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This is the house in Pittsburgh where I grew up; Mom and Dad, one sister, two brothers, multiple stray cats, lots of friends, occasional relatives or kids who needed a place to stay, and one bathroom.\u00a0 It worked.\u00a0 Our home was exactly that, a home.\u00a0 It hummed, probably on the edge of chaos, but it was always filled with love.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s where Mom came in.\u00a0 She was tough, strict, had the ears of a bat, never slept (at least not that we knew about) and most of all she was always there.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember a time in my childhood that I needed my mom that she wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
Back to the house, the reason it was able to contain everything I described above and remain clean and orderly most of the time, was the\u00a0 basement.\u00a0 (If you grew up in the Northeast you already knew that, but if you did not, the basement is the real epicenter of family life in that part of the world.)\u00a0 Our basement was pretty cool. \u00a0It contained the requisite pool table, bar, wall murals, black and gold shrines to the Steelers and Pirates, an orange \u00a0couch my sister built in \u201cshop\u201d,\u00a0 astroturf\u00a0 carpet, and paneled walls.<\/p>\n
Our basement also had a feature most other houses I have ever known did not; a food pantry.\u00a0 This is where Mom comes in again.\u00a0 My earliest memories of fighting hunger were forged in a tiny social justice center that Mom was running out of our basement.\u00a0 She and my Aunt Dody collected and distributed food constantly; most to poor neighborhoods on the north side of Pittsburgh, but in retrospect I am certain that she helped some of our own neighbors too.\u00a0 This all seemed completely reasonable to us.\u00a0 Under her sometimes \u00a0tough exterior, Susie Thomas was wired to care and to give.\u00a0 Hungry kids were her soft spot.<\/p>\n
We moved out of that house years ago, but Mom didn\u2019t change much no matter where she lived.\u00a0 She never missed a food drive, never went to Mass without a can or two for the local pantry, sent a donation every week to the food bank, and many donations throughout the years to Share Our Strength.\u00a0 (Mom admired their work so much, and of course Bill and Deb Shore are from Pittsburgh.)\u00a0 When she couldn\u2019t drive anymore, or see very well, she would enlist our help to make sure that she was doing her part to help the hungry.\u00a0\u00a0 Mom died last week, and though she was ready to go, we were not ready for the moment that she was no longer with us.\u00a0 The tears still stream easily, and the need to honor her memory is intense.<\/p>\n
So today I am going to fill up the bag that the Boy Scouts left on her doorstep for the Saint Michaels food drive, and then I am going to help blow up the #NoKidHungry hash tag for Giving Tuesday, and help us raise $50,000.00 in the next eighteen hours.<\/p>\n
One of Mom\u2019s greatest gifts was proving by example the power of one person to make a difference in the lives of others.\u00a0 She may not have used the expression \u201ctaking action\u201d, but she took it every day.\u00a0 There are 46 million kids in this country that she wants us to help.\u00a0 Let\u2019s do this. \u00a0I can hear her say, \u201cI\u2019m proud of you\u201d already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the house in Pittsburgh where I grew up; Mom and Dad, one sister, two brothers, multiple stray cats, lots of friends, occasional relatives or kids who needed a place to stay, and one bathroom.\u00a0 It worked.\u00a0 Our home was exactly that, a home.\u00a0 It hummed, probably on the edge of chaos, but it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thekindnesseconomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}