Reading Time: 4 minutes“You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”
It’s Christmas Eve, and this will probably be the most personal post I write in this series. I think that I may long for things I never had, but I miss the things I’ve had and lost. The finality of something gone missing forever, something being gone that was once there, is probably the most heartbreaking of all of the human experiences. At least it has been for me, and although I keep it hidden away, that is why Christmas means so much to me.
Until I was twelve, Christmas was everything a kid could hope for. It was something I took totally for granted, and counted on like the rising of the sun in the East. Every December without fail things would start to change. The lights went up. A sofa moved and a Christmas tree took its place. Boxes started to sneak into the house in place we knew to look, and we devised ever more devious methods of figuring out what was in them. Santa ate his cookies, we couldn’t sleep, and at some point our parents would release us to rip and tear through the packages that we hoped had thoroughly taken into account our carefully constructed lists for Santa Claus.
And then one year there was no more Christmas. Earlier that year my father had left, and my mother had attempted to take her own life.
Amidst all of that chaos, Christmas was the farthest thing from our minds, but as inevitable as the passing of time is, the Christmas season arrived, but there was no one to make it Christmas. What do you do when you’re thirteen, and the sun suddenly doesn’t rise in the East?
I can only answer that question for myself. For a long time I just hated. I hated Christmas, I hated December, I hated Christmas movies, Christmas lights, Christmas dinners, and Merry Christmas every time I heard it. There was only one thing I hated more than missing Christmas, and that was seeing other kids around the age I had been when I’d lost Christmas losing their Christmases by divorce, by poverty, or simply by neglect. There was nothing I could ever do to bring my Christmases back, but as I got older I realized there was something I could do to maybe preserve a little Christmas for at least a few kids, and I learned that in a WalMart.
Around the holidays I kept busy fixing stuff around the house, and I went to WalMart for some supplies. While I was cycling through the sensory overload WalMart always seems to produce in me, I saw a family of obvious Mexican descent trying to buy a few small toys for their kids who were clearly going crazy at the prospect of picking out their Christmas gifts. I stood there in the aisle transfixed as I watched the children pull item after item off of the shelves only to have the parents return them. I couldn’t hear what they were telling the children as they returned the toys to the shelves, but it was clear that it was because they couldn’t afford them. While I’m all for a little restraint at the holidays, this wasn’t restraint, it was poverty.
At that moment, after all of the years of anger and hatred at the unfairness of things I had no part in, and could never change, there was finally something I could change. I’ll never know the why of inspiration, or anything about the timing, but I do know that it’s the one thing I’m sure that humans can’t do without God.
As it it had been scripted, I watched the family pick out a few small things and just when I thought it was all going to work out, instead of heading to check out, they headed to lay away. Now I don’t know if there’s anything more disappointing to a kid than “almost,” as in almost getting something you wanted only to be told you’ll have to wait for it. They paid a few dollars at the lay away, and headed for the exit which is always at the exact opposite end of the store from the lay away counter.
To this day I have no idea why my feet suddenly developed their own motivation and walked me to the lay away counter instead of toward the duct tape I had come for, or why my mouth explained in detail that I would like to pay off the lay away for the family that had just walked away plus $20 to the clerk if she would just do two things.
First, catch them before they got out the door to let them know they could take their gifts home, and second never to tell them anything about me. She agreed, I gave her the money, and she took off after them.
It would make a great ending if I could tell you what happened next, but I didn’t stay around to find out. I’d also love to tell you that all of this helped me figure something out about myself that I could share with you, but the only thing it left me was that my heart cannot be inspired when it is full of anger and hatred for the things that I’ve lost, and I’m not capable of thinking my way out of that story, but when I see a kid at Christmas who may be feeling anything like I felt, all I have to do is let myself feel that, and inspiration will come. And from inspiration has come all of the healing I have ever done.
It’s Christmas Eve, do you know where your twelve year-old is? Try your local WalMart lay away counter. If it’s not your kid, I’ll guarantee you that someone else’s is there.
He graduated from UCLA with a BA in philosophy as well as a degree from the Southern California School of Culinary Arts, and feels food is one of the most important parts of a life - it can nourish, heal, and bring people together.
Michael believes health and well-being are as much a state of mind as they are a state of the body, and when it comes to fitness, food, and life in general, he thinks slow is much better than fast (most of the time). Stopping regularly to examine things is the surest way to put down roots and grow.
He knows he will never be done with his own work, and believes the best thing you can do for your well-being starts with loving and working from what you’ve got right now.
