It was going to be the coldest weekend of the year so far. Local shelters and charity foundations were posting comments on social media sites all day long on Friday. They were providing several different numbers to call if anyone saw any homeless people out on the streets, in the parks, or under the overpasses. It was simply going to be too cold for anyone to survive out in the elements on Saturday or Sunday.
It is times like this when it is a little easier to get everyone in your house to take the time to stay inside where it is warm and do some serious closet cleaning and sorting. Closets that statistics say now contain twice as many pieces of clothing as closets 20 years ago. With an eye out for anything that could be donated to charity foundations throughout the city, your sons, your daughter, your husband and yourself spent most of Saturday morning taking a good look at the items that had been crowding closets and drawers.
While your husband may have started the cleaning process with his mind on the nearly $15 tax write off he could get for the unused but working coffee maker and the $60 he was going to write off for each of his suits and overcoats that he was going to donate, his intend changed later that day. Instead of just waiting until Monday when you would be the only one at home to deliver the donations, you decided to just take the boxes in right after lunch on Saturday. It was actually your young daughter’s idea that the delivery of clothing donations and other household items be turned into an entire family affair.
As soon as you pulled into the parking lot of the downtown mission known for helping families in need, everyone in the car became silent. The line of people out the front door, waiting in the cold, was overwhelming. Turns out the cold weather had brought most of the city’s homeless to the shelters. So many, in fact, vans from charity foundations from across the city were arriving to shuttle people to other locations with more room.
You still took most of the boxes into the shelter and added your items to the other local clothing donations, but a couple of items were donated in a different way. As your husband and two sons got out to carry in the boxes, they stopped first and pulled out the three overcoats that had simply been thought of as tax write offs when you left the house. Instead, your daughter and the two boys each took one of the coats to three men who were at the very end of the line of people waiting to get inside. It was difficult to tell whose smiles were bigger. The men who received the coats.
Your three children. Or your husband.