(A Repost from December 29th, 2006)

 

“You say that to shock people,” the love of my life offers. I offer him more cheese and crackers and drink the last of his Sam Adams Winter Lager. It’s bitter and I make a face.

     “Maybe,” I agree, “but it’s true.”

     I hadn’t been teaching in an urban school long before I changed my December curriculum. No one cared what I taught my special ed. Kindergartners as long as they quit running naked in the halls and didn’t leave puddles of pee on the newly waxed floors. When Christmastime came at my new school, I approached the Principal about taking the kids to the mall to see Santa. He was dubious, but made arrangements for a school bus. I told the kids we were going to see Santa, but Elvis didn’t believe.

      “No see Santa,” he insisted, but I ignored him- a mistake I tried never to make again.

     The gentle white Santa sat on his throne, in all his splendor, and called for my class to come see him. Milton went first. Tears rolled down his cheeks in fear, and he wouldn’t let the old man touch him. Inching away, he knocked over a fake reindeer and a small tree. Comforted with a candy cane, he sucked on it without removing the plastic.

      While I was trying to get Dalton to spit out the fake snow he was cramming into his mouth with both hands, Elvis strutted up to the waiting Santa. Six years old, street-smart and wise, he had something to say, and no adult was stopping him.

      “How come you no come my house?” Elvis shouted. “You no like me? I’se good boy!” Good for Elvis is a relative term- meaning in the last five minutes he hadn’t cussed me out in Spanish or stolen something from the classroom.

      Santa lost his smile and he stuttered. I’m not sure, but I suspect they didn’t cover how to deal with Elvis in Santa school. Elvis put his hands on his hips and shook a tiny finger in Santa’s direction. “You no come my street. I no like you!”

      He stomped off the staging area, grabbed a handful of candy canes from the Elf, and kicked over the remaining fake reindeer. Joan liberated most of the candy canes, but Santa didn’t want them back, and we hurriedly rushed the rest of the class through the experience.

      It was then that I quit asking children what they wanted for Christmas or what Santa would bring them. There were whole neighborhoods in my city that Santa didn’t go down and it seemed cruel to taunt them with dreams that wouldn’t come true.

      I began to focus on the role of family and friends during the holidays and the beauty of the lights. I taught my kids the story of Chanukah and Elvis acted out the lead of Judas Maccabee with relish. We learned about Kwanzaa and the meaning behind each candle. We pretended to light the candles for Diwali and float them down the river. We talked about the angels singing to the shepherds. And once in a while, we colored pictures of Santa and his skin tone varied, depending on what color crayons were left after Dalton chewed his favorite ones.

       Every year, as a family, we picked out one student not in my class and bought the one toy they wanted for Christmas. One year it was the worst kid in the school. Franklin had been teasing my class mercilessly at lunch, on the bus, and in the schoolyard. Nothing made him cease his evil actions.

      “That’s the kid we should buy for this year,” my ten-year-old son observed after I ranted about his behavior at dinner- again. Taken back by his suggestion, I resisted. I’d rather put snakes in Franklin’s bed than buy him the toy of his dreams. “He’s just acting out because he needs attention,” my kid continued, giving me the same advice I’d given him about his own bully.

       I stopped Franklin in the hall the next day.

      “I dina do nuttin!” he protested.

      “What do you want for Christmas, Franklin?”

      He stared at me. “We don’t have no money for Christmas,” he replied, like I was the stupid one. “Not like Santa’s comin or nuttin.”

      “If you could have any toy, what would it be?”

      A bit of the belligerent look in his eyes faded as he described the remote control car he wanted. It wasn’t the huge, brand name car my own son and his friends had requested, but a small car that ran on double AA’s. I nodded and walked away.

      The last day of school before Christmas break, it was snowing and Franklin skipped school. I watched the snow piling on the cars and in the street. It was going to be slick driving until the sand trucks started, and there were streets in the city that hadn’t been plowed since the last major snow.

      Joan stayed behind to clean up the glitter, Kool-aid, bits of chewed wrapping paper, and smears of frosting as while I drove to Franklin’s house. No one was home. The snow was falling thicker and it was sticking. The sidewalks were empty. Even the drug dealers on the corners were inside drinking hot cocoa. On the city streets, it was just me and the state workers who left early for their warm homes in the suburbs. Occasionally I’d see a city bus, but they had few passengers. The slush was slick and growing deeper. The car in front of me did a donut just missing the streetlight.  Night was coming and I had my own kid at home wanting to tell me about his day. I drove all over the city, praying for a miracle.

     I looked at the present next to me. It was the nicest remote control car that Radio Shack sold; with a year of batteries attached. Wrapped in our best paper with a huge bow, it took up the whole passenger seat. But it looked like Franklin wasn’t getting a present this year either. “That’ll teach you to skip school,” I muttered, ready to give up.

      A snowplow, the first I’d seen, threw a mountain of slushy brown snow on my car. My wipers couldn’t clear it. I pulled over, got out the brush, and started removing the muck from the front of the car.

      I heard my name and looked up.

      “Need help?” Franklin offered. Snow covered his shoulders and he looked cold in his thin, three sizes too small, winter coat.  I should have bought him a coat too, I thought.

     “How come you cut school today?” I asked, always a teacher first.

      He shrugged and brushed the snow off my hood with his coat sleeve. “Gonna get in trouble n suspended if I went, so I’s started my vacation early.”

     I opened the passenger door and took out the present. I thrust it at him. “Merry Christmas!”

      He glared at me suspiciously, not reaching for it. I thrust the package at him again. “For you.”

      He crossed his arms. “I ain’t takin’ it. I ain’t no charity case.”

      “Fine,” I said shortly and not in the best holiday spirits. “I’ve been looking for you for two hours, and I’m tired.” I set the package in the snow and shut the passenger door. “See you in January.”

      “Wait,” he called as I started to drive away.

      I waited. He picked up the package, and approached the car. He nodded his appreciation, and I accepted it silently. He kicked at the snow and tried to speak. The streetlights came on, and the wind kicked up, blowing the snow around him like snow angels dancing.

      “Wanna ride home?” I offered. My kid would wait. He wouldn’t want me to leave this kid to walk home carrying a big package. He’d be a target with it- if he even made it home safe.

     I pulled up in front of Franklin’s dark house. The snow covered the taped windows and gang tags. No outdoor Christmas lights glittered in the darkness bringing light to the dark street. Even most of the streetlights were broken.

     “Thanks for the ride,” he said as he opened the car door.

     “No problem, Franklin. Merry Christmas!”

     “You shouldn’t be in this neighborhood at night,” Franklin said. “Lemme run this in and watch you leave.

      I smiled. I knew this neighborhood well and the ones who owned it knew my car by sight. I was probably safer here than he was, but I let him protect his honor while he watched me drive down the street. 

      “Santa doesn’t visit poor kids,” I tell people, meaning only people visit poor kids. Maybe I do say it to shock them. Mostly I say it because it’s true, and people seem to forget it. We are the lights of the season, not the bright bulbs on the outside of the house.

ready for purchase! (Paperback edition to follow shortly!)

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am in a bit of awe at this… more later when I find my words again…

It was a cold Iowa Sunday morning- the kind where the backseat of the station wagon never got warm enough to take off your mittens and you saw your breath in the air all the way to church. My dad was supply preaching on that icy day (which means he was filling in for a church in the middle of searching for a new pastor) so they dressed us in our best hand-me-down Sunday clothes and jammed the four of us in the backseat. The roads were slick and snow covered and a new dusting was falling. It was the Sunday before Christmas and my older brother and mom were singing a special so they practiced all the way to church.

We had gotten our tree the day before. My father drove out to the middle of nowhere and cut down the biggest tree he could find. When he and my brother went to put it on top of the station wagon, it hung over on both sides. They trimmed it down a couple of times before realizing no one had brought the rope so my father flipped open the back of the car and shoved the tree in, bottom first, hoping there’d be room for us when he was done. With the star end of the tree bouncing up and down with every bump on the country roads, my father headed home, tailgate held open wide with the tree branches. It was cold in the car and you couldn’t huddle together because there was a giant tree separating us. When we got it home, in the stand, my father set it up in the room with twelve foot ceilings and the tree hit the ceiling and curved back down towards the ground.

Sick of the tree, worried slightly that a squirrel would jump out of it once it warmed up, I went to complain to my mother. She didn’t want to hear it and set me to work making paper chains for it. Can you even begin to guess how many paper chains you have to make for a tree taller than twelve feet tall?

My father and brother dragged it back out of the house but my father didn’t want to cut off one inch too many. “A tall tree,” he kept saying. “I want the biggest, tallest tree that will fit in the house.” By the next morning, the tree stood straight up and brushed the ceiling. But there were no lights or decorations for it.

I don’t remember much about church that day. I recall the room being dark and moody, like the sky and my heart. I know my father preached and my mother played the piano and my brother sang a carol. I know someone told me the story of the first Christmas with a coloring sheet. But on the ride home, my father told my mother that the church didn’t pay him. The man who was supposed to was sick and no one else could do it. My parents had to be counting on that money. My father was working a series of low-paying jobs while my mother wrote and raised us in the drafty farm house they rented.

“You don’t have to give me the tea set,” I chimed in from the backseat.

“Who said you were getting a tea set?” my mother asked, before beginning the weekly discussion. “What was the most important part of your Sunday School class?”

“The candy cane,” butted in Songbird. She was barely three that year.

The snow started coming down harder making the mounds of snow along the road a brilliant white.

“What if Jesus came today?” I wondered.

“He’d freeze to death,” my oldest brother decided.

“We would let Mary and Joseph in, wouldn’t we?” My mother challenged.

Up ahead, miles from town, a car sat in snowbank, the engine not running. In that kind of weather, in the countryside of Iowa, there is only response. You stop and check on the family in the other car. My father pulled over, got out, and went over to talk to a man with straggly brown beard. He looked a lot like the man I’d colored that very morning.

When the woman stepped out of the car, so pregnant that she lumbered when she walked, she needed both men at her elbows to keep her stable on the icy road.

“It’s Mary,” Songbird said, the sound of wonder in her voice. It was Mary, I agreed.

They came home with us and stayed a couple of days with us while their car got fixed. Christmas was right around the corner and my mother kicked into high Holiday gear. She made a thousand star cookies decorated with yellow frosting and tiny white balls with holes in them and hung them on the tree. Every day when I got home the kitchen was full of stacks of cookies, homemade candy and fudge, while my mother and the pregnant woman laughed together. I checked to see if Baby Jesus came before I changed in play clothes, but was never surprised. Everyone knew he didn’t come until Christmas Day.

One of my mother’s checks for an article arrived and we went to the bank to cash it. The cashier gave me a big candy cane and her eyes got big when I told her Mary and Joseph were staying at our house. My mother tried to explain, but the people at the bank gave me another candy cane for Songbird.

Christmas Eve Day came and Joseph’s car waited in the driveway. My mother stuffed it full of baby clothes our own baby had grown and boxes and boxes of cookies and treats for the ride. She begged them to stay until after Christmas, until after the next snowstorm, but they were eager to start their journey. As they left, my mother slipped a stack of cash in Mary’s pocket. Mary caught her and tried to give it back. “For the baby,” my mom said. Mary gave us all a big hug and promised to write after they got where they were going.

We set up the creche under the manger after they were gone: Mary, Joseph, and the animals. The shepherds were off to the side with their sheep and the angels wouldn’t appear until after supper. Baby Jesus was left in the box with the Wise men that wouldn’t appear for another week or so. That night, my father read the part of the Christmas story where Joseph and Mary went off on their grand adventure and I worried about our Mary and Joseph. Would their car stay fixed? Would they find a place to sleep that night? Would there be a bed for the baby when he was born?

There wasn’t a tea set under the tree that year. There weren’t very many gifts at all. My mother made us all new pajamas, a set of matching mittens and hats, but we all knew my mother had given all her Christmas money to Mary. It felt like a special gift to be able to take care of Baby Jesus like one of the Wise men, and my father reminded us that the greatest gift we can give someone is to show them love in action- a love that takes in strangers and feeds them. He reminded us that when we take care of those in need we are taking care of Jesus.

A few weeks later, a card came in the mail telling us that the baby was born, safe and sound.

For years, we talked about the year that Joseph and Mary came to visit us.

As I set out the manger sets this season, I am reminded that it’s not the material gifts we give that count- it’s the acts of love that make Christmas Christmas. May this season be full of opportunities to take care of Baby Jesus for you. May you see him in the poor, the hungry, the innocent ones needing a little bit of love. May you see him in forgiveness and patience. May you see him in your home and your heart this year… and if you’re lucky… may you see your own Mary and Joseph and have the ability to help take care of them!

to Amazon and a Kindle near you… also in paperback… Panda Girl

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Can’t quit smiling!

My writing kids had other plans for our hour together today. I went with my plans developed and at some point it became obvious that we weren’t going to do what I had planned at all today. As we focused on the pre-planning process for their next project- a collaborative story book for toddlers- I was able to teach the skills I wanted and reinforce the things I’d planned on revisiting during the lesson time.

When we crossed off the things we didn’t accomplish this week (I tend to over plan), the middle child noticed that we had managed to cover almost all the topics… just not the way I had planned.

Thinking on my feet when I’m teaching comes from years of experience. It’s like knowing twenty ways to get across town because you’ve lived there all your life so when one way is blocked, you take a short-cut. Part of that ability comes from the prep time I put in. I go in knowing exactly what needs to be covered, but I’m willing to let the kids take me a different direction than what I’ve planned because in the end we’ll end up in the same place.

Usually, the student-directed activity is more meaningful and on target for where they need to be than what I have planned. Mine may be more creative but I don’t have to plan for engagement when I follow the kids lead. And guess which one they’ll remember longer? It’s hard to give the kids that much freedom in a classroom, but it’s a critical part of their learning. My objective is for them to become better writers. Luckily there are thousands and thousands of ways to accomplish that task!