Children Rush Down

CHILDREN RUSH DOWN ( A LEGACY LETTER)

This letter was written when I was working in the Domestic Violence Shelter. It was so special because my two son-in-laws, my youngest daughter and one grandson were allowed unprecedented permission to be Santa's elves and help me make after hours deliveries to the Confidential location for the Shelter.

For over an hour they traversed three flights of stairs making sure that each apartment received gifts for their families. Dripping with sweat but very happy, it was a wonderful sharing of the Christmas spirit and the conspiratorial nature of having to keep the secret. Even my young grandson understood that to keep the families safe meant keeping that secret location "a secret".

I wrote this accounting for a Holiday Letter contest for our local paper.

HOLIDAY LETTERS: Children Rush Down

My favorite time of the holidays is that magical time when all the children have gone to bed at the Domestic Violence Shelter. Only Santa knows the confidential location and he always arrives with perfect timing when the last child has shut his eyes. I love that he always surprises the moms, who think they won’t have anything, and actually haven’t had even one gift in years. Early Christmas morning there are moms trekking to the office; they stammer thanks, show surprise, and shed tears. The children rush down to tell me that they are so relieved because, despite all my assurances, they were sure Santa would not find them.

Unexpected “heroes” make this possible, like the skinny 16-year-old who volunteered to help load gifts despite owning no coat, gloves or hat. The CEO who arrived Christmas Eve in a Corvette and covered the last-minute admission of a family who needed gifts. He shopped himself to assist Santa. Embarrassed, there was the mom who had told her kids there was no such thing as Santa, but then got up in the middle of the night, saw all the gifts, and asked to have paper to make a Christmas tree to put them under. She had no idea there would be so much.

Very dear were the clients who stood in awe when the snow started exactly at midnight and said, “It figures, because this is a real Christmas.”