Just to Feel the Joy

It just seems like everybody's smiling.

Running this Santa's Workshop at Lilly's school is so fun because kids are bringing me bags of change and buying little things for their moms and dads and brothers and aunts, and they get to swarm the wrapping table and all yell at each other excitedly as they wrap just like a big Italian family passing the food around, and there's my poor parent volunteers in there cutting and making ribbons and looking like buoys bobbing in the sea of kids. And after awhile the noise reaches such a loud level that I don't even hear it anymore, in fact, I can't remember what normal sounds like, and everyone thinks I'm in charge and that's funny and we rake in $900 dollars and kids get what they want, and the school gets to buy a much-needed fancy industrial pencil sharpener for every single classroom just because we get up a little earlier, sell some fun gifts, and raise a little money for the school.

What I like best is the teachers that I've known through the years stop by, and talk about their pregnancies, or just stop by to drink their coffee and watch the little kids buy their stuff. They're not in a hurry - they actually come by to just feel the joy. This is giving me the feeling that when I drive home and see my neighbor walking his 3 dogs through the rain puddles, that I should stop and give him a pair of brand new socks. I will get some from Santa's Workshop and give him some, because who wouldn't like to have someone roll down their window and give you some new soft socks, in the rain?

But mostly it's the feeling like your heart is so happy, that you have everything you need and you want others to have what they need. The school, in all its years of service to our family, has given us a center to belong, and it's a nice place to sprout. Like I was reading in this book one of my mom's gave me, the guy says, "I don't have to go somewhere else to be better. I can be better here."

But I would, when I'm done, sure like to live in Montana. (Not Hannah Montana. Although she is an interestingly troubled human being.)

It's been a busy four days of selling treats in the school library. There is joy, and I wonder if you can hear it all the way where you are.