The Blog

A Very Special And Different Kind of Christmas

 We got the call on 7:15AM, on Christ­mas morn­ing; Rose’s Dad had passed from com­pli­ca­tions after a recent surgery. He had been on hos­pice and unre­spon­sive for 5 days. We had been expect­ing the end, but prayed it wouldn’t hap­pen on this day. Rose had just returned home to spend Christ­mas with me a day and a half earlier.

We decid­ed to go through with our plans to cre­ate a spe­cial Christ­mas for some of our home­less friends. John Barnes would have want­ed it that way. I actu­al­ly had been plan­ning this for sev­er­al weeks but I thought I would be host­ing it alone since Rose had been car­ing for her ail­ing father in Illi­nois for the last 6 weeks. I real­ly didn’t expect her to be home for Christmas.

We loaded up the SUV with 10lbs of ham, an equal amount mashed pota­toes, cof­fee, assort­ed pies and a hodge-podge of gifts I had been col­lect­ing for the last month in prepa­ra­tion for this day. Many of the gifts, in “our” world, would not be accept­able for Christ­mas but for the home­less they were price­less. A case of bot­tled water, rolls of “moun­tain mon­ey”, flash­lights, hats, gloves, and 2 sleep­ing bags, McDonald’s gift cards and a small amount of cash. For Fritz and his friend Robert, I bought each a tran­sis­tor radio so they could lis­ten to the SF Giants games. Fritz also got a pock­et chess set so he could con­tin­ue to play the game he is so pas­sion­ate about. Remem­ber­ing what Robert had once said to me about the impor­tance of a note he had received from stranger, I made sure every­one had a per­son­al­ized Christ­mas card.

Fritz and Robert

 I had put the word out through Fritz that we would be com­ing for a Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tion, but as we drove to our meet­ing spot I won­dered how many peo­ple would actu­al­ly show. After all, Thanks­giv­ing was less than well attend­ed. As we pulled in the park­ing lot and turned the cor­ner, I was over­joyed at the num­ber of faces I saw.

So we pulled the table out of the SUV and start­ing serv­ing the 12 or so shel­ter less friends. A few more trick­led in. Every­one was a bit shy at first, tak­ing small por­tions. But once it was obvi­ous that there was enough food for every­one, our guest loaded up and came back for sec­onds and even thirds. That morn­ing we actu­al­ly thought we had over pre­pared and all the food would go to waste but most every­thing was gone in less than 45 minutes.

The out­pour­ing of thanks and grat­i­tude tugged at our heart­strings and brought a tear to our eyes.

Bil­ly and Elvis

  Bil­ly came up to me and said  “ You don’t know what this means to me. Before you came I was try­ing to decide if I should spend my last $2.00 at McDon­alds or try my luck at pick­ing through the trash.”

  Bacon said” I want to thank you for tak­ing care of my fam­i­ly. I have no way to repay you but I work with leather and I will make you some­thing to show my gratitude”

  The gen­uine car­ing I saw this Christ­mas morn­ing touched me.  I had only bought 2 sleep­ing bags and there were 4 peo­ple of need, so I decide to draw num­bers to deter­mine the win­ners.  Before I could enter every­one in the draw­ing, Robert came up to me and said, “don’t wor­ry about me, and give the bag to some­one who needs it more than I do.”  I ordered Robert his own sleep­ing bag that night.

Christ­mas Kiss

  As we loaded up the SUV, we were met with hugs and thanks for reach­ing out at Christ­mas.  As we drove home, we talked about what a tru­ly dif­fer­ent and spe­cial Christ­mas this was and vowed to make it big­ger and bet­ter next year.