I look forward to Thursday mornings, primarily because I get to spend time with 120 pals at the Central Synagogue soup kitchen, where I have been volunteering weekly since I was ten years-old. I speak with the guests about subjects ranging from the most recent Knicks game to the Gospel According to Luke, and these relationships have enabled me to see the commonalities between myself and people who before seemed unreachable. The men and women often remark that they have watched me grow or they call me “The Muffin Girl,” because I bake varying flavors of muffins for them each week. I am grateful to have these relationships, but also saddened by the fact that many of the same guests have been coming to the Breakfast for as long as I have been volunteering. The constancy of their current state is a fact that I one day hope to change in a more concrete way than just serving them a plate of food or talking with them each week for the brief hours before I go to school.

I have been shocked to see how an inquiry as simple as, “How are you?” can make a person feel seen and accounted for, how a smile and eye contact can be uplifting – even if just momentarily – during a time of loneliness or illness, how even remembering a guest’s name can alter the course of his or her day. The problem of homelessness is overwhelming and seemingly unconquerable; however, it is possible to lift these men and women in small ways, and that has felt ceaselessly rewarding.

In many ways, I wake up at 5am for myself just as much as I am for them. I am energized by our conversations, grateful for their company, and more self-aware when I leave to go to school that day. Seeing their lack of layers on winter’s coldest mornings puts any bad test score or Model UN anxiety in perspective.

And it is not just the guests who make the mornings so enjoyable, but also the individuals with whom I volunteer. Together, we discuss the election as we dish out hard boiled eggs and hash browns, we field the constant requests for hot chocolate, and black coffee, joke about the fluctuating interest in tea, and laugh at the guests’ asides.

Being part of Central’s Breakfast Program on Thursday mornings does not feel like a mitzvah, but more like a blessing. When I started volunteering at age 10, I remember marveling at, even envying, the familiarity and ease of the volunteers with the guests and among themselves. Today, I feel fortunate to have forged a similar rhythm and warmth.

Molly Shapiro is an eleventh grade student at the Dalton School. She works as a volunteer at the Doe Fund and the Storefront Academy, and is also a board member of Kids v. Cancer and a participant in AJC’s LFT program.

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