A pause

Today was probably one of the scurriest days, if not scurrilous, days of this busy season. I made 5 trips to my kids' school in between 8 and 3. And it is not just around the corner. The reason for this back and forthing was that today was Christmas party day, and I had to gather and distribute food and teacher gifts for four kids and then pick up my oldest and then go back and drop off something I forgot and then drop off something for someone else...

But since these parties and gift exchanges are now over (and were overdone - but the kids loved every last lavishment), now I feel like we can sit back and enjoy the season a little bit.  So we huddled up and finished watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which is not Christmas season faire, but we had started it last weekend and need to send it back to Netflix.  And it was well worth watching for its lessons on the dignity of life and the deceptions of propaganda and the power of truth and lies and friendship, although when this tearjerker was finished all the kids begged for me to delay bedtime a little longer because they needed to hear a funny story. I had to set aside The Little Prince, which we started a couple weeks ago, but is also melancholy, and find our Christmas anthology for something syrupy to complete a day full of high fructose corn sugar.

In the midst of all the back and forth, I spent an hour at the parish hall assisting with the St. Vincent de Paul distribution of Christmas packages. The 3 yr old and I helped sort the gifts a couple days ago, but yesterday the other volunteers bagged all the gifts and organized them for the families who had applied for assistance.  Most of the donations were typical: board games, inexpensive baby dolls, footballs and basketballs, lots of cars and trucks balanced by a mountain of Barbies, etc. There were a few really surprisingly nice gifts, notably some nice bikes among all the Huffys and some designer clothes. There were also a few things that wouldn't last long.  I think the volunteers tried to balance the quality and quantity of gifts that each family received, but it wasn't surprising to detect some envy when one family wheeled out one of these nice bikes in front of a family standing there holding their plastic trike.  It's easy to imagine the struggle of trying to be grateful for all the presents, but fighting down jealousy when another family walks away with more gifts in better condition.

Or maybe I'm just projecting my own response. I would feel envious, I'm sorry to admit. I would want my kid to get the nice baby doll, not the one from the Dollar Store.  I feel compelled to balance everything so that my kids don't envy each other's gifts on Christmas morning. But they like different things -- except Legos, which they all love, but I'm not sure my house can absorb even one more single Lego -- and so they will be getting different gifts and will hopefully be able to put any potential envy aside.

I appreciated the attitude of a man who smilingly came up to me as I was leaving and asked how to get on the list. I didn't know the answer to his question, but he continued in his good mood and said that his sister's kids would love to receive those great gifts.  He was too far away to be able to see what they were, but he could tell that every one was walking away with something, and he finished by saying "That's just great!" He had his own gift for being able to appreciate other people's happiness. And the people did seem to appreciate even the small things, just like my kids like the little doodads they received in their goodie bags today.

A good reminder to be thankful for all small gifts and for the fact that we all have different ones...