Remembering What It's About

Remember what it's about.

It. What's "it?"  The season. The reason.  Why we're celebrating.  We're not "shoppin' til we're droppin'," are we?

The Holidays make me loopy. I love the decorations, the feeling of togetherness, love, happiness.  I am a Christian. My reason for the season is Jesus.

What I hate is this DRIVE to shop, shop, shop.  I have asked, countless times, for people in my large family on my husband's side to draw names.  My sisters and I rarely exchange gifts.  If we do, we try to keep it small, and we tend to get for the kids more than our siblings. I do have some family members that go a little nuts on my kids and me, and it sometimes makes me feel bad because I did not spend enough on them as they did on me.

I love getting gifts and giving gifts. I just will not go into debt doing so.  My son's playing on a DS Lite he got Christmas of 2008.  There have been several incarnations of the DS.  Has he gotten one? Nope, cause his DS is still working.  I will not buy my kids the newest electronic doo-dad that will get replaced next year with the "new" newest electronic doo-dad.   Ask them (David & Jacob) how many years went by before I finally got them a Wii as a joint gift one Christmas?  I refused to buy at the same time everyone was going nuts for it.

I won't ever go into debt over Christmas. "But my kids deserve it."  Why, what have they done that demands you go into debt?  Know what my kids deserve? A clean house that we can live in and pay for, food on the table, electricity, nice clothes.  When we can afford it, we get passes to theme parks.  When we can't, we can't.  We take vacations when we have the cash.  Cash.  I'm not going in debt over a vacation.  We cancelled our 10-year-anniversary trip last year because Jake's lemon needed fixing.  It was either fix the car with cash or fix the car with credit.  Cash it was.

Wow, this post was supposed to be about something else.  

This post is about a little girl.  She is 8 years old.  I have never met her.  

Her dad delivers uniforms to my office for my shop guys once a week.  He's in his late 30's/early 40's.  Married, attractive, sarcastic, dry wit, funny, will bust out in Spanish (he's not hispanic) randomly at me to see my reaction.

He stopped delivering for a month or 2; we got a new guy for that time.

Then he came back.

I was listening to the Christian radio station.  He asks me "What are you listening to?"  I reply "Z 88.3, the Christian station."  He nods, hands me my invoice and walks out.

"What? What did I do? Is he offended that I'm listening to Christian music?"

The next week, I'm listening to Mumford & Sons.  He asks me "What are you listening to?"  "It's a band called Mumford & Sons."

"You kill me with your music," he replies.

"Why?" I ask.

"You don't know this.  Of course you don't know this.  My wife died two months ago after a battle with cancer.  Every time I come in here, I hear her music. I hear her in here."

"Oh, I am so sorry," I squeak, swallowing the huge lump that has lodged itself into my throat.

"It's ok," he replied.  "Or at least, that's what they keep telling me."  He hands me my invoice and walks out.

I run into the bathroom and sob.

It's been about 4 months since then.  He comes in, has started joking a little bit more, hands me our invoice and leaves.

Christmas.

His daughter is 8.  She loves My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic.  He saw me wearing a T-shirt from the show last week and asked me where I got it.  He wanted to get one for Christmas for his little girl.

She is 8 years old and will have her first Christmas without her mom.

I drove home in tears and baked cookies.  Isabel helped; for the little girl with no mommy.

I saw him today, our weekly sarcastic-fest meeting.  I handed him the cookies, along with some gingerbread people and other small cookies.

"For your daughter."

"You bake?"

"Yea. It's for her. Just...you know." I was trying not to cry.

"Thank you. This is so considerate. She's going to love these."  He hands me my invoice and leaves.

And that's what IT is all about.  Not me tooting my horn.  Just....remembering that there are people out there hurting and I have a talent or a gift, or whatever and I am going to make someone's day a little better, for a little second.