fund raiser sponsored by the faith community in Falmouth. As we started our drive, “All Things Considered” was on the car radio with the routine litany of wars, natural disasters, humanitarian crises, and political upheaval. We responded with our usual tirade of outrage and despair. The road was filled with drivers who, by the looks on their faces, must have been listening to the same broadcast. We all scowled at one another.
When we turned left at the church, a group of men in yellow vests waved us along. They looked a bit like a DPW crew directing traffic during road repairs, but these men were smiling, and their waves were welcoming. We shut off the radio and opened the windows.
“Are you here for the meals?” one of the men asked.
“Yes,” we said.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, and pointed us to a group of men and women sitting at a table twenty feet ahead.
“Good evening,” the first woman said with a bright smile on her face.
The next woman, grinning behind a clipboard, asked how many meals we wanted.
“Two please,” Shelley told her.
“That will be $38,” she said.
Shelley handed the man sitting behind the cash box some money and told him to keep the change. He beamed and thanked her as if she’d just delivered his first grandchild.
Another welcoming face directed us to the food station where four more cheerful ladies presented our meals and thanked us for coming.
We smiled and shouted, “Thank you,” and headed back home.
“This is such a treat,” I said to Shelley, both of us soaking up the aroma of a luau coming from the back seat.
When we got home and opened our dinners we smiled again. The menu had promised huli huli chicken, coconut rice and luau vegetables. Each of our aluminum containers was filled with a nice piece of spiced chicken, what looked like half of a pound of sparkling white rice, and some intriguing vegetables. Accompanying the meal was a bonus treat, a container of the staple of any church supper, macaroni salad. The dessert was unfamiliar but covered in chocolate, so we were happy.
The food was delicious and more than enough for our dinner, so we saved the macaroni salad for the next day and had left-over rice and dessert for another night. By the time we finished our Meals for Maui, we hardly remembered which crisis it was meant to support. Six weeks had passed since that particular disaster, and in that time, there had been hurricanes, earthquakes, political outrage, and even more war. More families were without food and shelter. The fires in Maui were a distant heartache swallowed into the abyss of the daily bad news cycle.
But even now, I remember the evening we drove across town to be treated to a feast. We heard that the meals sold out and raised several thousand dollars for Maui. Many people worked for days to achieve that goal. All the workers we saw that night were smiling. Like all of us, they were surrounded by discouraging news. But they came together and did something. In whatever way they could, they became the helpers that Mr. Rogers used to tell us to look for in bad times. And it was that work, in the midst of heartache, that made all of us smile.
