A Thanksgiving Story

     Many years ago I worked as a program director of a homeless shelter, and around Thanksgiving one year we had a full house. The volunteers wanted to cook for the people living in the shelter, and I proposed this idea to them. The people who were living there said that while they appreciated the kindness of the offer, what they would prefer is if the volunteers would be willing to buy things they might put on a grocery list, and then the people would cook their own Thanksgiving dinner.

      I will never forget how confused one volunteer looked when her list included a request for banana leaves. The people at the shelter represented many different homelands and cultures.

     The volunteers rocked it, and got everything on the lists the people living at the shelter asked for. One lady, of Mexican-American heritage, decided that she was going to make tamales. She had never made tamales before, but she remembered with much love her mother making them many times. Tamales, as anyone who has made them before will tell you, are a huge amount of work. 

     She started making tamales after dinner the night before Thanksgiving, having called her mother for any special instructions. About 2 am in the morning, when she was still deep in the tamale making process with others in the shelter, she fell asleep in a chair from exhaustion. As the morning light began to fill the dining rom she woke up, afraid for how much time she had lost making tamales. The other people in the shelter had finished making the tamales while she slept. 

     That evening for Thanksgiving the people living in the shelter sat around a long table, and joined hands in prayer before eating together a meal that they themselves had cooked and that for each of them spoke lovingly of home and family.

     Many of those present said it was the best Thanksgiving they had ever had.

     Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!