;)
May 28th, 2015
Every year, the graduating class at Corpus Christi School takes a trip to Washington, D.C. for two nights and three days. These days are jam packed from early morning until late at night. This year, I had the pleasure of being a chaperone on trip and we had a fantastic time.
Fortunately, the school principal, Dick Taylor, is a wealth of knowledge and served as our informal personal tour guide. He has made around 18 trips to this particular area over the years, but you have to be a fast walker to keep up with him.
The children are a very small class and a very close class. Many of these children will be headed in different directions as they enter high school, so they spend the time they have together appreciating one another.
We were able to see the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery and the Changing of the Guards, Smithsonian, the White House and so many more things.
By the end of each day, we worked up some large appetites from all the walking and activities. The first night, we had dinner plans to the Medieval Times Dinner & Show. The second night we went to Baltimore. I was a bit leery with all of the recent violence and uprisings, but it seemed pretty calm while we were there. Everyone could go to dinner wherever they wanted, but as usual, the kids decided we all would go together, so we went to the Hard Rock Café.
As we laughed and enjoyed the oversized portions of food, we had many leftovers. My daughter, Aleigha, packed up a sack of this leftover food and I said, “You know we will have to carry it and by the time we get back to the hotel, you guys won’t even eat it.” But, she did it anyway.
Moments later, we left the restaurant and witnessed numerous homeless people with signs and tins asking for money. Now this is a very hard position to be in and one that sometimes you ask yourself – “What do I do?” Do I offer money? Do I ignore? Can I walk away? My daughter turned to me and she had the beginning of tears in her eyes and said, “Oh, mamma.” As I looked to the left, there was a very frail man with a sign saying so hungry leftovers is all he asked. She looked at me and I looked at her. We both put our hands on that huge bag of food that we took for granted and approached this man. As we neared, his eyes filled with tears and his body trembled. We handed this man the bag and he barely held on and slid his backside down the gate and started eating his rations, yet in a weak voice said, “God bless you.” We looked right at him and said, “Thanks, we will pray for your circumstance and may God bless you.”
My little 14-year-old daughter turned away and out came the tears and sadness of the reality that these circumstances of real life situations bring. She felt glad that she had done that, but thought long and hard about what happened knowing full well that there are so many similar situations out there. We walked away and talked about this experience and how we can try to do our part in the world to help as we watched this man from a distance eat everything in that bag. We then saw him stand and go on his way.
I told Aleigha that on that day at that very time, despite my discouraging her to even take the bag out of the restaurant, she felt the need to make a different choice and in her doing so, it must have been meant to be. That she, Aleigha Dodd, was the one chosen on this particular evening to help this man on this particular night.
It was a great learning lesson for all of us.
