Article December 9, 2002 Issue

Back home for the holidays

By Ginny Luedeman

CHRISTMAS WAS COMING —to the military base in North Carolina where my husband, our two young children, and I longed for the kind of holiday season we used to have back home on the West Coast. There, our children would have had grandparents to cuddle up with. Back home, we would have had a real family Christmas. That was at the top of our wish list. But how could that be possible when we were a whole continent away from "back home"?

Our hopes rose when we read an ad run by our local newspaper. The full-page announcement told about our community's local governmentrun program connecting "under-privileged" senior citizens with a loving family for the holidays. The ad provided a list of seniors on welfare —"adoptive grandparents" they called them—to choose from.

This sounded perfect. Our longing must have actually been a prayer—and here it was being answered. We needed the love of a grandma, and some grandma out there needed a family like ours to make her feel loved and appreciated during this special time of the year.