This March I will be participating in the month-long Slice of Life Challenge. Each day I am posting a ‘slice’ from my life. I have been using prompts from Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir to explore memories. But today I had to write about a small moment that brought me joy. I haven’t seen students in over 8 days and I’m worrying that it will be months before we get back to teaching. So I volunteered to help distribute lunches to children and families in our town and was able to see dozens of kids as they pulled up to get food. They looked so happy to see teachers and a few even wrote cards for us to give to their teachers. My heart melted. I won’t share a photo of any families out of respect for their privacy, but this is my colleague Cheryl (on right) and a city councilman (on left) and my principal Teresa took the photo. Today I finally felt like I was “doing something”. WIN!
When the cars pulled up
and the windows rolled down
grins burst forth
from all of our faces.
“Hi!! I miss you!”
a simultaneous… ‘jinx’
from both sides of the window.
A desire to rush up
and wrap our arms around them
was shelved for now.
With 6 foot social distancing,
we showered them with smiles.
as they scooped up the food
and talked about life.
“How is your sister?”
“Have you read some good books?”
“Did you play in the snow?”
Before driving off
we tucked in much love
with waving hands.
“See you soon!”
“Be well!”
“Bye!”
for now…