Here is the transcript of Rhea Bouchard Powers' column as it appears today in The Valley Breeze. If you would like to read it on their website, go here.Adopt-A-Family (2009)
By
Rhea Bouchard Powers
Note: This column marks an anniversary for me. It was 20 years ago this month that I wrote my first Adopt-a-Family column. Twenty-years and here I am, as passionate about it now as I was then. The only difference is that in the intervening years I have also become a full-time volunteer and a member of the Board of Directors.
Trying to come up with a different way to say the same thing year after year becomes a challenge. Therefore, this time around I am going to run the same column that first saw the light of day in November of 1990.
Christmas can be a tough time of the year under the best of circumstances and for a lot of different reasons. But the toughest thought for me to face at this time of the year is that there will be children who won’t receive anything for Christmas. I’m particularly sensitive on that subject because that’s what my father’s Christmases were like as a child.
He was six years old when his mother and baby brother were killed in an automobile accident shortly after the family moved from Canada to the States. His father, grief-stricken and in poor health, managed to keep the three surviving children together, but they lived in boarding houses and for many years their lives were pretty cheerless.
My heart just breaks when my father tells how he used to attend 6:00 o’clock Mass on Christmas morning to avoid meeting other kids. “They used to laugh at me because I didn’t get anything for Christmas,” he explained, and my eyes fill with tears at the thought. That’s a terrible memory to have to carry with you through life, and there is nothing anyone can do to erase it.
That’s probably why Tom Ward’s column about the Adopt-a-Family program caught my attention last year around this time. It explained how people could volunteer to sponsor a needy family for Christmas, agreeing to furnish gifts of clothing and toys.
Unlike most charities that involve nameless, faceless donations, Adopt-a-Family furnishes you with a personalized list. You’re given the children’s first names, ages, and what the parent thinks each child needs and wants.
My sisters and I decided to pool our resources and adopt a family together. We selected a single-parent family with three children. When our list arrived in the mail we mapped out our strategy, and on a Friday evening all four of us set out to do some shopping.
Our first stop was the shoe store. Picking out winter boots for this one and running shoes for that one didn’t take much time, then it was onward and upward to the second place on our list, a children’s clothing store.
That required a little more strategy and a lot more time, trying to coordinate age-appropriate outfits that were stylish. We tossed in some trendy socks and a few other inexpensive fad items as well. Kids have such a need to be like everyone else, and if we were kids we would have loved this stuff. It was at the toy store, though, that we lost control and had the most fun.
At this point, for all intents and purposes, these three children had become “ours.”
On Christmas morning, as I sat in my living room surrounded by my own family, my thoughts were also with my adopted family. I wondered how they had liked their gifts, and wished I could have been there to see their faces as they opened their presents. My sisters all told me they felt the same way.
Needless to say, we have decided to adopt a family again this year as a family holiday project. We are adopting a second one as well, in conjunction with a group of friends.
No, I really don’t have an awful lot of money, but Adopt-a-Family is a Christmas gift I give myself. I do it primarily because it makes me feel good and because it makes my Christmas richer. But on a deeper, more fundamental level, I am doing it for the long ago little boy whose bleak Christmas memories I am powerless to change, and for the children in the here and now whose memories of Christmas have yet to be formed.
If you are interested in adopting one or more children (at an average cost of $150 per child), or making a donation that will be used to provide gifts for children who have not been sponsored by outside donors, call us at 401-766-2291 and leave a message. We will get back to you as soon as possible. If you would like to join us as a volunteer, call 401-769-3429 and speak to Beverly Denis, our volunteer coordinator (and my sister). You can also visit us online at AdoptAFamily@cox.net.
In these financially troubled times we really need your help. Please join us. You will be glad you did.
By
Rhea Bouchard Powers
Note: This column marks an anniversary for me. It was 20 years ago this month that I wrote my first Adopt-a-Family column. Twenty-years and here I am, as passionate about it now as I was then. The only difference is that in the intervening years I have also become a full-time volunteer and a member of the Board of Directors.
Trying to come up with a different way to say the same thing year after year becomes a challenge. Therefore, this time around I am going to run the same column that first saw the light of day in November of 1990.
Christmas can be a tough time of the year under the best of circumstances and for a lot of different reasons. But the toughest thought for me to face at this time of the year is that there will be children who won’t receive anything for Christmas. I’m particularly sensitive on that subject because that’s what my father’s Christmases were like as a child.
He was six years old when his mother and baby brother were killed in an automobile accident shortly after the family moved from Canada to the States. His father, grief-stricken and in poor health, managed to keep the three surviving children together, but they lived in boarding houses and for many years their lives were pretty cheerless.
My heart just breaks when my father tells how he used to attend 6:00 o’clock Mass on Christmas morning to avoid meeting other kids. “They used to laugh at me because I didn’t get anything for Christmas,” he explained, and my eyes fill with tears at the thought. That’s a terrible memory to have to carry with you through life, and there is nothing anyone can do to erase it.
That’s probably why Tom Ward’s column about the Adopt-a-Family program caught my attention last year around this time. It explained how people could volunteer to sponsor a needy family for Christmas, agreeing to furnish gifts of clothing and toys.
Unlike most charities that involve nameless, faceless donations, Adopt-a-Family furnishes you with a personalized list. You’re given the children’s first names, ages, and what the parent thinks each child needs and wants.
My sisters and I decided to pool our resources and adopt a family together. We selected a single-parent family with three children. When our list arrived in the mail we mapped out our strategy, and on a Friday evening all four of us set out to do some shopping.
Our first stop was the shoe store. Picking out winter boots for this one and running shoes for that one didn’t take much time, then it was onward and upward to the second place on our list, a children’s clothing store.
That required a little more strategy and a lot more time, trying to coordinate age-appropriate outfits that were stylish. We tossed in some trendy socks and a few other inexpensive fad items as well. Kids have such a need to be like everyone else, and if we were kids we would have loved this stuff. It was at the toy store, though, that we lost control and had the most fun.
At this point, for all intents and purposes, these three children had become “ours.”
On Christmas morning, as I sat in my living room surrounded by my own family, my thoughts were also with my adopted family. I wondered how they had liked their gifts, and wished I could have been there to see their faces as they opened their presents. My sisters all told me they felt the same way.
Needless to say, we have decided to adopt a family again this year as a family holiday project. We are adopting a second one as well, in conjunction with a group of friends.
No, I really don’t have an awful lot of money, but Adopt-a-Family is a Christmas gift I give myself. I do it primarily because it makes me feel good and because it makes my Christmas richer. But on a deeper, more fundamental level, I am doing it for the long ago little boy whose bleak Christmas memories I am powerless to change, and for the children in the here and now whose memories of Christmas have yet to be formed.
If you are interested in adopting one or more children (at an average cost of $150 per child), or making a donation that will be used to provide gifts for children who have not been sponsored by outside donors, call us at 401-766-2291 and leave a message. We will get back to you as soon as possible. If you would like to join us as a volunteer, call 401-769-3429 and speak to Beverly Denis, our volunteer coordinator (and my sister). You can also visit us online at AdoptAFamily@cox.net.
In these financially troubled times we really need your help. Please join us. You will be glad you did.
