Every year around this time just before Christmas my father would stop by the door to our room and tell my brother and me to gather up our old toys--toys that we didn't really play with anymore. He didn't explain why we were to do this. He just said to gather the toys and bring them outside to the car. I can remember wondering why we had been so ordered. Had we done something wrong? Were we being punished? Or had we been insufficiently fond of certain toys, such that they would now be taken away?
As always, I went to my brother for the explanation.
"We're taking them to the fire station," he said, rummaging through the nether recesses of the closet where the older toys lived.
The fire station? Why the fire station? Where's the fire? Or is there about to be a fire?
"They collect all the toys there," my brother continued, "from all the kids."
I pictured this mountain of old toys on the floor of the fire station. Where would they park the trucks? What would the firemen do with all these toys? I put 2 and 2 together. An idea formed in my head.
"Do they melt them down?" I asked. I was picturing all the toys gathered into one great heap and being subjected to a controlled burn such that a great block of colorful metal and plastic would remain, and perhaps this would be constituted, piece by piece, into new toys, which would then be sent to Santa Claus so that he could deliver them all over again.
"No, dummy, they don't melt them down," my brother said. "The toys are for poor kids."
"Oh." I wondered why there would be so many poor kids in the fire station. I had never seen them before, and I passed the station every day on the way to school. But I didn't ask, for a question of greater significance had entered my mind.
"Why don't they just get their toys from Santa Claus on Christmas like everyone else?"
"That, I don't know," my brother answered without looking up from his work.
Of course, he did know. He was two years older than I. He knew everything. He just didn't always say everything that he knew.
It seems that it was always snowing when my father drove us in the station wagon up to the fire house, rear bed loaded with two or three boxes of toys. We had indeed found toys that we did not play with anymore. We had found toys that were for little kids, for we were a year older now and had grown beyond such things. And we had found toys that looked newly interesting, but had to be let go nonetheless. It seems it was always snowing, but perhaps this was just the one year I remember well. The year I learned that there were poor kids who went to the fire station for toys when they could have just waited a few days for Santa Claus to bring them.
My father parked the car by the curb and had us carry the boxes into the bay where the fire engines were parked. There was no disordered, crumbling mountain of toys as I had imagined, but neatly stacked boxes and a stack of wrapped packages as well, and there was even a Christmas tree twinkling with colored lights. A red cheeked fireman received our boxes, wished us a merry Christmas and ruffled our hair with a bear-like gloved hand. He strolled out to the parking strip, where my father was lighting his pipe, and they spoke for a minute about the snow.
In a child's mind, things piece themselves together. Things get melted down and reconstituted and take shape bit by bit. My father was not the sort of explain things in words. He just told you to do things, and one came to understand through the doing. Giving was not a suggestion, not a matter for negotiation. It was a command, and as you carried out the command, you observed the world around you more thoroughly. You would learn in due time that it is not Santa Claus who brings toys. You would learn that, at least in some small way, it is you. And you would understand in time, with the understanding that is amenable to taking form in words, how it happened that you felt so warm inside on that snowy drive home from the fire house just a few days before Christmas.
As always, I went to my brother for the explanation.
"We're taking them to the fire station," he said, rummaging through the nether recesses of the closet where the older toys lived.
The fire station? Why the fire station? Where's the fire? Or is there about to be a fire?
"They collect all the toys there," my brother continued, "from all the kids."
I pictured this mountain of old toys on the floor of the fire station. Where would they park the trucks? What would the firemen do with all these toys? I put 2 and 2 together. An idea formed in my head.
"Do they melt them down?" I asked. I was picturing all the toys gathered into one great heap and being subjected to a controlled burn such that a great block of colorful metal and plastic would remain, and perhaps this would be constituted, piece by piece, into new toys, which would then be sent to Santa Claus so that he could deliver them all over again.
"No, dummy, they don't melt them down," my brother said. "The toys are for poor kids."
"Oh." I wondered why there would be so many poor kids in the fire station. I had never seen them before, and I passed the station every day on the way to school. But I didn't ask, for a question of greater significance had entered my mind.
"Why don't they just get their toys from Santa Claus on Christmas like everyone else?"
"That, I don't know," my brother answered without looking up from his work.
Of course, he did know. He was two years older than I. He knew everything. He just didn't always say everything that he knew.
It seems that it was always snowing when my father drove us in the station wagon up to the fire house, rear bed loaded with two or three boxes of toys. We had indeed found toys that we did not play with anymore. We had found toys that were for little kids, for we were a year older now and had grown beyond such things. And we had found toys that looked newly interesting, but had to be let go nonetheless. It seems it was always snowing, but perhaps this was just the one year I remember well. The year I learned that there were poor kids who went to the fire station for toys when they could have just waited a few days for Santa Claus to bring them.
My father parked the car by the curb and had us carry the boxes into the bay where the fire engines were parked. There was no disordered, crumbling mountain of toys as I had imagined, but neatly stacked boxes and a stack of wrapped packages as well, and there was even a Christmas tree twinkling with colored lights. A red cheeked fireman received our boxes, wished us a merry Christmas and ruffled our hair with a bear-like gloved hand. He strolled out to the parking strip, where my father was lighting his pipe, and they spoke for a minute about the snow.
In a child's mind, things piece themselves together. Things get melted down and reconstituted and take shape bit by bit. My father was not the sort of explain things in words. He just told you to do things, and one came to understand through the doing. Giving was not a suggestion, not a matter for negotiation. It was a command, and as you carried out the command, you observed the world around you more thoroughly. You would learn in due time that it is not Santa Claus who brings toys. You would learn that, at least in some small way, it is you. And you would understand in time, with the understanding that is amenable to taking form in words, how it happened that you felt so warm inside on that snowy drive home from the fire house just a few days before Christmas.
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