An Open Letter

Dear Toys for Tots Recipient Parent,

Thank you.

Thank you for working so hard, day after day, to keep your kids clothed and fed.

Thank you for the countless, thankless jobs you do, every day.

For the meals you skip, so your child won't go hungry.

Thank you for not giving up.

Thank you for the fact that you keep on trying, even if putting one foot in front of the other feels impossible and some days you don't know how you'll find the strength to do it.

I know many of you are trying to raise your kids on your own- without the benefit of a partner.

Times are so tough, and there's so little to go around.

Some of you have made choices that most people would find unimaginable-- like going without your own medications so that you can fill your child's prescription.

I wish there was more I could do for you.

I know it is so little, really, in the end- an armload of toys to be distributed to children I won't ever meet.

I know it doesn't solve the big problems, which, frankly as a disabled person myself I don't always have the answers to for myself, let alone for everyone, like I wish I did.

But it is a joy beyond my ability to explain to you that I am able to choose and send a toy for your child, and I'm grateful for the chance to do it. For the chance to be reminded how lucky I am to have a roof over my head and food in my fridge.

One thing I have to ask, though. I want you to do something for me.

When they bring in those toys for your kids this Christmas, hold your head up high. Know that though you may not have been able to buy them yourself, you earned every single one of them.

Know that this formerly single mom (who once had to adopt out beloved pets because I couldn't feed them and my two year old) understands a tiny bit of your world, even if not by far the whole of it.

Know that people do care.

And please know what an honor it is, for me, to be able to buy a gift for your child, because I can't buy them for my own anymore.

You see as of last year she's rejected the holidays. Her birthday, even, and for the most part, me along with her 'old life', with her new teenage religious values.

I won't even get to see her this Christmas, on her sixteenth birthday.

But I love her just the same-- more than she'll ever know. And I will be remembering how we burned (okay, how I) burned the cookies and she laughed because I ate the burnt ones anyway. How she decorated the little dollhouse with beads and strings of ribbon. How she used to squeal with joy at the sight of all the pretty packages.

And so for her, and for your child, I did what I could do. I wish it could be more. I wish it could be toy stores full.

All I ask in return is this.

Please hug your child an extra time for me, this Christmas morning.

When they wake you up at the crack of 'oh my god is it morning?' and you don't even get your slippers on let alone coffee made before the joyful ripping of paper is begun.

Treasure, and savor it knowing that there is a mom out there who would give everything, just to have her child back again.

Our children are the true meaning of the holidays- whichever you celebrate.

May we give them a world more peaceful, and hopeful, in 2012.

Sincerely,
February Grace

PS to all my friends and readers- it's not too late- please consider tossing an extra toy in your cart this year for Toys for Tots. I met a woman earlier this year who told me a story about how, as a child hiding at a women's shelter with her mother, the doll she got from Toys for Tots was not only her only Christmas gift that year but one of her only toys in her childhood- and she loved it dearly. I won't ever forget that story. I ask you to remember it with me.