A Rosewood Christmas

Last Night Was The Rosewood Family Holiday Party. I capitalized every word in the previous sentence because the invitation we received was written that way. Must have taken the activity director hours to type!

When I arrived at 6:45 for the 7:00 event, the dining room was already filled with residents, 98% in wheelchairs, each anxiously watching the door for their family members to arrive. I was glad I had arrived early as Mom visibly relaxed when she had family! Although I tried to tell Mom about my week and show her pictures from the trip, she really couldn't focus. The upcoming party was foremost in her mind.

Between 7:00 and 8:00 we had food and entertainment. Man, it was a long hour! A pianist was the entertainment, but he was on the other side of the room and didn't have a microphone, so even those of us with decent hearing couldn't hear his commentary or music. We ate our three cheese cubes, one meatball, two sausages, four green and two red grapes, and solitary cookie and drank our mysterious sweet pink beverage mostly in silence.

Finally 8:00 arrived and so did Santa. Santa was a little on the thin side and said "Merry Christmas" with a distinct Spanish accent, but it became magical as he pulled out a specially chosen gift for each resident. The activity director called out the names: "Ekaterina Dimitriskaya: Happy Holidays", "Max Lowenthal: Happy Hannukah", "Mildred Mohrman: Merry Christmas". The gifts were distributed: Ekaterina's wrapped in snowman paper, Max's in dreidel paper, Mildred's in a Santa themed bag. Wrinkled faces erupted into smiles as they opened their gifts.

Later we found out that each staff member had adopted a resident and had specially chosen a gift for someone they cared for. Mom's gifts - a red velvet zippered bag with "naughty" written in rhinestones on one side and "nice" on the other, a candy cane themed metal storage box, and a photo album were lovingly chosen by María, her evening nurse, who knew Mom liked red and had lots of family pictures to store. María was as excited about giving this gift as Mom was about receiving it.

It didn't matter much that this Christmas party was made up of non-English speaking Russians, Hanukkah celebrating Jews, atheists, and Christians of various types. It didn't matter that the entertainment was pretty worthless and the food un-exciting. It did matter that employees were showing love to residents who are not always easy to love.

In other parts of town, extravagant parties were going on last night with elegant decorations, food, clothing, and gifts. I think, however, that the simple display of love at Rosewood was exactly what God has in mind for a Christmas party. The God born at Christmas came to love the unlovable and I think he'd be most pleased how that love was shared at Rosewood last night.