Home Made

By Liz Hauck

A story of grief, groceries, showing up — and what we make when we make dinner

One day, in my daughter’s early years of working in social services she shared the starfish story with me. You’ve probably heard it. I had. But the moment my daughter shared it with me was poignant because it showed me a new level of maturity she was moving into as a young professional trying to make sense of her choices and of the world. If you need a refresher, here’s how it goes:

One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking something up and gently throwing it into the ocean.

Approaching the boy, he asked, “What are you doing?”

The youth replied, “Throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them back, they’ll die.”

“Son,” the man said, “don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can’t make a difference!”

After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf.

Then, smiling at the man, he said…..“I made a difference for that one.”

This book is a beautiful starfish story. Liz Hauck drew me in by describing the wild dream she and her dad spun one day. They speculated on the possible success or failure of cooking meals for residents in the group home which he cofounded, and where he worked for most of his career. But before they could even consider making it a reality, her father died. In that life-changing space of grief as Liz struggled to make sense of life without her dad, the idea returned to her. And she somehow found the fortitude to try it out. She went to the group home where the lamp in her father’s office could still be seen from the sidewalk below, and cooked dinner once a week for a group of adolescent young men for three years.

Her stories are funny and heartbreaking and at times overwhelming. Hauck invites the reader into the relationships she so carefully nurtured over those three years. She shows us her vulnerability, her curiosity, the humble nature which helped her to accept all that the struggling adolescent boys had to throw at her. She laughed with them when they teased her, and cried by herself when she saw their hearts breaking.

She gave me an inside peek at the difficult lives lived by children who’ve been abandoned. She helped me see the way the “system” and the people working in it often go above and beyond, stretching themselves into relationships as unstable as shifting sand. She beautifully captures the language of the residents, the limitations that seemed insurmountable, and the multitude of micro-steps that for some led to success.

In her excellent afterword, Hauck educates us about the foster care system in the United States and the struggle to offer children the opportunities that all children deserve. She quotes the house cofounder and her father’s business partner Gerry Wright in a piece written about the house in The Boston Globe in 1969. Wright said “There are too many committees trying to solve the problems of the millions. We’re rolling up our sleeves and going to work with a dozen.”

The expansive nature of Hauck’s work with the dozen over three years demonstrates the power of this effort. She may not have changed the millions. She may not even have “changed” the boys she worked with. But her story shows, without question, that she made a difference in their lives. And they made a difference in hers.