But there was always one extra plate.
That plate never made it to our table.
“That one isn’t for us,” she said gently.
I stood there in my socks, curious and confused. “Then who is it for?”
She smiled but didn’t answer directly. She slipped the foil-wrapped plate into a grocery bag and tied the handles together with the same care she used when fixing my scarf before I went outside.
“It’s for someone who needs it,” was all she said.
At that age, I didn’t push. Children accept answers the way they accept the weather. But as I grew older, that question followed me.
By the time I was fourteen, I asked again. This time, we were putting on our coats, getting ready to leave the apartment on Christmas Eve.
“Mom, who do you bring that food to every year?”
She handed me my gloves and kissed the top of my head. “Someone who could use a warm dinner, sweetheart.”
We lived in a small town, the kind where everyone seems to know each other’s business unless you’re someone the world has decided not to notice. At the end of our street sat an old laundromat. It was open day and night, its buzzing fluorescent lights visible from blocks away. Inside, it always smelled like detergent, damp clothes, and the hum of machines that never seemed to rest.
That was where he stayed.
His name was Eli.
He couldn’t have been much older than his late twenties when I first noticed him. He wore the same worn-out hoodie every year and carried his belongings in a plastic bag and a backpack that had clearly seen better days. He slept curled up near the soda machine, as far out of the way as possible.
What stayed with me most wasn’t his appearance. It was the way he watched the world. Carefully. Like someone who had learned not to expect much from it.
He never asked for help. Never made eye contact when people passed by. But every Christmas Eve, my mother walked straight toward him.
She never hovered or stood over him. She knelt so they were eye to eye, slid the bag toward him, and spoke softly.
Eli would sit up slowly, blinking as if he wasn’t sure what was happening. Every year, he said the same thing.
“Thank you, ma’am. You don’t have to.”
And every year, my mother answered the same way.
“I know. But I want to.”
As a teenager, I didn’t understand it. I thought kindness always came with strings attached or an unspoken expectation. I was suspicious of anyone who helped without asking for something in return.
One night, as we walked back to the car, I whispered, “Mom, what if he’s dangerous?”
She didn’t slow down. Didn’t raise her voice. She just said, “A hungry person who’s been forgotten is not dangerous. He’s hurting.”
Over the years, pieces of Eli’s story surfaced, never all at once. My mother never pressed him, but she also never stopped showing up. Trust has a way of building itself when it’s given time.
One Christmas, when I was sixteen, Eli was awake when we arrived. He looked exhausted, like sleep had avoided him for days. My mother handed him the food and asked if he was all right. Continue reading…
