Holiday Dinner

Holiday dinner

Every year for the past 5 years, I have volunteered at my church to feed the needy. My church participates in feeding the needy every Saturday morning but two days of the year I decide its my turn to contribute. Although I have only gotten to serve the food its self two out the five years I’ve volunteered I still have almost the same memories for each minute of the days I spent helping. The people, atmosphere, and smells are overwhelming in their own distinctive ways, and each with its own significant meaning and memory. Feeding the needy is an inexplicable feeling of jubilance and solemnness. Two entirely different feelings yet so alike in this case its flustering in a sense.

Last year I served the soup, homemade authentic chicken noodle soup. The smell omitting from the soup was delectable. The sweet aroma of chicken broth and not to mention the actual chicken bits contained in a giant pot peaked the sense of smell to its full potential. But this amazing smell was not long lived. You see standing over a giant pot of deliciousness only masked the smell of the rest of the environment, once you walked a few inches away from the pot a smell so foul strikes your nose almost as if a two ton truck ran you over with absolutely no mercy. The odor was of what I call stale water, like when you take out jeans from the washer and just leave them balled up on top of the dryer for weeks, they get a strange smell as if the water had gone bad. There was also the smell of a very well used dumpster, one that doesn’t necessarily contain any garbage but still retains the smell of many years of trash. Two god awful smells at their strongest in one enclosed area was revolting. I assumed the smell was of the people who hadn’t had a warm shower in possibly years or have stood out in the rain countless times and don’t have access to a washer and dryer. but due to respect to the others in my surroundings I maintained a close distance to my pot of soup