An unforgettable lesson on true generosity

For years, my family’s run-up to Christmas went something like this: String Christmas lights, bake cookies and pluck a few tags from the “angel tree” at our local mall.

The gift requests on those tags were from needy children and their wants were simple enough: a couple of Barbies, some Hot Wheels cars, a baby doll or a soccer ball. It felt good to do good, and quieted whatever guilt I felt about going overboard for my own daughters.

But over time, our family’s fortunes changed. My children’s needs expanded; my budget shrank. I began shopping off-season sales for holiday gifts, delaying toy buying until Christmas Eve and ordering online when I found deals.

That spared me the silent admonishment of those mall angel trees, their paper ornaments fluttering with so much need.

As things got better, I approached each Christmas with the best of intentions. Thanksgiving, after all, is the perfect lead-in. What better way to show gratitude for your blessings than by sharing with someone else?

Every year I made the same speech to my now-grown children about selflessness and charity. But we would get so tangled up in the details of giving — how much, of what, to whom — that the holiday sometimes passed before our plans took root.

This year will be different. And I have Mirna Gonzalez to thank for that.

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I met Mirna last year, when she surprised staffers at the San Fernando Valley charity MEND with a home-cooked lunch to thank them for the gift box they gave her after a thief made off with the Christmas money she had been saving all year.

I wrote a column about her and dozens of readers responded, offering money, gift cards and toys for her children. Mirna was amazed by the generosity.

As the bounty flowed in, Mirna passed it along. She bought groceries for neighbors who had lost jobs, helped ailing friends pay medical bills and gave warm clothes to children waiting at cold bus stops.

She wrote thank-you notes to the people who had sent donations and kept a tally of the families she aided. By last spring, more than 300 people had benefitted from the diapers, dinners, blankets and jackets — things bought with money meant to ease Mirna’s problems.

Life hasn’t gotten easier for Mirna since then. She battled cancer this summer — and won, she believes. But she hasn’t been able to work for months; she relies on faith to pay her bills. “I feel so blessed,” she said when I visited her family this week.

Her teenage son is on the honor roll. Her two toddlers are happy and well-fed. Her apartment is warm, clean and safe. “So many people,” she said, “have so much less.” She looked heavenward when I asked whether she has enough for next month’s rent.

Then she led me into her tiny kitchen and pulled the foil back on her gift to me: A home-cooked Guatemalan feast she had prepared for my family’s Thanksgiving.

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Mirna asked me not to write about her again. I hope she will forgive me this breach. She is uncomfortable in the spotlight and unaccustomed to charity, but dutifully bound to gratitude.

Last year she became, for many, a holiday reminder “that Christmas is not about shopping, receiving and decorating,” as Glendale reader Kathi Wager said, “but about giving sacrificially from the heart...”

This year, for me at least, her story represents something more — a challenge to conventional boundaries that we sometimes let circumscribe goodwill.

I remember those e-mailed offers from readers; they wanted their money to go to Mirna because she was kind and grateful and hard-working, the conscientious mother of a considerate son.

We reward the deserving with our donations; we like to know where our goodwill is going.

That is why it took the “angel tree” to stoke my generosity. It seemed more virtuous to provide a teddy bear for “Emma, Age 3” than to drop my cash in the bell-ringer’s kettle for the Salvation Army’s faceless legions.

Mirna measured her own needs against what she knew of others’. Her vision made her charity’s conduit, rather than its object. And if that cost her? She doesn’t see the loss.

I still carry a list in my head of what she might have done with her windfall: Buy a car. Advance her rent. Fix her oven. Mirna might now be struggling less if she had held on to more of last year’s largesse.

Why, I asked her delicately, had she not thought to safeguard her future, or even live it up a little, rather than parcel out her gifts to others?

She looked at me, uncomprehending. I asked again, in simpler English. Then I realized that her silence reflected not our language barrier but our difference in perspective.

“My best friend, the one I can talk to about anything, she was in the hospital last December,” Mirna said. She was too weak to cook, too broke to buy presents for her children. She was due to come home on Christmas Eve.

“I got all the foods she liked and made everything for her Christmas dinner,” Mirna said. She also bought gifts: a Christmas tree, decorations for every room. It was a storybook Christmas tableau.

“When she came home from the hospital and walked in…she couldn’t believe it!” Mirna said. She clapped her hands in glee at the memory. But a moment later she was crying.

“She told me it was the best Christmas she ever had.” It was also her last. That best friend died of cancer two months later.

“For all those people who helped me — they helped so many other people,” Mirna said. “Not just with clothes and toys and food. They helped them to believe…that somebody cares about them.”

Mirna reminds me whenever we speak, “There are so many people suffering. God has blessed my family.”

Her spirit has recalibrated my own compass; equipped me for the coming journey. Toward Christmas. From Thanksgiving.

Read the original column about Mirna Gonzalez at latimes.com/mirnagonzalez.

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