{"id":2417,"date":"2011-01-22T02:39:01","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T02:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2011-01-22T02:41:03","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T02:41:03","slug":"a_two-hanky_rea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2417","title":{"rendered":"A Two-Hanky Read"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TG works with lawyers and judges and such, and with only one exception that I know of, the folks I&#8217;ve met through her are uniformly wonderful and delightful. (Note that this doesn&#8217;t change my view that we&#8217;re badly over-lawyering our society&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Then today, she shared something with me that just made me stop. And tear up like I was making onion casserole.<\/p>\n<p>Retired Marine Charles W. McCoy Jr. was the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Courts for the last two years (the Hon. Lee Edmon, who &#8230;possibly jokingly&#8230; threatened me if I ever hurt TG&#8217;s feelings and then stood with us and married us is his replacement) is the adoptive father to children he met and adopted through the foster care system.<\/p>\n<p>He <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2003\/dec\/20\/news\/vo-mccoy20\" target=\"browser\">wrote them a poem<\/a>, which TG just shared with me&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Gather round my children for a story that is true.<\/p>\n<p>A story about Santa Claus and the gift he gave to you.<\/p>\n<p>You said that last year Santa didn&#8217;t come your way,<\/p>\n<p>That there was nothing &#8216;neath the tree for you on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n<p>When last year Santa saw you in that foster home, he knew what you were feeling &#8212; so sad and all alone.<\/p>\n<p>You wrote down what you wanted, made your list of toys, and oh how Santa wished that he could give you back your joy.<\/p>\n<p>Santa&#8217;s toys are made with love, each a work of art.<\/p>\n<p>But Santa knows that none of them can mend a broken heart.<\/p>\n<p>So Santa doesn&#8217;t always bring just what you ask him to, he searches deep within your heart to find his gift for you.<\/p>\n<p>He watches when you&#8217;re dreaming, hears you when you pray.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s how Santa chooses what to bring on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n<p>Back and forth Santa paced, then sat down in his chair.<\/p>\n<p>Scratched his head, thought and thought and fiddled with his hair.<\/p>\n<p>Soon he closed his big blue eyes, his cheeks all flushed and red.<\/p>\n<p>In a flash, he fell asleep, as if he were in bed.<\/p>\n<p>And as he slept more deeply, he began to snore.<\/p>\n<p>Till the roaring of his snoring shook the workshop floor.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly he woke up with a twinkle in his eye.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll give those kids a present money cannot buy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He grabbed his coat, rushed outside and disappeared from view.<\/p>\n<p>All night long he searched and searched to find his gift for you.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;d watched you in your dreaming, heard you as you prayed, and that&#8217;s how he decided what to bring on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n<p>All at once he found it and stuffed it in his sack.<\/p>\n<p>It was a gift that you could hug, and it would hug you back.<\/p>\n<p>A present you could play with, and it would play with you.<\/p>\n<p>A gift that you could love and love, and it would love you too.<\/p>\n<p>A present you had asked for, but only in your dreams.<\/p>\n<p>Exactly what you wanted more than any thing.<\/p>\n<p>You thought that he forgot you, that Santa passed you by.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s because you didn&#8217;t see the twinkle in his eye.<\/p>\n<p>Santa gave you something that you had never had.<\/p>\n<p>He gave you what you wanted most.<\/p>\n<p>A loving Mom and Dad.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;d be remiss not to mention that Littlest Guy&#8217;s mom and stepdad have adopted two delightful (and energetic!) children through the foster system, and that my brother is hoping to do the same thing this year.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a special room somewhere for these people&#8230;<br \/>\n&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A judge writes to his adopted sons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}