Posted by
DenverCatholic on Sunday, May 03, 2009 3:27:51 AM
My daughter, being told to help clean up, suddenly remembered that we had an invitation to go to a community outreach that was being put on by a church called Victory Outreach. Since we are having a financial hardship right now, and because I always try to take my children to free events and activities, I informed my kids that they needed to clean up around the livingroom for about 15 minutes and then we'd go. The 15 minutes was actually time I was trying to use to hot roll my hair, put on a little bit of makeup and check myself out in the mirror. Yep, still ugly. I'm not sure why that surprised me.
With all the cheering and excitement, my children had only picked up a couple of things that they had strewn about by the time I was ready to go. But, alas, they weren't ready to go. I had them get their hair brushed, shoes and socks and coats on. Yes, May 2nd of the global warming year 2009 was too cold to go without winter jackets for an outside event in Denver Colorado. While they managed to get that done for about 10 more minutes during sibling rivalry shenanigans, I took care of a couple of things for them, putting cups in the kitchen, yelling at them to "stop it!" And then I stood in the doorway waiting for readied children to eventually make their way over to exit our home.
We actually had easy directions somewhere for a change. In Colorado, good directions are hard to come by. It seems that most people like to use a 7-11 as a destination marker, yet there are 7-11s everywhere you look. We arrived at 4:30. This thing was supposed to go from 4 to 8 pm, meaning that we weren't late. Not being late is a big plus for us, even if technically we were half an hour late had we tried to be there upon the opening and not miss anything.
There were only a handful of people there, it had begun to sprinkle, and it didn't look like much was happening. A couple of the members of the church greeted us and then resumed chatting with others. We made our way into the building but were asked if there was something that they could help us with--meaning that we had invaded territory. I let them know that I had an invitation to come to the "block party".
Donny said that it was postponed until next Saturday because of the weather. He was getting the bbq grill going and said that if we wanted to eat, we could stick around, so we sat on chairs right in front of the building and I honestly felt like a beggar. Mostly because nobody was talking to us. I tried to chit-chat with several people but it just wasn't happening. It didn't feel right to leave because my children had been hoping to go and participate in activities, and eat something. We ate the free food. I'm a mom.
Then it happened that Donny's wife, Nicole, arrived and had cordial social skills, but she left after brief introductions. There were no drinks but Nicole said to wait and she'd be back with them. We waited for about 20 minutes for her to return, but I couldn't take the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that we were being seen as outsiders and beggars any longer. We said our thank yous and our good-byes and then we all went home.