Winning at the Food Share has Birthday Blues Grill'd

According to Henri Charrière in his autobiographical book, Papillon, the most terrible crime that a person can possibly commit is

“the tragedy of a wasted life”.

But the life of a butterfly is fleeting and happiness can be elusive...

Birthday blues are where people suffer depression or anxiety around their birthday. It can be caused by any combination of factors, including: pre-existing depression, fear of ageing, fear related to not having sufficiently achieved life’s milestones for one’s age, traumatic childhood memories, social anxiety.

But when you throw poverty into the mix, you can find yourself not only getting depressed about your own birthday, but also that of other family members as well.

This is particularly so for parents regarding their children’s birthdays, where they are unable to provide them with the childhood experience that they want for them, or that they themselves enjoyed.

This includes not being able to hold birthday parties, provide the child’s present of choice (or any present), or even a birthday cake.

• We have managed to hold simple birthday parties for our son a couple of times, but we have not had one in recent years and some years I even struggle to get a present organised, let alone a cake with candles.

• I have not personally celebrated any milestone birthday since I was 18.

• My ex-husband is now in his late 70s and we have also missed celebrating his milestone birthdays in recent years.
  

Each major birthday celebration that you miss at the twilight end of life is a lost opportunity that becomes exponentially more tragic each time, due to the reduced likelihood of reaching another one.

For children, these are formative experiences that can never be replaced later or undone.

Whilst instilling a circumspect approach to the materialism of special occasions is not entirely without merits as a parenting goal, lack of celebration of occasions like birthdays can impact family bonding and this can be carried forward to future generations.

An unexpected windfall gain is always a good shifter of low moods...

Such was the case when I received a phone call from the local Food Share informing me that I had won a dinner for two adults and two children at Grill’d restaurant in Albury that same evening.

This came at an ideal time, being about a week and a half after my son’s 14th birthday and about two weeks before my 45th.

Albury Wodonga Regional Food Share (an organisation that I will write a more extensive article on later), is the operator of the local food pantry supermarket – of which I am a regular customer and without which we would definitely be suffering from nutritional deficiencies. My regular patronage of this establishment is due to my inability to pay the exorbitant prices now demanded by the major supermarkets for basic food items, out of my Centrelink payment (which is grossly below the absolute poverty line). Let’s face it: things were already bad for the poor before the Cost of Living Crisis and the Housing Crisis hit - but now the situation is just farcical.

Anyway, over the Easter and Mother’s Day period, Food Share ran a number of raffles and competitions. Fortunately, I was one of the people who struck it lucky - just scraping in when another winner cancelled.

On our night out at Grill’d we didn’t end up doing a birthday cake - but we did get to spend one evening just feeling normal by eating out as a family.

On that night, the restaurant was full of other families doing exactly the same thing – most of them also Food Share competition winners. The staff at Grill’d Albury were fantastic, going above and beyond to ensure that we all felt like ordinary, paying, valued customers and not some charity cases rocking up to a meagre soup kitchen, fresh off of life’s rubbish tip.

An added bonus was the quality of the food, ensuring that I could choose just about any menu item – a rare luxury for someone with a serious MSG sensitivity.

The star of Grill’d’s menu and their significant point of difference in the marketplace is undoubtably their Healthy Fried Chicken (HFC).

Other fried chicken franchises and products are usually completely off limits to me and others with MSG and other food chemical sensitivities. The freshness and unadulterated state of the chicken and other ingredients at Grill'd is a refreshing change from the status quo. It was nice not having to navigate this minefield for once.

So, a big thankyou to both

Grill’d Albury and ALBURY WODONGA REGIONAL Food Share

– your generous gift was much appreciated.