I learned from my mother how great it feels to give to others during the Christmas season. She had so little but was always eager to share it, and at the holidays, she judiciously spent the pennies she’d carefully hoarded to buy ingredients and materials for gifts. Hard work was worth it if it meant earning the means to be generous.
I became aware of this after I turned 10 or so and decided it was the year I’d work and save up all summer and fall so I could buy a Christmas gift for each member of my family.
We were desperately poor – stay-at-home mom, factory-worker dad and eight siblings – and, of course, there was no allowance to save up. I knew I’d have to earn whatever I hoped to spend.
There weren’t a lot of earning options for 11-year-olds in 1968, but I set my mind to finding ways to drum up cash.
There was, of course, the old tried-and-true babysitting route.
Now, back in the 1960s, babysitting was basically a “keep ’em alive and you’re good” sort of proposition. Parents didn’t expect enrichment; you were there to give the baby a bottle, fetch the toddler a drink of water, keep the place from burning down and watch TV until the parents got home.
I was old for my years and had been changing diapers and making bottles and singing lullabies since I was about 6. I took my babysitting duties seriously and always tried to bring along something the kid would like – coloring, a card game, a new clapping song.
Since I was so young, I couldn’t command big bucks the way the 14-year-olds did; I was lucky to make $2 on a good evening (about $18 in today money), so it was a hard slog on the way to my Christmas money goal.
Collecting glass bottles in order to return them for the 2-cent deposit was another scheme. We lived on a busy road, and littering was seemingly a way of life for many travelers, so if you were willing to wade into the swampy, weed-filled roadside ditch, you could count on this source for a steady dime or so a week.
I also got hired by the elderly widow down the road who paid my brother to cut her grass each week. She needed “a girl to do some light cleaning,” and I certainly had those skills; I did that stuff at home every day.
I was supposed to dust, scrub the bathroom, do the dishes, empty the trash, clean all the floors and do a load of laundry each time I came. It took a couple of hours each visit, and I was to get 50 cents (about $4.67 in today money).
The poor lady had quite a problem with her sight, though, and several times, when she cashed us out, she paid me with a nickel where a quarter should have been. I’d look at my brother, and he’d shake his head, so I never said anything, but I had certainly worked for that other 20 cents!
The week before Christmas, I was ready. I had $17.40 in my little handmade purse, and I was fired up. I was anticipating a romp through Woolworth’s, envisioning all the treasures I was going to shower my family with.
I’m not sure to this day exactly what happened during my happy meandering through the store that fateful day. Did I set the purse down in order to more closely examine a potential purchase, leaving it for a lucky “finders, keepers!” believer to discover? Did someone finesse it smoothly off my arm while I was engrossed in my shopping?
However it happened, the stomach-dropping result was the same: my purse was suddenly not there. A frantic search through the store yielded nothing, even after I enlisted the help of a sympathetic clerk.
All gone.
I was crushed. So much sweat and hopes, just … lost.
Worst of all was that I’d been bragging about how much I’d saved and all the treasures I was going to get for everyone. I couldn’t imagine facing them all, empty-handed, on Christmas morning.
My sister and I had developed a love for old surfer movies, and we both loved Rat Fink, a raffish cartoon character who hung around the hot rodders and surfers. I somehow scrounged up the dime or so it took to buy her a plastic Rat Fink ring and wrapped it up in a desperate last-minute attempt to salvage at least a tiny bit of my gift-giving dignity.
And here, my friends, arrives the miracle.
Come Christmas morning, that chubby little dark-eyed angel lied her butt off. Without batting an eye, she exclaimed the Rat Fink ring was her favorite present.
If you have pain and loss and disappointment and embarrassment, get yourself a sister as sweet as mine. She felt my humiliation and my hurt, and she did what she could in her guileless, 8-year-old way to take away the sting.
Bad things happen; it’s life. But joy and love and caring can go a long way toward softening the blows we take in our daily grind.
I hope all of you are blessed to have a Catherine on Christmas morning – that special someone who can help you see all the love and light and feel the joy and holiday magic. It’s what my mother would have wanted, too.
Merry Christmas to all!