The sweetest thing in the world

I was finishing up the dinner shift at the Sean Humphrey House tonight when the doorbell rang and in walked a Girl Scout troop. They came to sing carols for the residents in the house (backstory: the Sean Humphrey House is a home for people living with AIDS who aren’t fully able to care for themselves. It houses six residents at a time. I’ve been cooking dinner there every Tuesday since October. It’s a nice gig, and getting to know the guys is really cool. And I’m learning to cook, which is a plus for me. Not all of them get visitors very often, so carolers were a real treat). So these adorable girls line up, pass out little Christmas-colored packets with the lyrics in them, and start singing. Then they gave each of the guys a bag of Christmas gifts. One of the moms explained that they worked as a troop all year to be able to afford the gifts (think cookie sales), which actually moved one of the guys to tears. They each got a hat, socks, coffee gift cards and music gift cards, and new razors, and then they must have had some information about each of them because there were much more personal. For example, the dude that plays guitar (very well, may I add) got tickets to a show, the one that loves Trolls and frogs (he had AIDS dementia and the mind of an eight-year-old boy) got a new Troll and a froggy picture frame (I confess, I teared up when he held up his new troll. His old one’s really old). It was absolutely the sweetest thing I’ve seen yet this Christmas season. Bless all the dear children, indeed (or so I thought during Away in a Manger, as I looked at the girls).