Winter's Worthy Child

One of my husband's most cherished memories of his mother centers on the time she decided, even in the midst of economic hardship, that her fourth child out of five needed a new winter coat.

As fourth in the lineup, my husband almost never had new clothes.  He inherited the hand-me-downs of his brother, who was six years older.

But, as a seven-year-old boy, he had begun to assist his brother on his paper route, a task which, in Buffalo, New York, meant pulling a sled stacked with newspapers across miles of snow-covered dark before the school day.

The winter weather was fierce and unforgiving, and some of the boys regularly suffered frostbite.  

So, she took him once every week to a downtown department store, where, holding his hand, she wended their way to coat section.  There, she paid five dollars cash to a clerk, who recorded the payment by hand in the "layaway" book.

At the last payment, with winter in full and harrowing force, the coat -- which was a down-filled miracle of warmth and protection -- was donned by this true-hearted seven-year-old boy and worn all the way home and for three winters following.

But this story isn't about the coat, really.

It's about the courage of a seven-year-old boy pulling a sled through the dark before school every day -- and it's about the mother who loved him.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- the financial hardship of the family, every single journey to the department store conveyed to my husband the following truth, necessary to every child:  you are worthy.

In my husband's adult life, he has communicated this message of respect and dignity to many others.

One of the many reasons I admire President Biden is the fact that he developed his character and integrity while growing up in a little while clapboard house -- not unlike the little white clapboard house my husband called home -- without economic privilege, without societal advantage, without the assurance of a college education or the job that might come afterwards.

Yet President Biden emerged from his beginnings knowing he was worthy.

Now, as President of the United States, he tells us, as members of the American public, that we are worthy, too.

We may not foresee all of the challenges our future will present, but we can be assured that our character will be equal to them.

I have faith that President Biden's integrity is greater than the weather, the frostbite, the broken sled, the adversity.

With a commitment to support one another, the storms are navigable, and we will travel through them with our bonds renewed.

Our democracy depends on the courage, the fortitude, and the generosity that forge those bonds.

President Biden possesses these gifts in abundance, and, as he chooses to remind us, so do we.

Lane MacWilliams