Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Thanksgiving (181/365)





Today's just about the last day of the fiscal year.  Some of our funding was lost. (It wasn't cut so much as a held up in a perpetual waiting game.)  So it was the last day for our housing counselor, who's losing his job as the new fiscal year begins.

My coworker, the bookkeeper, rounded us all up for a goodbye lunch and recruited us for the preparations.  She had already brought spaghetti and rice and beans from home; what else could we contribute?  I cut up some apples and oranges; someone got some roast chicken; I went to the bakery across the street and got five pieces of different cakes, so that everyone would have something that they liked.

I looked at the table and thought of Thanksgiving.  With all of the little things we brought it was a feast, and it was a Thanksgiving in a way.  Just since I've been here the counselor has helped so many people, and his clients have so much confidence in him.  I could hear it in their voices when they called on his off-days, eager to talk to him and disappointed that he wasn't in.  He spent a lot of time with each one of them, and it didn't matter how often they had to come back to have their case resolved; he would work until the end.  So I'm very thankful for that, and I know his clients are too.  It was a bittersweet Thanksgiving.


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