Silver or Gold I Do Not Have...

My office held a Toys for Tots drive this week, and the response was overwhelming. All of those people who might have had the best of intentions but let time slip away, as so often happens, were saved from themselves by one young man in the office who took up a collection for Transformers--he even let the donor choose the particular Transformer he wanted to give, and then traveled to a number of stores in adjoining towns to make sure that all "orders" were filled. In the end, our company of just over 100 people ended up with a waist-high box brimming with toys.

Personally, I have a bit of silver and gold this year. After a dozen years of freelancing, I took a full-time job two years ago and regular, predictable income has been good to us. My 11-year-old daughter and I went out to buy a toy, but we ended up buying a few. We needed some pink things to balance out all those Transformers. She'd been sick and had just gone back to school that day, and I was worried about having her out running around, but she was enthusiastic about shopping. In fact, she insisted on carrying the gifts, saying, "I can take that" as I picked up each new item. I protested that I could carry some of them, but she insisted and so I let her take them, giving it no more thought until this evening, when I started to tell my mother about the success of the drive.

"Mommy bought a few toys," my daughter told her. My mother asked what I'd gotten and my daughter described the toys. And then she said, "I didn't have any money, but I carried them."