My oldest son Tommy turns 27 years old this week. Since I featured a whole week of Sean when it was his birthday, I thought it was only fair if I did the same for the other two boys. All of these columns I'm posting this week are Father Knows Nothing columns that didn't quite make it into the book. This one is about charity...
I can still see the look on Tommy’s
face when he heard he was going to have to do community service in order to be
confirmed by our church. He didn’t say
the words, but his facial expression screamed: “I can’t do that.”
It’s not that
Tommy is anti-community. It’s that he’s painfully quiet, and most community
service projects involve having to speak and interact with strangers. Tommy
doesn’t even speak and interact with his family. I pinch him twice a week just to make sure
he’s still breathing.
So, when we looked
at the possibilities on the long list of community service projects they gave
us, one of them jumped out at us: volunteering at the library.
“What do you think
about that one?” I asked.
He grunted and
shook his head. “Nah.”
Just as I was
searching the list for something even more appropriate for him, like “taking a
vow of silence,” he pointed to something that I never thought he’d consider.
“What about this
one?” he asked.
I thought I must
be seeing things. “You’re accidentally pointing to ‘volunteering at the soup
kitchen.’”
“I know,” he said.
“Do you know what
that is?” I asked.
“Sure. They serve
free food to people that can’t afford it. Right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“But you wouldn’t go there to eat the food. You’d go there to serve it.”
“I know,” he
replied, rolling his eyes at me. “I’d like to try it.”
So, he did.
We found out that
they needed help on Tuesday nights, and right then and there Tommy committed
himself to doing it the rest of the school year. I drove him to the Catholic
Charities soup kitchen every Tuesday, and every week he came out of there with
a big smile on his face. I should note: this is a boy that also never smiles.
“Are you actually
enjoying this?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said.
“They put me in charge of the beverages.”
On the way to and
from the soup kitchen the two of us began to have long conversations about
being thankful for all of our blessings. He was now able to put a face on the
word “poverty,” and began to realize that poor people really aren’t any
different than we are.
“It feels good to
help,” he said. “People really seem to appreciate it.”
When he broke his
leg and couldn’t help for a few weeks, he really missed it. The moment that
cast came off, he was back in there, helping out on Tuesday nights. This,
despite the fact that there were only a few more weeks until his confirmation
and the religious education program told him he had already completed the
requirement.
“I want to keep on
doing it,” he said.
And he did, for
two more years. After his sophomore year of high school he was even given a
community service award by the Arch Diocese.
I have to tell
you…I never saw that one coming.
