For Wilshire Baptist Church
Two people live at our house. One is generous and hospitable. The other is hesitant and standoffish. You might doubt that, but it shows up in the smallest, most innocuous ways.
Last week, when the brush and bulky trash truck finally came up our street, I ran downstairs to watch it from the front window. In Garland, the truck comes every week, and while we had no storm debris to carry away, I had a big pile of brush and branches that I had been weeks in dragging out to the curb and I wanted to make sure it got picked up.
“It’s the pitchfork truck,” I shouted to LeAnn as I looked out the front windows. I said that because on the regularly scheduled day, a big truck with a big claw came down the street and stopped in front of our neighbor’s house. The driver got out, climbed up on top, sat in the control chair and maneuvered the claw down to pick up their pile of brush and load it in the back. Then he climbed down and drove away, leaving our smaller pile untouched. The pitchfork truck, on the other hand, is an old-style garbage truck with a man who jumps off the back and uses a genuine pitchfork to stab a pile of brush and lift it into the back of the truck.
As I watched the man gather the pile with his pitchfork, trying to get the largest amount possible like a hungry man working a plate of spaghetti with a fork, LeAnn came out from her office and said, “I’ll give them some cookies.” She had baked some toffee cookies especially for me a few days earlier and we had some to spare.
“Oh . . . don’t do that,” I said. Somewhere in my too-practical mind I reasoned that these two men were running a day late and were too busy to enjoy the niceties of cookies rushed out from the front door of a random house. But then something clicked inside me and I realized I was stifling LeAnn’s natural gift of hospitality. While I would never think to give a city worker a handful of cookies, especially not while I was standing in judgment of how well he completed his job, it was for LeAnn exactly who she is and what she does for anyone and everyone all the time.
“Don’t listen to me,” I said, ashamed at myself. “Do what you want to do.”
And she did, and not because I gave her any sort of permission; we don’t roll that way and I wouldn’t have it any other way. LeAnn ran out with a Ziplock of cookies and handed it up to the man as the truck started to pull away. And then the driver honked his horn and the man jumped off the back, ran to the front and climbed into the cab, and the truck drove away down the street.
I went out later and picked up the twigs and dried leaves left behind on the lawn. “They never get it all,” I thought, but then the thought evaporated as I imagined two men enjoying the simple pleasure of homemade cookies on a hot afternoon.