The task, as Nikki Maucere tells it, felt daunting.
Her husband had died in a car crash only months earlier and she was facing her first Christmas as a single parent. She had joined several social media groups to find support, and on them, widows were offering a piece of advice she wasn’t sure she could take.
“Make sure and get some gifts and wrap them for yourself,” she recalls them saying. “Otherwise, your kids might have a meltdown when they see you have nothing to open.”
Until that moment, Maucere hadn’t considered the reminder her empty hands might bring her 3-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter on Christmas morning. She hadn’t thought about how single parents, whether made that way through death, divorce or other circumstances, had to feign surprise when they opened gifts they had bought and wrapped.
“I thought the task sounded really sad, and I didn’t want to do it,” Maucere recalls. “I thought, ‘No one should have to do this.’ ”
While considering her options, she saw a post on a Facebook page from a woman with an organization that aimed to help single parents during the holidays. Maucere decided to take a pride-swallowing chance. She reached out with a request: If she provided the money, would someone with the organization be willing to pick out and wrap a gift for her?
But she was told the organization wanted to provide presents for children, not adults.
“I thought of it as more of a gift for my children,” Maucere explains, as if she has to, as if it’s not obvious that asking a stranger for a wrapped candle or a pair of slippers is less about her wants than her children’s needs. “To see me open gifts lets them have the emotional security to know I’m still loved, I’m still taken care of, even though Daddy is gone.”
