The Missing Holiday Spirit:

What the Holidays Mean to One Welfare Mother

Aired November 24, 1999

The holiday season is here, it's normally a time for family, friends, and celebration, but not everyone is in a position to be filled with the holiday spirit. 90.3's correspondent Harry Boomer talked with a welfare mother about what the holiday means to her.

Dion Linder–Mostly every holiday, my kids spend with their gradnparents on the other side of the family, and not Christmas.

Harry Boomer–Before Santa shows up with his sleigh loaded up with toys for good little boys and girls, Dion Linder and her three children, Demetrius, Demetria, and Kayla, have to get through Thanksgiving. Being grateful for what one has is a relative issue. Dion has her health, her kids, and her mother, with whom they will spend this Thanksgiving. It is truly no understatement to say they don't have much else. Old St. Nick visits their household sparingly.

DL–The last two Christmases, my kids haven't had a Christmas, not from me, from their grandparents, whoever else buys them a gift. That's what they've been haviong, because I've been trying to find me a plcae to stay.

HB–That has been a two-year search. One might even call it an ordeal. Dion and her children have spent nights huddled together in bus shelters. They've slept in a Greyhound bus station downtown. They have bounced from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. They've stayed with friends on and off. They've lived in an abandonded building with no heat and no hot water, but it had plenty of rats and roaches. Right now, they stay with her mother, when all else fails. After tomorrow, Thanksgiving will be a memory, another day they survived. Like any loving parent, Dion says she wants her kids to be happy, especially during the holidays.

DL–Christmas ain't the same for them. They want a Playstation so bad, and I've been trying to get him this Playstation since it came out. The only way he got one is through his school, they've got this work program where they get him CDs, you knowthere's the homeowkr and everything, he can borrow CDs from his friends so he can play the games he wants to play. It's a lot of stuff they want right now and they can't get. They want bikes, I can't get them no bikes. Usually I'm working, you know, I'm working and staying in my own place and paying my bills and taking care of my kids and myself. Right now, I don't see no Christmas window. The key is having no toys or nothing like that, here with my kids, but we'll be alright. I make it up to them, I make it up to them you know, like Easter when kmoids usually don't get toys or whatever, but I can't do no whole big Christmas, not right now.

HB–The last time they had a Christmas they wanted to remember was in 1997.

DL–I had gotten into an accident with an RTA bus, and then the day before Christmas I had gotten a check from them, so I did get to give them something, you know, not as much as I usually would, but I did get them little, like three or four toys a piece, so they had a Christmas then and we had a tree, so that was a blessing. You neve know what's going to happen where you're going to be blessed, so I won't know what Christmas this year is going to be like until Christmas gets here. You know, that hurt me because usually it can be something up under that tree.

HB–Dion lives for the day where she doesn't have to make idle promises to her children.

DL–And I keep telling them, "you all will have it, you all will get it, you all will get it, you know, we got to wiat." My son, he's 8 years old. He understands, he'd just be like, "dang." He'll just wait for his birthday, and no matter what happens, I'm going to get my kids something. I try to be like that for Christmas, but usually around December, I'll probably be bouncing from house to house, for the last two years I've been bouncing from house to house.

HB–Ebenezer Scrooge seems hard at work denying Dion and her children a merry Christmas. They, like other kids, have today's sugar plums dancing in their heads.

DL–They're always trying to get me to take them to McDonald's and stuff, and they're, "can we go to McDonald's, I want a Pokemon." I can't get them no Pokemon right now. they're into all the little cartoons on and all that, they're into it, they just don't have the toys, they don't have the t-shirts, they don't have stuff like that right now.

HB–Still, Dion dreams of a better day, a Christmas day filled with holiday cheer.

DL–I want to be in my own place, I want a tree, I want some toys for my kids, I want to cook for my kids, I want it to be warm, quiet, just me and my kids. We do Christmas with them, wake up at 12 o'clock, 12:01, get up like we used to do and go and open up our gifts and play until 10 o'clock in the morning and fall out from playing.

HB–Joy is where you find it. For Dion's children, it won't be under a Christmas tree. For INFOhio, I'm Harry Boomer in Cleveland.