Winter Wish

My office desk is piled with toys and wrapping paper. My boss and I are doing Winter Wishes again (read: I am doing Winter Wishes again). This is a local charity organization that distributes underserved children’s letters to Santa and companies like mine sign up to be on the receiving end. Each year, an office-wide email announcement invites all willing participants to stop by the Human Resources department to choose a letter. There are never enough letters to go round: the response is like a land grab. There is a minor stampede to get in line for the chance to answer a child’s Christmas wish.

Of course it makes me feel good. This year, a 7 year-old boy is getting the Batman Wii game he wants, thanks to me. Last year, an 8 year-old girl got sparkly in-line skates that I would have wanted if they had existed when I was her age.

I don’t fool myself; these are but tiny drops of help for a city filled with children who need so much more, and other than enabling their belief in Santa for another year (I hope), how much does a game of Kerplunk really enhance their lives?

I am the product of a privileged upbringing. I had it all: a top notch education, a childhood filled with ballet and piano lessons, friends, travel, and to top it off, a family that loved, supported and encouraged me. I had it good. We opened presents on Christmas Eve, Swedish-style. Thinking back to those Christmases past, I remember sitting near the fireplace with a full stomach and a house filled with people I loved, eagerly eyeing all the wrapped presents with my name on it. I’m pretty confident I was also eyeing the chocolates.

By the time I was a teenager my mother’s drinking had become an extra presence. The holidays were something to get through. After my father died, I dreaded the choking sadness that filled the home. My mother’s happiness had evaporated. Her valiant efforts to rally for her children’s return to the fold for this supposedly happy occasion were torture to witness and achingly futile. Once she was gone, each successive December 24 drove home the disparate reality of the life I once had and the one I now lived.

Over the past few years, however, a new tradition has evolved. I now spend Christmas with all my siblings - whole and half - and my niece and nephews. This brings out the happily sentimental side of me. I eat too much food, and drink too much coffee, and we catch up on the past year as best we can with the little time allotted. And at Christmas Eve, I look around the room and know that my parents would be so glad we are all together.

On Monday, when I wrap the Play-Doh Ice Cream Shoppe for my Winter Wishes child, I’ll include my own wish for her. I know what we all want for Christmas, and it’s nothing we can wrap up with a bow.