Yeah I know, the story’s been told before. Expats in a strange land trying to recreate holiday celebrations from home – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter – the funny substitutions one makes when desperate for a piece of home.
Last year, I tried to introduce the orphans to one of my beloved Easter traditions, coloring Easter eggs. I went from store to store and all I could find was brown eggs, no white.
And no dye kits for coloring them.
I bought the brown ones any way and used all I could find of food coloring – yellow and red, and lime green jello packets. We ended up with slightly reddish-brown and slightly orangish brown eggs. The jello green didn’t work at all.
Of course, they didn’t know what they were supposed to look like so they thought the eggs were beautiful and had a blast making a mess with the colors. The baskets they made truly were beautiful works of art!
This year I was determined. I started earlier and headed straight to the stores that sent out mass mailing circulars advertising brilliantly-colored intricately-decorated Easter eggs. The check-out stands were chock full of magazine covers (South African magazines I must add) showing smiling moms displaying pastel baskets jam-packed with Easter treats galore. Bright plastic eggs, little fuzzy chicks, peeps, all my childhood memories of sugary Easter goodness flooding back.
Of course, none of these items were to be found anywhere in the store. Did they import the stuff from overseas just for the photo shoots but you can’t actually get them here? That was just plain cruel - setting us moms, or momfacsimiles like me, up for failure.
So what could I find? 3 inch high Chocolate bunnies for $3. No way. Our extravagant budget for Christmas presents was only $4 per child. I bought Barbie dolls and teddy bears for that.
Single plastic eggs pre-stuffed with what sounded like 4 jelIy beans were $1. With lightning blonde speed I calculated that would be $80 for 80 children to each get 1 egg. Not gonna do it.
Then I saw them, the Pez dispensers. The head of each was a big goofy rabbit face. That would be perfect! It would be filled with candy but it would last longer than the 30 seconds it took to eat it. That big goofy rabbit face would sit on a shelf at home (if there was a shelf) or peek out of a backpack and make them smile for weeks to come, long after the candy was gone. I did the math. 30 rand per child. That’s about $4 x 80 kids. I couldn’t do it. $320 so each child can get a little piece of plastic with a rabbit head on it. I couldn’t do it. And I stood there in the aisle of PicknPay and started to mist up. I am NOT going to cry because I can’t give my kids a bunny dispenser. Wait… Yes. Yes I am.
I so wanted to give one to each child in our program. It was just a stupid Pez dispenser and I couldn’t buy it for my kids. And I suddenly got it – a slight hint of the unfathomable pain a parent must feel. There were many many moms and dads out there who couldn’t afford one Pez dispenser for their one child. Couldn’t provide chocolate bunnies or Easter eggs or Christmas presents. And forget about holidays, how hard must it be each and every day for a parent to watch their child suffer because even necessities like food and clean water cannot be provided?
But then the holidays come, how they must ache to do something, anything, to make it special for their precious children. Not that it takes things you buy to make a holiday special. I remember as a child getting the Charlie Brown tree and popping popcorn and stringing it to drape on the tree, and Cap’n Crunch Berry cereal made a colorful chain. It made the most beautiful tree. I had parents who knew how to make holidays special without spending a lot of money. What about these kids, the kids in our programs? No parents, no holidays.
Dejected, I moved on down the aisle, the floppy eared, bulgy eyed, goofy grins of the Pez bunnies mocking my pathetic tear-stained retreat.
But I was determined that I was still going to make it special, by hook or by crook. Not sure what that means, because I don’t plan on stealing the Pez rabbits. But we still had our Easter craft activity. Last year we had a jewelry making day at all 3 orphan centers when a bead store had donated bags of beads. I had saved all the broken ones that couldn’t be strung, knowing one day they would come in handy for a craft. We could glue them onto tongue depressors/popsicle sticks to make beautiful bejeweled crosses.
Still have to find the wooden sticks. Shouldn’t be a problem right? Guess my pollyanna optimism is still intact - the sadistic plastic bunnies hadn't robbed me of that!
And I did buy $50 worth of candy: jelly beans, small foil covered chocolate eggs (one per child, I feel so stingy!), marshmallow eggs (again, one), and my new favorite Easter candy, speckled eggs. They are tiny perfectly egg-shaped robin’s-egg-blue speckled candy coating over chocolate covered something. Something gelatinous or maybe sweet raisin bits? Not really sure. I've learned not to ask.
I’ll have to spend another $50 for the next party because this won’t be enough for all 80 kids. $100 on candy, is that wrong? Am I missing the point? Shouldn’t loving the kids be enough? Food, health, school, clothes. Basic needs met. Basic - should I be satisfied with that? Or is it wrong to spend $100 on candy when we struggle each month to meet the budget for their basic needs?
It's just that I long to bring them joy – is that selfish of me? I want them to have something to look forward to every once in a while besides the hot meal they are so happy to receive each day. I want them to have some childhood memories to look back on besides the time my dad left, or mom died, or granny got too sick to care for us all, or my sister was sent away to live with her “uncle”. Maybe sometimes instead it could be… remember the time we all piled onto the jumpy house at the same time and it collapsed and every time they tried to blow it up we kept piling on it so it wouldn’t inflate? I haven’t told that story yet. Or… I remember the first time I got a real ball for Christmas, not one made out of garbage.
Is that so wrong?
Last year, I tried to introduce the orphans to one of my beloved Easter traditions, coloring Easter eggs. I went from store to store and all I could find was brown eggs, no white.
And no dye kits for coloring them.I bought the brown ones any way and used all I could find of food coloring – yellow and red, and lime green jello packets. We ended up with slightly reddish-brown and slightly orangish brown eggs. The jello green didn’t work at all.
Of course, they didn’t know what they were supposed to look like so they thought the eggs were beautiful and had a blast making a mess with the colors. The baskets they made truly were beautiful works of art!
This year I was determined. I started earlier and headed straight to the stores that sent out mass mailing circulars advertising brilliantly-colored intricately-decorated Easter eggs. The check-out stands were chock full of magazine covers (South African magazines I must add) showing smiling moms displaying pastel baskets jam-packed with Easter treats galore. Bright plastic eggs, little fuzzy chicks, peeps, all my childhood memories of sugary Easter goodness flooding back.Of course, none of these items were to be found anywhere in the store. Did they import the stuff from overseas just for the photo shoots but you can’t actually get them here? That was just plain cruel - setting us moms, or momfacsimiles like me, up for failure.
So what could I find? 3 inch high Chocolate bunnies for $3. No way. Our extravagant budget for Christmas presents was only $4 per child. I bought Barbie dolls and teddy bears for that.
Single plastic eggs pre-stuffed with what sounded like 4 jelIy beans were $1. With lightning blonde speed I calculated that would be $80 for 80 children to each get 1 egg. Not gonna do it.
Then I saw them, the Pez dispensers. The head of each was a big goofy rabbit face. That would be perfect! It would be filled with candy but it would last longer than the 30 seconds it took to eat it. That big goofy rabbit face would sit on a shelf at home (if there was a shelf) or peek out of a backpack and make them smile for weeks to come, long after the candy was gone. I did the math. 30 rand per child. That’s about $4 x 80 kids. I couldn’t do it. $320 so each child can get a little piece of plastic with a rabbit head on it. I couldn’t do it. And I stood there in the aisle of PicknPay and started to mist up. I am NOT going to cry because I can’t give my kids a bunny dispenser. Wait… Yes. Yes I am. I so wanted to give one to each child in our program. It was just a stupid Pez dispenser and I couldn’t buy it for my kids. And I suddenly got it – a slight hint of the unfathomable pain a parent must feel. There were many many moms and dads out there who couldn’t afford one Pez dispenser for their one child. Couldn’t provide chocolate bunnies or Easter eggs or Christmas presents. And forget about holidays, how hard must it be each and every day for a parent to watch their child suffer because even necessities like food and clean water cannot be provided?
But then the holidays come, how they must ache to do something, anything, to make it special for their precious children. Not that it takes things you buy to make a holiday special. I remember as a child getting the Charlie Brown tree and popping popcorn and stringing it to drape on the tree, and Cap’n Crunch Berry cereal made a colorful chain. It made the most beautiful tree. I had parents who knew how to make holidays special without spending a lot of money. What about these kids, the kids in our programs? No parents, no holidays.
Dejected, I moved on down the aisle, the floppy eared, bulgy eyed, goofy grins of the Pez bunnies mocking my pathetic tear-stained retreat.
But I was determined that I was still going to make it special, by hook or by crook. Not sure what that means, because I don’t plan on stealing the Pez rabbits. But we still had our Easter craft activity. Last year we had a jewelry making day at all 3 orphan centers when a bead store had donated bags of beads. I had saved all the broken ones that couldn’t be strung, knowing one day they would come in handy for a craft. We could glue them onto tongue depressors/popsicle sticks to make beautiful bejeweled crosses.
Still have to find the wooden sticks. Shouldn’t be a problem right? Guess my pollyanna optimism is still intact - the sadistic plastic bunnies hadn't robbed me of that!
And I did buy $50 worth of candy: jelly beans, small foil covered chocolate eggs (one per child, I feel so stingy!), marshmallow eggs (again, one), and my new favorite Easter candy, speckled eggs. They are tiny perfectly egg-shaped robin’s-egg-blue speckled candy coating over chocolate covered something. Something gelatinous or maybe sweet raisin bits? Not really sure. I've learned not to ask.
I’ll have to spend another $50 for the next party because this won’t be enough for all 80 kids. $100 on candy, is that wrong? Am I missing the point? Shouldn’t loving the kids be enough? Food, health, school, clothes. Basic needs met. Basic - should I be satisfied with that? Or is it wrong to spend $100 on candy when we struggle each month to meet the budget for their basic needs?
It's just that I long to bring them joy – is that selfish of me? I want them to have something to look forward to every once in a while besides the hot meal they are so happy to receive each day. I want them to have some childhood memories to look back on besides the time my dad left, or mom died, or granny got too sick to care for us all, or my sister was sent away to live with her “uncle”. Maybe sometimes instead it could be… remember the time we all piled onto the jumpy house at the same time and it collapsed and every time they tried to blow it up we kept piling on it so it wouldn’t inflate? I haven’t told that story yet. Or… I remember the first time I got a real ball for Christmas, not one made out of garbage.
Is that so wrong?
Lisa, I LOVE your blog, thank you so much for taking the time to do it, no matter how often or late, it's so wonderful when it gets here.
ReplyDeleteAnd....you and Jesus are giving them joy, you are giving them a loving person, and other people, to love them and introduce them to the peace that passes understanding. It's not the candy or the toys that they get joy from (although it sure is fun!) what really counts is being around adults who are human but show them love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. You sure demonstrated the self control when you refused to spend hundreds of dollars on plastic easter eggs!
Love,
Celia