micro bake sale for the food bank

maya and i just finished our micro bake sale. we made peanut butter cookies with hershey's kisses a few days ago, and we managed not to eat them all. this morning we set up a little table and sign right outside our front door. i put the beck radio station on pandora. we cozied up on the cold stoop in our jackets and started waiting. there was something very zen-like about this activity. we looked across the street at the blue sky above the houses and let the traffic flow before out eyes. then the random giving and not giving and getting began. our first customer was a woman who worked at ucsf and gave us $5.00 for one cookie. then many people walked by with just smiles or averted gazes. a happy woman bought two cookies for $1 and ran off laughing on high heeled boots. a confused looking man carrying lots of paper and plastic bags walked by and we gave him two cookies for free. a man walked by and said he would like to buy one but didn't have money so we gave him a cookie. then he ran back with a dollar, he had bumped into his friend down the block, and shouted a huge "merry christmas". our grim-faced neighbor came out of the house and biked away. another neighbor came out and gave us $5.00 for a few cookies for a kind co-worker. a woman from around the corner gave us a dollar for a cookie, then returned in her car, jumped out and gave us $5. more people walked by without looking. a woman tried to communicate with us in spanish, was unsuccessful, then filled a bag with about 10 cookies and walked away, leaving maya with her jaw hanging open. a neighbor from across the street came over and gave us $5 for "la nina" and told us in spanish about how he only had boys and some other things i could not understand at all. bob marley came on the radio. more people went by without stopping. bikers in the bike lane checked us out. we said "yes!" if we got a smile. miles made a half-hearted attempt to join us for a few minutes, but then went back to his video game upstairs. a ups man came by with two boxes for us from delaware grandparents. it was warming up. then one more woman came by with $5 and we told her to take the rest of our goods.

now we are going to take the money to the food bank. i have no idea if this will help the kids understand anything. money, giving, getting, it is all pretty random in our world. our bake sale felt nice, though.