Page 38 of Big Island Neighbors
“A day of Kona sunshine will warm you up.”
“That’s the plan. Can I help you carry all this to the car?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
When she parked near the playground, she was surprised to see just how many families were lined up for soup. She had expected to see mostly older men, maybe a few young adults – and there were plenty of both.
What shocked her was the number of young mothers with babies on their hips, older mothers holding their family’s place in line while kids ran across the grass, even a few big kids in line who didn’t seem to be attached to an adult.
“All those people don’t have food at home?” Kai’s voice came low and quiet from the back seat.
“I guess. Or little enough that they’re grateful for a hot meal.”
“But there’s babies.” His voice rose slightly in distress.
“Yeah.” Emma unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the car door. “Come on, you want to help?”
“How can I help?”
“Here.” When Kai climbed out of the car, she handed him the box full of empty thermoses. “You carry these, and I’ll carry the soup.”
“Okay.”
It was a dreary day, and a prickling mist hung in the air. Even so, the playground was swarming with kids. Kids swinging and slipping from the damp monkey bars, older boys shouting and laughing as they climbed onto the roof of the play structure, girls circled in dry spots on the ground.
Kai watched the other kids with interest as he kept pace with Emma across the grass.
The weekly soup kitchen was already in full swing, and she spotted Mrs. Rasmussen ladling out some kind of chunky vegetable soup. The next lady was topping them off with hunks of bread. They stood under one of the shelters typical of Hawaiian parks: high sloped metal roofs with no walls. A run-down building behind them readNew Horizons Community Center.
Emma joined the women behind the table and helped best as she could. There were no drinks, she noticed, and she made a mental note to gather somemamakiand other herbs from the garden next time to make a pitcher or two of tea.
Kai hung at her side for a long while before finally wandering towards the playground.
When Mrs. Rasmussen began to scrape the bottom of the soup pot, Emma showed her the jars of cream of kale soup that she had made and the box of thermoses she had washed. There weren’t enough for everyone, but maybe enough for everyone who wanted one.
“You found all of those at the transfer station?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked.
“At a couple different ones, but yeah.”
“It’s a good idea.“ She raised her voice and announced, “Anyone who wants another warm cup of soup to go and a free thermos to go with it, it’ll be ready in five minutes.”
A smattering of people hurried to get back in line as Mrs. Rasmussen scraped the last of the veggies out of her oversized pot and poured Emma’s jars of soup into the bottom.
Once it was warm, Emma ladled it out into the mixed assortment of reusable coffee cups and thermoses.
The people she handed them to were grateful and shamefaced in turn, often a mixture of the two. A couple of them were just surly, not that she could blame them. If she rarely got a good night’s sleep and didn’t know where she would be laying her head tonight, she was sure that she would feel much the same.
As the crowd began to dissipate, Emma caught Mrs. Rasmussen’s attention.
“Are there this many people every week? This many families?”
“More every week,” her neighbor answered.
“What do they do the rest of the week?”
“There’s the food bank, food stamps. But those don’t always stretch far enough.”
“What if we did this more than once a week?”
