The Christmas gift

Editor's note: Betty Lee, 90, is a resident of Carson Valley Residential Care Center. Although this memory was received too late to run along with all the other stories of this Christmas season, it is still a good read for two reasons: It's a well-written piece about the reality of divorce (even during what must have been about the 1940s), and also may remind us all to look at the bright side, no matter how dark our lives may seem, especially now, during the post-holiday blues.

Christmas without Dad - the first of many - was to be a difficult hurdle for our three youngsters. It was one of the numerous small crises parents who have decided upon the drastic step of divorce do not consider until it happens, but here it was, a stark reminder that our family was no longer complete. It would be difficult, I knew, to make this a happy Christmas. How it would be done, and how all other crises concerning their welfare would be met, was now up to me. In the usual Christmas rush, that unhappy year, my mind turned constantly to this one problem.

How often, one wonders, are supposedly generous impulses stimulated by selfish motives? In times past, I recalled, there had been the opportunity for minimizing my own problems by trying to help someone with greater ones. It had always worked for me; maybe it would for the youngsters. I could only hope.

I am sure that when I called the welfare bureau in the little town of Annapolis, Md., the very kind lady who answered the phone could not have known my reason for requesting a child we could "adopt" for Christmas, but she was most cooperative. Yes, she had a little 5-year-old boy who had been abandoned by his parents and placed in a foster home. No, she could not permit us to have the child in our home on Christmas Day, but if the children would provide a toy or two, since there was no provision for other than clothing and food, it was an answer to a prayer. My prayer, I thought, but she could not have known that, of course. I felt a little guilty.

The three children, Skip, who was 15, Charlie, 11 and Gloria, 10, took on the project of "Operation Little Boy" with their usual tremendous enthusiasm. The boys both had money which they had earned delivering papers and caddying at the Naval Academy Golf Course, and Gloria turned to odd jobs in order to supplement her allowance. Much time was spent in discussing the possible desires of a 5-year-old who had very little of anything.

The shopping was done. Then Christmas Eve came, and the gifts, wrapped with care by young hands, were piled in the car for a trip to the Welfare Department, which would in turn see that they were delivered to a little boy who could still believe in Santa Claus because of three older children who had found the spirit of Christmas.

Charlie and Gloria wanted to go with me, and I was hoping it would turn out to be a meaningful experience for them. The social worker was the same kind lady who had spoken to me on the phone, and she insisted that they sit down with her as she told them about the youngster they were helping, about how lucky "they" were to have a home and love, and parents who cared about them, and what their gifts would mean to someone who did not have these things. The children were quiet (close to tears, I think) and as we left the welfare office, Charlie turned to me and said, "Mom, I think this is the very best Christmas we've ever had, don't you?"

God had, indeed, answered two prayers, with but a single response.