Fluffy white snow glistened on the ground a few weeks before Christmas, 2007. I have never been a fan of the cold, losing feeling in my limbs or wet saggy clothes, but I was determined to trudge my way to Potter’s Golf Course to sled ride with friends. That determination was shot down quickly, as Grandpa’s rusty, red Ford pick-up truck eased into the steep driveway. Excited to be out of school and out of the house for the day, I bolted out the door and right into Grandpa.
He shrugged off the collision and smiled, “Where’re you headed kiddo?”
Aggravated that I had to carry on a conversation I answered repulsively, “Potter’s to sled.” Instantly realizing the insolence of my answer, I attempted to make up for it with a genuine smile and playful pat on the back.
“Ah sledding. I remember when …” and he went on with a story I’d surely heard hundreds of times before. “What do you think? We could work this afternoon and take Grandma to Cracker Barrel tonight.”
All I could do was stare with a blank look on my face. He had to know I wasn’t paying attention, just as he had to know I wanted to go sledding. He repeated himself, “What do you say? Let’s go out to the shop and make toys for Children’s Hospital? Christmas always sneaks up and I want to make as many as possible.” My heart melted as the words left Grandpa’s mouth. Not so much because I couldn’t go sledding, but for the undeniable desire Grandpa possesses to help others with no consideration of accepting anything in return.
The urge to be with friends dwindled, “Of course,” I grinned. Each year Grandpa made various toys for the children who would be in the hospital during the holiday season. I was especially proud that year, because I helped design the toys with Grandpa....
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...d with confidence. The day came and went with ease as we talked about school and sports and joked about all the small things that never seem to matter at the time. Sledding down the biggest hill couldn’t have compared to my time with Grandpa that snowy winter day.
As the weeks passed we continued our production. That Christmas, we made over seven hundred toys for the local Children’s Hospital. Each car and ring toss was engraved with the sole word, “believe”. We wanted each child to have something they could put their hope and faith into.
Delivering the toys to the children created a sensation of accomplishment that I have yet to find elsewhere. Melancholy faces shone bright like sunshine as we cheerfully entered rooms, making small talk with the kids and distributing the wood works. I was reminded that life’s greatest happiness comes from the smallest gestures.
, Sean Tuohy, and Sally Jenkins. In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2010.
Madurodam has been the smallest city in the Netherlands since its inception in 1952. Its tributaries and canals measuring no more than a finger’s width. Its ornately crafted Dutch gabled houses would make amiable summer residences for rodents. Its immaculate portrayal of railway lines would have any train-spotter paralyzed with awe. This war-monument-turned-amusement-park steals the imagination of children and adults alike. There is a certain human tendency to associate affection with objects of a reduced size. Maybe it is this affection that serves as the reason almost all of the toys we make for children, as Roland Barthes puts it, “are essentially a microcosm of the adult world [...] reduced copies of human objects,” (“Toys” 689). One might argue that toys of this kind allow for the child to more quickly adjust to the conventions of the world they are about to be members of, but does such ritual conformity repress creative freedom, a birth right of every child?
Stanza six shows how toys and presents mark the child’s life rather than love and affection.
An example of the cycle followed by her father, his father, and his father before him is told when Blunt recalls a major blizzard in December 1964 that trapped the family and some neighbors in their small homestead. She unemotionally describes how her father simply proceeded to go through the motions of keeping the pipes from freezing, calmly accepting the fact that he could do nothing as the storm progressed and he could not prevent loss of a of their livestock. Or how when he first ventured out to check on the animals in their nearby barn and nearly lost his way back in whiteout conditions. Later, when the storm passed, she told of playing amongst the frozen corpses of the cattle, jumping from ribcage to ribcage, daring her older brother and sister to cut off pieces of the animals, all with the calm acceptance that this was so normal, nothing strange about it.
...s" represents the idea of poor kids tolerating harmed toys. This energy and acknowledgement hail from the inclination of being much the same as middle and upper class kids and fitting in.
Sad that we were forgotten, we were barely hungry anymore. When the kids went up for food, we stayed behind. From across the hall, I could see our relatives having a great time gathering their food. Then, something was blocking my view. When I looked up at the face of the figure, I realized it was my Dad coming this way! Quickly, I looked over to Sam who saw the same thing I did. We waited while he slowly made his way down the hallway. By the time he made it, he knew we saw him. Just before the door frame, he stopped and waved for us to come towards him. On our hurried way out of the room, I glanced over at Maddie. She saw us leave and didn’t seem to care all that much. Although Maddie likes our older cousins, she has much more fun with the younger ones. For some reason kids love Maddie. Instead of caring about what Sam and I were up to, she turned her attention to the children whom loved her attention. When Sam and I arrived at our father, he waited to speak so we could catch our breath. “You guys want to sit with your cousins right?” Without hesitation, we nodded in agreement. “Well I guess you can…” Before he could finish, we sped up the hallway.
It was finally fall break. I was visiting my grandma for a few days. Well past dinnertime, I pulled up to the white stately home in northern rural Iowa. I parked my car, unloaded my bag and pillow, and crunched through the leaves to the front porch. The porch was just how I had seen it last; to the right, a small iron table and chairs, along with an old antique brass pole lamp, and on the left, a flowered glider that I have spent many a summer afternoon on, swaying back and forth, just thinking.
“Well, I NEVER! I’ll just have to find other little helpers to make the toys. And by the way, you’re all fired!” Santa yelled as he stormed out of the room in his jolly old fat suit and his pink cheeks, looking all cheery. Three words. Corner lip lift. He smiles ALL the time. Even when he’s mad. The elves were stunned as they exited the shop where they had spent hundreds of years working, and trudged through the snow back to their homes.
The day went on smoothly until the crepuscule showed its majestic colors throughout the calm sky. We were playing with a lot of tiny toys, keeping it real in our little imaginary world. We used to bring to life all the cartoon characters that we saw at television, even though we saw them separately, him at home, and me in the archaic coffee shop where I "drove by" to essentially watch the cartoon, sell retail cigarettes, and expect the owner's wife to give me some cookies or an apple.
One would expect this young child to be sad and heart-broken, yet she always comes across as strong willed, happy and quite grown up for her age. Before her brother and sister died, she recalls playing and running. Now she hems kerchiefs, knits stockings and eats her supper down by h...
captive by a sheath of frost, as were the glacial branches that scraped at my windows, begging to get in. It is indeed the coldest year I can remember, with winds like barbs that caught and pulled at my skin. People ceaselessly searched for warmth, but my family found that this year, the warmth was searching for us.
The wind whistles through the open door, dusting the living room with fresh, glistening, white snow. Inside there is an elegant Christmas tree, twinkling in the corner of the room, adorned with unique ornaments, reminiscent of trips shared between a man and his wife. On top of the tree is a lone star devoid of any light. The charming, little, one-story farmhouse is not vacant, though it is so silent that it seemed like a Charlie Chaplin film. An elderly man, George, snoozes in his tattered old rocking chair next to the warm, crackling fireplace. George abruptly awakens, noticing the chill sneaking into the house. He groans and shuffles toward the door in his threadbare robe and raggedy slippers. As he is about to close the door, George peers out at the drifting snow. The white storm brings him back to a memory precisely fifty years ago.
The year was 1992; a cold December arctic wind had brought a chance of snow to the area. It was the weekend and time to relax after a long hard week at work. The weather service had predicted several inches of snow to blanket the region by the next day. Not to worry: it was the weekend and traveling was not a necessity.
Stepping through the revolving glass doors of the hospital felt like entering a completely different world. With my arms crossed over my chest, I followed my parents though the never-ending, eggshell white hallways. My nostrils burned from the fumes of cleaners and sterility. Lovely paintings and luscious plants filled the walkways, trying to mask the hollow, empty feeling that most visitors felt. We passed two types of people along the way to our destination: the kind that strolled by while flashing everyone big, cheery smiles, and the people who kept their gaze straight ahead ignoring your mere existence; I preferred the latter. I did not belong in this place. This was a place for the sick, a place where people went to die. My grandfather did not belong here. We continued walking as my thoughts slipped away to a more pleasant time in my life.
Finally, we arrived at our destination. I left the car leaving my parents and little brother behind and ran up the steps to my grandma’s house. I just had to be the first one to knock on her door, so I did. She opened the door for me, and I went inside parting with the bitter cold and darkness surrounding me. Inside the house I was immediately encircled with the aromas of her Christmas cooking and baking. A real fresh Christmas tree which was already beautifully adorned with old family ornaments perforated the air with more holiday aromas. I went into the kitchen with my mom, and together we helped my grandma finish preparing the Christmas Eve dinner.