The average delivery day at Partners in Caring goes like this:
Gary, our trusty volunteer, and I drive our behemoth of a van down to the Chicken Soup Brigade, a food bank on Capitol Hill. We load up 40+ bags of groceries, filling the trunk and all of the seats. At 15 lbs. per bags, that’s 600+ lbs of free, gym-quality weight lifting!
A short trip to one of our partner Seattle Housing Authority apartment buildings, and we hoist the bags again onto a cart and deliver, right to the doors of our clients.
40+ bags, 600 lbs. It might be easy to get lost in the scale of it all. But to the recipients, the one bag of groceries that we deliver might be a large portion of the food they will see that week.
All of our clients have one or more disabilities that prevent them from going to food banks themselves, and most are seniors (over 55 years old).
Satiety has such an uplifting effect. As we make our rounds, otherwise quiet hallways come to life as neighbors swing their doors open to offer trades for ingredients or share recipe ideas.
Residents are happy to brag about what they made from the previous week’s bag or just to chat. In being a friendly face, I have been regaled with family photos from the 1940s, a taxidermal wolf from a career in Alaskan fishing, and stories from a life spent on a nuclear submarine.
While food may be a given for many, I am humbled by those who are able to keep smiling in spite of it all. As long as a bag of groceries can bring some joy to our clients, I will look forward to each delivery as a chance to keep improving the lives of some of the kindest people I have met.
– Emily
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