The giver gets the most reward

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Updated: January 24, 2012 9:46AM

Some days, it all makes sense.

I was standing at the kitchen counter early one morning last week when my older boy knocked over his lunch bag. It fell to the floor and the can of Diet Dr Pepper he had snuck inside cracked open in such a way that it sent a sheet of soda pop spraying four feet into the air between us.

I was regarding this phenomenon, not with distress, but a certain bovine curiosity, musing that you couldn’t re-create that curtain of mist if you dropped 100 cans, when my younger son’s voice shouted from the next room. “There’s a dead mouse!” he cried.

“You get the soda, I’ll get the mouse,” I said, grabbing a paper towel, choking back my snarky comment (“You wear size 12 shoes; take care of the mouse yourself.”) I did the dirty work, returned to the kitchen, and thought, sincerely, “I’ll miss this.”

Half an hour later, I strode out of the house, toward the train station, got half a block, remembered, “Oh, the gifts!” — the shopping bag of neatly wrapped presents, the purchase of which, for a Season of Sharing letter, was outlined in a recent column.

I pirouetted, raced back, grabbed the bag — “Can’t talk!” — and bolted for the train.

At the office, I asked the editor who gave me the letter where I should deliver the gifts. I thought she’d say a certain room on the 10th floor executive offices. Instead, she gave me an address on West 123rd Street. I didn’t know there was a West 123rd Street in Chicago. But there is, in West Pullman.

“The donors are responsible for hand-delivering the gifts.” Now you tell me.

I assessed my options. I could go down to the street and try to press the gifts on random passing girls — “Here honey, take a present.” But considering our world today, that might not go well. It seems fraught.

I asked a hotshot colleague who lives in Pullman. Could you . . . ? “Busy!” Clarity descended on me, and I had what I call a “Nineveh Moment.” If you recall your Bible, God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh but, also being a busy, can’t-be-bothered kind of guy, Jonah tries to shuck the task, a storm comes up, buffeting the ship he is trying to escape on, and Jonah gets tossed into the sea.

That happens. Shirking certain missions only backfires and you end up in a big fish. I told my editor that I’d take care of it.

My intention was to drop the gifts off the next morning then flee downtown. Between the round trip the day before and today, I had already schlepped the gifts 100 miles. The lady at the shelter had a different idea.

“I want her to meet you,” said Marshe Owens, a case manager at the shelter, located in an old convent house, the floors and woodwork worn, the ceiling patched in places, the space tight — 60 people living in 13 small rooms. But clean and homey.

I sputtered, trying to back off: aren’t donors supposed to be anonymous? But that was brushed aside. First I met the mother, a bright-eyed lady to whom fate has handed some bad breaks. I had jokingly supposed her daughter wanted to be a writer, based on her asking Santa for a journal. But more than a glib line, that turned out to be true. The girl has the optimism that gets writers through the disappointments of our profession, ascribing significance to trivial matters such as meeting a newspaper columnist.

“She said, ‘I’m on my way, Mom! This is a big break!’ ” her mother told me. I’ve been having that thought daily for the past 30 years. So the girl, 12, was sent for.

There we should draw the veil. Suffice it to say that I found myself driving north up South Halsted, really, really, really glad that I had, with prodding, paused from dancing around the bonfire of my own ego to think of someone else for once. I felt nestled in a rare bubble of happiness and tranquility. A very — dare I say it? — Christmassy feeling, followed by a realization: Don’t wait until next Christmas to do this kind of thing again.

Time Grows Short!

The end of December already. Which means you only have until Saturday to enter the Sun-Times Goes to the Lyric Opera contest, to win one of 50 pairs of tickets to see “The Magic Flute” on Jan. 11. Mail a post card with your name, address, phone number and e-mail to Sun-Times Goes to Lyric Opera, P.O. Box 3455, Chicago, IL 60654. Or enter at suntimes.com/win. Good luck.