Saturday Breakfast Buzz — What’s the best part of the holidays for me? Adopting

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/12/2010 (5450 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many Christmases ago, my mom would take my sister and I out in a sleigh and we would take baked goods and small packages of food to people in our small town who lived by themselves, some who didn’t have family around and some who simply couldn’t afford extras over the holidays.

That tradition was something I missed for years. As I travelled to Alberta, Saskatchewan and eventually back to Brandon, our kids came along and Christmas took on new meaning, but I still longed for "a true meaning of the holidays."

That was, until the Salvation Army’s Adopt a Family for Christmas program came back to Brandon.

I will never forget the first year we took our two very young children out for what is now a Christmas tradition. We adopted our family of a single mom and three small children, all girls, and got our "suggested essentials list" from the Salvation Army.

Then it was off to the stores.

The kids help with all the shopping, and we give the kids money at the dollar store to pick out some special gifts for each member of the family for "stocking stuffers."

There’s nothing more heart-warming for me than to see my two small children with their $10 bill trying to stretch it as far as they can, asking us at every turn "do you think they’ll like this, mom?" The excitement of kids giving to people they don’t know is one of the great gifts I receive each year.

Yet they likely don’t even know how proud, as parents, it makes us. Charity is one thing, but once you see a person as an individual, and realize there is a mom in your city with three little girls, who will not have a Christmas unless you personally step up, it makes giving very personal.

We do the shopping and then just before Christmas, we get the call from Salvation Army regarding the address and possible day for our delivery.

We climb into our car and head out into the night, talking about the great Christmas we have planned, knowing full well there are others in our community who will have very little for the holidays. All the while, we make sure our children know they each have the power to change that.

Then we show them how.

We pull up to what appears to be low-income housing in what many would call a "tough" area of the city. My two small kids jump out of the car to grab the boxes of gifts, food and stocking stuffers. We all walk to the front door to ring the doorbell. Answering the door is a girl of 19 years of age at best, with a baby in hand who is wearing only diapers.

As we introduce ourselves and say "Merry Christmas," she asks us in. There are two other girls, both under five, jumping on the recycled ’70s chesterfield like Santa had just walked through the door. On top of the old console TV sat a small Christmas tree, eight inches tall, one strand of garland and one string of lights across the front window that was frosted by humidity, hardly holding out the cold winter air. It was then I noticed all three girls were also just in diapers, after just finishing a bath.

The mother asks the girls to "get back under the blanket on the couch" as they watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV. The Salvation Army always gives us a recommended list of items to buy, but somehow we always buy just a little more, which means a few extra trips to the car. My wife holds the baby as the mom starts to load items into a fridge that has some milk, condiments and lots of room.

As we leave a little girl could be heard saying "look mom, Christmas oranges." Every year when I think to complain about the endless boxes of oranges that appear in our home, I always think of that little girl and the excitement in her voice at something many of us take for granted.

But it’s not like that for everyone. Life is not some Hollywood movie, and we do not know what people are thinking, feeling or how some will even react to charity. But in my mind, that’s not the point. If someone is to take advantage of my kindness, the weight of that is on them.

Karma is cruel. But when it comes to adopting a family, my gifts are given blindly.

For if you truly celebrate "the birthday for the big guy," I seem to remember he came for the rich, and the poor, the sick and the strong. Quite frankly, I am concerned more about some of the more emotional deliveries.

The toughest one was last year. We adopted a couple and their two boys from El Salvador. They had been in Canada for less than three months and literally had nothing. After the third large box of goodies, the mom began to wipe tears from her eyes, as my wife stopped our delivery to hug her.

The father smiled too, pride in his throat, and eyes glossed as well. I couldn’t help but hug the couple too, as we wished them "Feliz Navidad" and finished our deliveries as quickly as we could. It was a tough ride home that night.

My leaking eyes made it hard to see the road clearly as we pulled away. All four of us were quiet in the car. We had just seen and felt Christmas.

And it felt wonderful.

 

JOKE OF THE WEEK

A woman went into a post office to buy some stamps for her Christmas cards.

"What denomination do you want?" asked the lady at the counter.

"Good God!" she replied. "Has it come to this? I suppose you’d better give me 20 Catholic and 20 Presbyterian."

 

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK

* Cynthia Sanderson

* Jenna Liske

* Shawna Marie

* Simone Pilchar

* Heather Neumann

* Kim Hodgson Hanlon

* Melanie Hunt

* Tracey Szucki

* Carmen Brown

* Blair Evans

* Gwen Vernon

* Brenda Vickery-Drover

* Joette Sydney Kasto

 

» Tyler Glen hosts the Breakfast Buzz on Brandon’s 94.7 Star FM.