Animal Crackers

 There was a significant event in my life that helped me see the power of CARE in the world.

 In the early 90’s, I was a manager at a small retail department store in northeast Pennsylvania.  It was during the Christmas holidays and, like many companies, we sponsored an “Angel” tree on which were ornaments reflecting the needs of people and families within our community.  I specifically use the word ‘needs’, because these ornaments didn’t hold grand wishes of game boys and cell phones.  Instead, they were simple basic requests of clothing and household items.

 As December progressed, the ornaments were replaced with brightly wrapped gifts for these families in need, and we began to contact them to let them know there was a special gift for them at our store.  It was totally gratifying to see the sincerely thankful faces when they came in and saw there was a gift just for them!  As Christmas Eve approached, there was one particular family that we could not locate - a single-father and his two young daughters – in order to pick up their gifts.

 Some of our store employees got very resourceful and were able to locate the relatives of this family who then finally got in touch with the man to tell them of their gifts.  As were the other families, he was extremely grateful and told us he was able to arrange a ride up to our store on Christmas Eve.  We were so excited to be able to give those last three lonely-looking gifts under the tree!

 On Christmas Eve, my assistant located me and told me he had arrived to pick up the gifts.  As you can imagine, the store was very busy with last minute shoppers.  Once we reached a lull, I walked to the back of the store to find my assistant and I passed the Angel tree with the three gifts still underneath!  She told me that she thought I was going to give the gifts to him when he was in earlier.  She and the other employees told me how he had patiently waited for me.  But I did not realize that she thought I was going to give him the gifts myself – I felt SO badly about the miscommunication!

 Well, we got back on the phone to try to track him down again.  Somehow, thankfully, we were able to find him, apologize for him waiting so long due to our internal miscommunication, and ask him whether he was able to come back for the gifts.  He said he wasn’t sure, but would try – of course we were all hoping that he could!

 Being Christmas Eve, we got busy again and I got a page in the middle of all the chaos that the man was there and to come back to the offices to greet him.  I dropped what I was doing and quickly got back to the office to meet this kind and patient man and give him the gifts for his family.  When I arrived, he was holding a box which was clearly not one of the gifts we had for him.  He turned to me and held out the box, saying this was a little something from his family to us as thanks for the Angel gifts.

 Inside the box, were close to a dozen plastic baggies, each full of animal crackers, each meticulously tied with a bright red piece of yarn.  I was held totally speechless – I could not even imagine receiving a gift from a family who had so little.  Not to mention the fact that we had inconvenienced him so much by making him wait so long on his first trip up as well as causing him an extra trip to our store!  I was indescribably moved by his gesture.  He left with a smile on his face, carrying those three precious packages for him and his daughters.

 To this day, every Christmas, I bring out that little baggie of animal crackers.  They’ve been bagged again to protect them and are merely crumbles, almost dust, remaining.  The message they hold for me is the basis for my CARE mission statement – Giving of what you have, no matter how small, can significantly impact another.