Number 29

A local woman's shelter co-hosted a program where their clients and other families in the area could come on a specific day to a large parochial school. Parents and caregivers could go into the gym and choose gifts for their kids, meantime kids could come into the gift shop and choose a gift vice versa. My friend Christy and I were on the team of helping the kids choose for their adult caregivers.

I learned early in the game that my own kids couldn't come and help because of confidentiality issues. It didn't hit me though until I was helping my first customer, number 29, that this experience really was a bitter combination of joy and resentment for the older of the kids being shepherded through.

As for number 29, she made no eye contact with me as we walked down the hallway to the gift shop. I pointed out some of the options she had for gifts for her grandma, and she skitted past one to the next, eyeing the clock, checking her cell phone, disengaging from the process. Finally she settled on a gift set of perfumes and body lotions that were packaged into a gift basket, and seemed genuinely happy with that selection for her grandma.

The process was to go something like this: Pick up the kids (though she hardly seemed like a kid, a fact not lost on either one of us), take them through the shop, pick the gift(s), then guide them to the wrapping/snack/Santa post, where their caregivers were to pick them up again. Hence the reason for the number assignment -- crowd control and a means to match kids with the adults who brought them.

I probably escorted ten families' worth of kids through the process. There was a four year old boy who clutched my hand for dear life but let me know he liked superheroes. (Check! My son does too.) An incredibly verbal and intelligent girl who made sure that her mom's gift basket, towels and wrapping were all color-coordinated. A younger girl who asked that I stay by her side until all gifts were wrapped and her mom had come to get her.

As for number 29, I failed miserably with her. It reminded me of the description in Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," where Francie describes her mother's loathing of charity. To the point that Francie lies about her first name being "Mary" so that her name is eligible to win a coveted porceleain doll. About the shame she feels as she walks up to receive it in front of other children who know the truth. And ultimately she discovers, with glee and horror, that her real name is Mary Frances. So she deserves -- or does she?

My customer was there for a purpose, but she didn't like it. And when I tried to lead her into the wrapping room, she demurred -- "I have my own wrapping paper." I told her that her grandma would be picking her up there, and she insisted "That's not how we did it last time. I don't want to go in that room. I'm 15." I could see her point. So instead I led her back to the registration room, where, sure enough, her grandma was waiting for her. And let them go on their way.