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What is it About...
The Spirit of Giving?
The Spirit of Giving (and Receiving)
From the Other Side of the Fence
By Ruth Schickowski
PlastiScope21
Reporter
L
et me start my story by telling you that I am not a good volunteer.
My usual solution is to throw money at a request for help. At
Christmas I try to put something extra into the Salvation Army
kettles. But like many others, I carry far less cash than I used to.
In this season of giving, I wanted to share my story from the other side
of the fence. When I’m done, you’ll know where your coins, flung into the
kettle while you hurry back to your car, actually go.
When I was a little girl, in the 1960s, my parents were divorced. I only
share this so you’ll understand my circumstances. I was seven or eight at
the time, and as the oldest of three children, I knew we were “poor.”
However, even though I was mature, I was also young enough to want
Santa to be real, and to wish that everything was going to be all right. We
had a roof over our heads, and food on the table, but Christmas time was
still a wishing time.
I knew that there would be no Santa that year. Did my mother tell me,
or did I just assume it? I don’t remember.
Regardless, things were going to be bleak. No tree, no presents, no
holiday dinner.
I was a big girl; I could deal with it, but I had a younger brother and
sister who probably couldn’t and gosh darn it all, why did they have to?
Talk about life being unfair!
Then one night shortly before Christmas, while watching television
with my mother, brother and sister, there was a knock at our front door.
This was unusual, because the front door opened into a room being
used as a bedroom and we never used it as an entrance or exit.
Being the oldest, I answered the door. There were two grown-ups in
unusual uniforms standing there; they asked to speak to my mother. After
I called her, I stood behind her, listening to the conversation.
The Salvation Army had received word that our family would be doing
without at Christmas time, and they would like to help. From whom the
word had come, I don’t know; but belated thanks, whoever you were/are
because you were a God-send that year.
The two men then gave us two wicker laundry-sized baskets, one filled
with all the fixin’s for a bountiful feast on Christmas, and the other over-
flowing with beautifully wrapped presents. We would have Christmas!
We did!
To tell you the truth, I’d known for a long time that wishes don’t come
true, and that Santa wasn’t real. But that night, I believed.
Somewhere, in the whole wide world, someone decided that my family
deserved to have Christmas. And all these years later, it is still among my
most precious and cherished memories.
I also believe it lit a tiny spark in me, because now I know that some
magic is very real.
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