The spirit of Christmas...
My grandmother's cleaning lady, Sandra, came this morning. I adore her because she and her husband have worked tremendously hard for the past seven years to provide a better life for the two of them and their five-year-old twins. This morning, Grandma and I gave her a Christmas check, some of the cookies that I had baked, and some small gifts for the twins. Sandra started crying and told me in Spanish that she and her husband had "nothing to give her babies" because her brother had passed away recently and she and her sisters had to pay nearly nine thousand dollars to transport his body back to Mexico.
I nearly burst into tears right there. She kept telling me that she wished she could get her daughter "the sixteen dollar computer" and that her son desperately wanted a Playstation and couldn't understand why he wouldn't get one this year, or any other year. She said that she was running out of money because she had to buy her daughter so many shoes. That confused me, so I asked her what she meant. Sandra kept holding up two fingers and telling me that her daughter had to have two pairs of identical shoes because her feet were different. She then started walking with a pronounced limp and dragging her feet.
"Mi hija, ella camina como esto. Siempre."
A light bulb clicked in my head. "Ella camina como yo. Tengo parálisis cerebral."
I started walking to show her.
"Si! Si! Como mi hija."
She put her hand over her heart and told me that none of the other children would play with her daughter because she walked like that; her daughter would come home crying every day from school. My heart broke. No one would ever play with me, either, and I knew how confusing and awful that felt. Sandra kept saying that the doctors cost too much; that she didn't have enough to help her daughter.
Immediately, I thought of the Scottish Rite hospital that gave me my surgeries, free of charge. They never turn any family away and always pay for every procedure, whatever the cost. I wrote the address and number down for her and told her that they will give her daughter a surgery for free.
"¿Para mi hija? ¿Sin dinero?
I nodded.
She started crying. "Gracias, Mónica. Eres ángel de Dios. Eres ángel."
I had no words for her.
Grandma and I decided that we're going to go out and get gifts for the twins tomorrow and take them by Sandra's house. We can't afford a Playstation, but we were going to try and get something that they would like.
Any gift ideas for five-year-old twins?