“They’re…” Slow. Frustrating. Depressing. I never anticipated just how hard it would be to get donations to get innocent kids gifts for Christmas. “Going,” I settled on. “We had our one big donation from that one family come in, but the individual donations have been a slow trickle. The economy…” I said, waving a hand out.
“I’m good for another grand.”
“You’ve already donated a lot.”
“Yeah, but little kids living in shelters have it rough enough. They shouldn’t have to think Santa forgot about them on top of it.”
My heart lurched, remembering being in a shelter myself as a kid and hearing the smaller kids ask their parents such heartbreaking things—like if Santa even knew where they were since they didn’t have a house anymore.
And the worst part was, some years, ‘Santa’ didn’t come. And those kids went to school come the new year to hear about the thousands of dollars’ worth of presents their classmates got from Santa while they wondered what they did that was so bad to get nothing.
It was me.
I was those kids.
Unfortunately, by the time we finally got out of the shelter for good, I was too old for Santa.
When I heard that the charity I saved up for all year to donate to was at risk of closing down because the previous director died, I felt like there was no choice but to step in and take over myself. Because there could be approximately forty-five thousand children in homeless shelters across the city. And theyalldeserved a Christmas present, dammit. No matter how much I hated begging for donations.
To get each child one gift—all in with wrapping and logistics—we were looking at needing one point five million in donations. To get them each a toy plus a book, craft, or article of clothing, we were looking at around two million.
The latter was, of course, the goal. These kids often had next to nothing—just a bag with a few articles of clothing, maybe one precious toy. To be able to bless them with more than one toy would be phenomenal. If we had to settle for the former, that would do. I absolutely refused to not reach that goal, though.
Which meant I really needed to start kicking butt on the donation drives and reach outs to the community and the wealthy city-dwellers who might be feeling extra charitable this time of year.
“How far are you from your goal?” Andy asked. I shot her a look that had her wincing. “That bad, huh?”
“I wish I found out about the opening sooner. I would have started fundraising in the early fall. It’s getting down to the line now.”
“If anyone can do this, it’s you. Sign me up to ring some bells or whatever you need.”
“What I am going to really need soon is a gift wrapper, but…”
“But I once wrapped your birthday present in paper bags from the corner store.”
“With a trussing twine bow,” I said, getting a snort out of her.
“Hey, you work with what you got.”
“What are you going to do with all those presents for your nieces and nephews?”
“Oh, there’s this amazing invention calledgift bags. They save the lives of the wrapping-impaired. I will have Sammy go around her office for donations. Lawyers always have money to spare. And guilty consciences from defending bad guys all the time.”
“Every penny will help. Okay. I need to get a couple of hours of recording done before bed.”
“Ah, yes,” Andy said, unfolding. “What is it this week? An orc with a twelve-inch ding-dong?”
“Ding-dong?” I snorted.
“I’ve been happily with Sammy for eight years. I haven’t seen one of those since my freshman year of college.”
“Well, this week it is a moody cowboy with a rental cabin on his ranch and a social media influencer doing a digital detox there over Christmas. It’s actually really cute.”
“Alright. Well, I will let you go to your doom-closet. Come on, Meatball,” she said, patting her leg. “Oh, come on, dude. We’re literally walking down the hall. Fine. Have it your way,” Andy said, scooping up the Frenchie and making her way toward the door. “We’ll see you tomorrow,” she said before she was gone.
Alone, I locked the door and went down the hall toward my ‘doom-closet.’ In Andy’s defense, it was anactualcloset—the big hallway one that provided precious storage space in my small city apartment. But when I stumbled into book narration thanks to continuous comments from people encouraging me to do it, I decided to take the closet and turn it into a recording studio, so I didn’t have to spend a huge chunk of my income on studio rental time.
Being windowless, it was dark and a little claustrophobic. I’d tried to brighten it up by using baby pink foam soundproof tiles on the walls and ceiling. And recently, I’d strung some twinkle lights up to turn on when I was inside.
