The holiday season is upon us. (OK, I know it is early November, but the trees are going up in the stores, and the Hallmark Channel is starting with the holiday specials.) The holiday season always reminds me of the amazing way my mother handled a situation with me when I was 12 years old.
My great-grandfather stopped by in early December to drop off his holiday gifts. I don’t remember what my brothers received, but I do remember what I received. Avon Face Powder. Now, I am not bashing Avon or face powder, but I was 12. My great-grandfather was in his 90s at the time, so this probably made sense to him that a preteen girl would want something that was considered elegant and extravagant, in his day.
I was polite and thanked him, but after he left I started to cry. My mother could have slipped into a “you are ungrateful, he is 90-year-old man” sermon. Instead she non-judgmentally stated that she knew I was disappointed, but that there might be a family in need where the mother would appreciate the gift.
My mother then spent the next few hours on the phone finding an agency that would accept the face powder. (This was before the internet, and was surprisingly difficult to find an agency that accepted gifts for families in need.) My mother was a single parent with three children. You really couldn’t have blamed her if she took the easy way out, told me to be grateful, or replaced the gift with something else. Instead we ended up “adopting” a family for the holidays. We went out, as a family, and purchased gifts for everyone in that family, wrapped them (including the face powder and some additional make-up for the mom), and delivered them to the agency.
This became a yearly tradition, something we did every holiday season. To this day I can’t imagine the holidays without donating to Toys for Tots or adopting a family from the tree at the Y or the mall. And that Avon Face Powder represents one of the best holiday gifts I ever received.
The Educational Journey 