She was hungry. I was hungry, too.

A few years back, when I was deep in the shit of resurfacing traumas, a strange thing happened. I only call it strange because it happened to a girl from an affluent family who did not have any financial problems. They were, and are, much better off financially than we are. But I understood that something had gone wrong in their household when the twins started asking me for extra food in their lunches so they could share with this girl at school who never had any lunch. This was surprising because they go to school with a bunch of rich kids. We are not rich, we just have very different priorities than most people and we make ourselves near to broke sometimes to give our kids certain things. Anyhow, I got the scoop from the kids from what little info they had, and I understood intuitively that the parents were, like me, trying to deal with something that had gone wrong and lunch had gotten lost in the shuffle in their house. Shit happens, you know? I have plenty of kids. It was not a problem for me to pack one extra lunch, so I took it upon myself to do that. I surfed the net to learn more about the child's dietary restrictions due to the religion of her family (I was not out to start a revolution, just to make lunch for a little girl). I quickly learned my way around the child's lactose intolerance as well, and lunch was served. And I loved it. For a whole school year I had the joy of providing a meal for an extra child. Each night as I made the lunches, I thought that maybe one little girl would be spared the feeling of not being cared for. One little girl is valuable and powerful. She can grow up to change the whole world, or at least her corner of it. The possible ripples of such a thing are endless. Maybe she will grow up feeling that help will come from somewhere if things get really shitty. Maybe I helped sustain the platform of security her parents originally gave her while they dealt with whatever had gone wrong for their family. Such possibilities are priceless to me. And so is every little girl. I have had a bad week. I do a lot of cooking here, but the food just seems to get even better these days when things get a little hairy for me personally. And I know why that is. When I fed the twins' classmate, I was also feeding the neglected little girl who lives inside of me. One little girl, who had the nerve to ask her classmates for food, improved the quality of my life. I fed her and she fed me. I had no idea.