Sometimes Things Just Work Out

I have learned from a very wise person that “experience gifts are the best to give”. I am a single parent with three adult children. When the children were growing up Christmas was always my least favorite holiday. Although we always talked about the true meaning of Christmas there was always that pressure to give them gifts. I had very little money so that always presented a problem. I would have the children make a list of things they wanted. The agreement was that they would get three gifts from the list they provided. The list could be as long or short as they wanted. What was always precious to me about these lists is that it told me a lot about their values. Interesting enough, as adult children they are true to what I discovered as they grew. My oldest (a boy) would always give me a modest list but with all various “name brand” things. He was big on sneakers (Jordan’s in particular. This was the Michael Jordan era). Even though he knew he wouldn’t get them, he always included them on his list. My middle child (a girl) always put down a limited number of things, usually very inexpensive items. A lot of items would be “craft” related. The youngest (a girl) usually had a combination of both brand name items and relatively inexpensive items. They were always to make their list according to importance to them. In addition to the list provided, I always tried to get them an “experience” gift. This one year in particular I got together with one of my girlfriends who also had a son the same age as my son and we decided that since they both LOVED basketball, we would scrape together and get tickets for them to see a professional basketball game. Both of us were single mothers and were always concerned about our boys. We had countless discussions about raising our boys and how we wanted them to be self-sufficient, well-rounded adults. I would guess that they might have been 11 or so this particular Christmas. We put our money together and was able to secure tickets to the Wizards game. Of course, they were “nosebleed” seats but we wanted them to have the experience of seeing a live game. They both would spend hours watching basketball on TV and playing video games and any chance they got would play basketball outside. They both were so excited about getting a chance to go to a “real game”. I honestly don’t remember who they were playing but I’m sure if you ask them – they would know!! We arrived at the arena and proceeded to climb the stairs up, up, up and up again. By the time we reached our seats, and looked down, the players looked so small. They didn’t complain, they just seemed so excited about being in the arena. My girlfriend and I kept watching the seats way down below us and noticed that there were several empty seats that stayed empty for pretty much the entire first half. We decided that we would try at half time to go down and see if by some chance we would be able to sit in those empty seats.

Half time approached and the four of us proceeded to go down to those great empty seats. Just as we got comfortable an usher came and told us we would have to move. I immediately started pleading my case that this was the very first time that the boys were getting to experience a game and we just wanted them to be able to really see the players up close, and how we weren’t bothering anyone, and how those seats had remained empty for two quarters. We promised to get up if the people who purchased those seats came. My pleading was to no avail, but I thought it was important to let the boys see how we had the courage to take a chance and then lobby for what we wanted – even if it didn’t work out. Just as we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to leave, a man sitting in the same row handed us two tickets!!!!!! He said he had two extra tickets and he agreed that the boys SHOULD be able to see the game from there. I was shocked!!! Without hesitation we handed the tickets to the usher who just looked disgusted with us but knew he couldn’t throw us out if we had tickets. We took the two tickets, sat in the seats and sat our boys in our laps. The look on their faces was priceless. They were so happy!!!!! I kept thanking the man. He didn’t know what a blessing he was to me that day. Tears started coming to the surface as I was reminded that yes, sometimes things just work out!!!