Come Saturday Morning: Eating Outside
Sitting on a pair of couches facing each other, we ordered pear and gorgonzola salads and wood-fired pizzas for dinner.
Just steps away, leaning against a bus stop sign, a woman waited in the deepening twilight. She wore a t-shirt, a pair of ragged shorts, and carried a styrofoam container inside a plastic bag. She seemed weary and hot, and tried not to look too conspicuous as she stood in front of at least 25 diners who were eating, drinking, talking and laughing loudly. No one seemed to notice her as she quietly waited for the bus.
The Taste of Guilt
As one of those diners, I felt very conscious of my status as a person of privilege. I knew she would never sit down at a table at this particular restaurant and order a meal like the one I had tonight. I felt guilty as I ate my pear salad and realized that I'd later carry my own styrofoam container because we'd ordered way too much food.
Other diners didn't seem to suffer from the same guilt. They left plates half-filled with food as they paid their checks and walked away. Nobody looked at the woman at the bus stop. Even though we were just feet away from each other, we were in separate worlds.
Eating as a Political Statement
Tonight's events reminded me of an article I'd read about those who practice another form of eating outside. Kate Perry reported on a growing phenomenon in Australia: well-educated city residents dumpster diving for dinner and scavenging for food through commercial trash bins. Here in the US, at the website freegan.info, table diving and plate scraping - eating food off plates left behind by other diners - is promoted as a way to get something for free and protest consumerism and capitalism. All very well and good, but there' a difference when one can choose to do this and when one has no choice.
The woman standing at the bus stop carrying her dinner home lives a life of limited choices compared to the diners eating outside under the stars. The educated urban professionals who dumpster dive to protest capitalism have a wealth of choices compared to the homeless man sitting in a doorway begging for money for food - a man we passed as we walked back to our hotel, carrying our leftovers.
An Unanswered Hunger
Should I have given him our containers filled with wood fired pizza slices, flourless chocolate cake, and tiramisu? Or would a ten dollar bill have been a better choice? Should we not have taken our daughters out to dinner at a nice restaurant, and gone table diving and plate scraping instead?
What lessons did we avoid teaching our daughters this evening, because they are too complex and too painful to learn for ourselves?
"Come Saturday Morning," a song released by the Sandpipers in 1970, describes a day in which nothing particularly important or significant happens - yet somehow the moment becomes memorable. Every Saturday morning, I'll try to post something that's in keeping with this theme. If you have thoughts or ideas - or would like to contribute - email me.
Comments
In answer to the questions, “Should I have given him my leftovers or a ten dollar bill?”
You should do niether if the gift is out of guilt and not from the heart. If you feel guilty what does that accomplish. Be grateful and thankful for what you have and share what you have out of love.
And that’s my point, Sheila. I described what we had in our containers simply because none of it would have made a fit meal for a grown man. But if I gave him the money, would he have spent it on alcohol or drugs? If I were carrying a sandwich or a couple of pieces of real pizza, that would have been appropriate.
My heart always wants to give. But I am neither a therapist nor a social worker. I once spent time talking with a woman who made a life out of working with the homeless. She would squat down, talk to women and men eye to eye, connect with them as human beings before she offered help or aid.
In my situation, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.
I don’t live in an urban setting, but the woman I was with does. She sees the harsh reality of those who beg on the streets. After reading my post, she told of an attractive, well-groomed man who looks young enough to be a college student who begs outside her apartment. “Hey, could you give me some bus fare? I don’t have enough money to get home,” he tells passers-by and they give him anything from loose change to dollar bills and more. He does well with this, but my friend knows he’s not a college student.
Is what he’s doing wrong? Is he better – or worse – than the man in the doorway that I passed? How do we deal with homeless people or the working poor? How do we help without taking away their dignity?
I am very aware of class differences and that’s what I was stressing in my post. Walls divide us, and are we better off trying to help individually, or by supporting institutions that do the work we are not trained to do?
Great blog post! I think this is something a lot of us struggle with, and there are no easy answers.
I just helped organize a food drive for a local food bank, and I learned that where I am in the suburbs, most of the people who get food from the local food bank are the working poor, and many of them have children. They have to choose between paying rent and buying food. We need more affordable housing, but no one wants it in their back yard. So many people shop at Wal-Mart (I refuse to shop there) because of the low prices, but those Wal-Mart employees cannot afford to live in the communities where they work.