Meals On Wheels

SJ and I spoke with my dad earlier this evening, or last night, by the time I post this entry. We didn't really invite ourselves over for Christmas dinner, but managed to get invited when we offered to bring over dinner for them like we did for Thanksgiving.

I asked whether dad whether he wanted us to bring over Christmas dinner. Dad said they were just planning to have Stouffer's "Lean Cuisine," but he'd check with mom, and asked whether we wanted to stay and eat with them. Naturally I asked whether mom was up to having us over again rather than just dropping off the food. Mom was up for the company. They have no presents for us, nor we for them--just our presence and the home cooked feast.

My side of the family stopped exchanging presents a few years ago. No real need to with two elderly parents who have everything, two middle-aged kids of theirs who don't need anything, and no children of either of ours who would want anything. My cat can be mollified with a pillow sewn from a bit of old t-shirt, filled with catnip from my garden that I dried after the last harvest a couple of months ago, when I let it go to seed.

It's sort of a family joke about Meals On Wheels. When I taught Sunday school as a high school senior, one of the kids in my fifth grade class said his mom was a volunteer for Meals on Wheels. Although I hated to embarrass the guy by bringing it up as an example of charity more than once during the school year to illustrate various lessons, he seemed cool with it, as long as I said outright to the class "I don't mean to single out John (again), but his mom's volunteer work is a perfect example of . . ." You've got to give a fifth grader a way out of looking like "teacher's pet." That seemed to do the trick. Nobody picked on him, and he showed up every Sunday chipper and ready for his lesson.

I have done volunteer work before: teacher aiding fourth-grade math and grammar, and second-grade "art," when I was in high school in London, teaching fifth-grade Sunday school back in NJ, and teaching Head Start when I was an undergrad at Bucknell in rural PA. I've never been a volunteer for MOWAA.

Despite that, I don't really think the folks at MOWAA would mind my cooking my own Christmas feast and packing it up in a cooler to bring over to my own elderly parents to share with them, so they don't end up heating up frozen dinners. Yes, the elderly poor who can't really get out for meals anytime of year need the excess food more than my own parents do, but family is family, and I'm sticking with them.