Colleen Maxwell
As my best friend and I entered a Detroit elementary school dressed up as Tigger and Winnie the Pooh in the dead of winter, kids — wearing sandals and T-shirts in the foot of snow — turned to stare.
They cracked smiles between shivers and pointed at us, wondering what brought cartoon characters into their normally dead-beat school that day.
We nervously smiled back underneath our painted faces, hoping their reactions were a preview of the reception we would get the rest of the day as well.
In my later years of middle school, my mom started a not-for-profit organization with a few other women dedicated to providing a little holiday cheer to needy Detroit families.
While the program has grown to educate the kids about sleep habits, they originally started out by throwing a holiday party every year for the kids, going all out with presents, music and activities.
Choirs sang, the kids got an entire day to play and the volunteers left with a little bit of a bounce in their step.
What I didn’t realize at the time I volunteered was how the experience would go so much further than dressing up as elves and other characters and passing out gifts while hanging out with a few good friends.
It would go further than getting free pizza and easy community service hours.
It would even go further than making the day of a few kids by getting them out of classes early.
The kids were typically served lunch in the morning because so many of them weren’t able to get fed before school at home.
On the day we came, they ate twice — their normal morning meal and a pizza party provided by Papa John’s.
We distributed trash bags stuffed to the brim with a sleeping bag, pillow, crayons, coloring books, jump ropes and other toys to every kid in every classroom.
But it never ended up being the typical childhood amusements that caught their eyes.
One little girl opened up her bag and reached to the very bottom for a toothbrush. She proudly held it in the air and announced that she would no longer have to share one with her mom.
Another boy grabbed a pair of socks and immediately put them on, saying it was the first pair he had.
As I traveled from class to class with jump ropes and other toys in hand, I realized that graciousness wasn’t a scarcity in the school.
Suddenly, the simple gifts we collected weren’t so simple.
They weren’t just socks and toothbrushes — they were day-makers and life-changers for the kids who no longer had to share blankets with siblings and could now have paper to express their suppressed desires to color.
I felt guilty as I thought of the countless socks on the floor of my room or the boxes of unused markers and crayons or the sleeping bags sitting in my basement gathering dust.
This was a place we were needed — evident by the kids tugging on my Tigger tail as I said my goodbyes for the day and they lugged their life-size bags home, now sporting grins.
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For that one walk home, their laughter and chatter about the day distracted them from the cold.
It was one day.
It took an entire year of work and planning and stress for one day.
But I think it took a little more than that amount of time for them to forget it — and that makes it completely worth it.
Colleen Maxwell is the State News lifestyle reporter. Reach her at maxwel79@msu.edu.
