Day 37: Wayside Soup Kitchen

Tonight I'm sitting outside the Wayside Soup Kitchen here in Portland. Somewhere in there Rich is cooking for everyone, part of a class project for a course he's taking. I'm early to pick him up, so I sit at watch.

It's cold outside but the street is crowded with mostly men, sipping coffee from paper cups and smoking cigarettes. They're loud as they circle each other, talking over the next one, and younger than I expected. Some are clean shaven, others sport scruffy beards and I feel a bit like I'm at a bar just after closing, the sort of drunken revelry and loitering makes me nervous.

Two girls walk out of a nearby building and the men start to call out suggestions and ask for money. I want to roll down my window and tell them to knock it off, but the girls have moved on, and I have nowhere to go. So I sit and stare. What started as a casual persual is now a downright stare. They break off in small groups. A woman joins two men and one pulls off his winter hat and puts it on her head. The kitchen is closed by now and a latecomer pulls on the locked doors. Someone nearby presses a paperbag of bread into his hands. He sniffs inside, then tosses it to the street uninterested. A father, walking swerves up the street is followed by two little children. He introduces them around the circle and the stand there, two toddlers without hats or gloves, watching the adults smoke circles in the cold air. One by one they move in different directions until I'm left with nothing to watch; just a discarded bag of bread and a lonely line of half empty paper coffee cups.

I think of how close we are to being on these streets. I wonder what the difference is between my life and the thirty year old woman who was just hobbling with a walker down the middle of the street, her face bandaged and worn. Is it about love or is about choices? Is this about addictions or is it something more? Is it enough to gather our people close to us and love them straight from our bones? Or is success and happiness the direct result of decision making and simple planning; an algebraic formula or a metaphysical bond? The truth is, it's probably a lot of both.

Sitting in the car, I'm lonely for my husband. Watching other sad souls, my heart double skipped when he walked through the doors and crossed to me. He slides into the warm car and I pull away, holding tightly to his warm hands, loving him straight from my bones.