Got a note from the oglet’s teacher the other day, the student council has a “giving tree” whereby each kid who desires chooses a child, represented by a paper angel, at random, and buys him/her a christmas gift.

These “gifts” are not just random contributions, each paper angle represents a real child, and each real child has a specific Christmas wish which will not otherwise be fulfilled.

Previous to the receipt of this message, the oglet came home and asked Mama if she could choose one of the angels at school. The Ogwife (thinking this was another school fundraising gimme) had explained to her, that we’d just had a fairly major repair on the truck that left us kind of strapped for cash. That night, the oglet came to me, and tearfully asked if her money would help, handing me the birthday/holiday cash she’d been secreting in her piggybank. I was a bit taken aback, and explained to her that we (hopefully) would never need to take money from her.

When the note came home, all of the pieces came together, and we understood what was going on. I asked her if she understood what it meant.

“some kids won’t be having christmas because their parents are poor. They won’t get presents” she said. “I was afraid we were too poor to get them something”. Thankfully, we’re not. We put together a care package for the young lady who had asked for toys and girls clothes of a specific size.

Not too many things get to me, I’m not too overtly emotional. I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life, and toughed it out. When my daughter was willing to help ME out because she thought we were too broke to help another kid, I lost it. Not in front of her, of course, but when I hugged her and put her to bed, I went off.
Nobody taught her this. Her desire to help someone because they were in need was from whole cloth.