Today is Friday, June 10th, 2011; Karen's Korner #2085
Several weeks ago my husband Jim had a medical procedure in Fort Dodge which required him to be in the hospital overnight.
On my way home that evening, I stopped at Aldi's, a discount grocery store, to pick up a few items.
Ahead of me in the check-out line was a Caucasian gal in her late-thirties to mid-forties with four shopping carts. Many of the items were multiples: a dozen gallons of milk, eighteen cans of spaghetti sauce, six boxes of pancake mix.
As I waited, I asked, "Do you cook some place?"
She smiled and replied, "No, this is for our family!" She was accompanied by a black young man, probably in middle school.
"We don't have any biological children; we have twenty adopted kids," she said proudly. She named her son and said, "He and his nine brothers and sisters needed a family and we were asked if we could take them. So we took them all!"
She told that her four carts containing basically enough food for two weeks with an 'occasional trip to the store in between'.
Two things I am sure she never has to worry about: loading all of their groceries into their 15-passenger van (she had brought along help) and a baby sitter at home for any younger family members (someone has to be the right age to take care of smaller siblings!).
Her grocery bill totaled $364.
So the next time you are looking for an angel, she just might show up in line ahead of you at a grocery store, pushing four grocery carts, wearing an over-sized sweatshirt, shorts and sandals.
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