At Christmas, A Time to Care

The Boston Globe

A young mother walks into a restaurant with four children - a girl and three boys. The oldest, a boy, is maybe 11; the youngest, also a boy, is about 4. It's a little after 8 a.m. and already in the upper 40s, unusual for a December morning in New Hampshire. Yet the kids are dressed in bulky jackets, hats, mittens, boots, scarves.

They are quiet children. No elbows in each other's sides. No fighting over who sits where. They walk to a table, take off their hats, wriggle out of their coats, sit down, wait for the waitress, and then, even the littlest, who no doubt cannot read a word, study the menu as if it holds the secrets to the universe.

Two older women are watching this family. They are seated next to them. They study the children, gaze at the mother, then look at each other and smile.

Their smile says so many things: "Aren't they beautiful? Aren't they lucky to have each other? Aren't the children so well-behaved? Remember when our kids were that small? Remember when we were young mothers?"

"You have a beautiful family," they eventually say, catching the young mother's eyes.

And she nods and smiles and says, "Thank you."

And then comes the story of the last three days, of the ice storm and the cracked trees and no electricity and no idea when it will come back on.

"We slept at a motel last night because it was 34 degrees in the house, too cold for the kids. My husband's working in another state. He said we should drive there and stay with him, but I don't know. I don't know whether to get the pipes drained today so they don't freeze because tomorrow it's supposed to be in the teens. Or to wait and see because what if I pay to get the pipes drained and then the electricity comes on? It's so expensive. If only I knew how long this was going to last. If only I knew what was going to happen, then I'd know what to do," she says, talking more to herself than to the women who are listening to her.

Their breakfast arrives: orange juice and milk, pancakes and cereal. The older women say goodbye and, without the young family's knowledge, pay for their meal.

It's not enough, they tell each other. But it's something.

A different young mother has two children, a roof over her head, and heat, though the thermostat is set so low in her house you can hardly feel it. There's not enough money this year, barely enough to squeak by.

And yet she calls My Brother's Keeper and selects a family for whom she will buy gifts.

I wish I could do more, she says.

Dottie Kelly lives in Braintree. Her children are long grown but every Christmas she continues to make gingerbread men not only for them and for everyone she knows, but also for people she doesn't know. Thousands of perfectly shaped cookies festooned in frosting with the person's name printed where a heart would be. She pokes a hole in every top then strings red ribbon through it so that the cookies can be hung on a tree. She rolls and bakes and frosts and wraps and even mails them.

Some 10 Christmases ago, I found a package from her at my door. Inside were gingerbread people for my husband, my kids, and me, a gift from a stranger.

This year I unwrapped cookies for my in-laws and my grandchildren as well as a cookie with a question mark for a baby on the way. She doesn't mail them anymore. Instead we meet every year because we've become friends.

This is what Christmas is: Being with friends. Making plans. Seeing someone we don't see from one year to the next. Writing and receiving cards from friends we've lost touch with.

We hurry up in December, but we slow down, too. We linger when we run into someone we know. How are you? We ask. And we really want to know.

The world spins with its endless woes, its wars, its storms, its famines, its physical and financial crises, our personal worlds full of wars and storms and crises too.

But every year, there is Christmas, a season of giving and feeling and caring.

"I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time," Mother Teresa wrote.

This is what we do at Christmas. All of us try in our way to love and feed and care for one person at a time.