The Heart Of A Child

The year is 1996, the month of December. My 6 year old son was on his holiday vacation from school and as every year preceding he always went with me to work.

I was an over the road truck driver and I always looked forward to him riding with me during his time away from school. We live in southeast North Carolina, so we dont see much snow or winter weather as far as that goes. This particular trip was the week of Christmas and I was delivering to New York City, a two dropper. The first drop was in the Bronks at the farmers market, the second in Lower Manhatten.

As we started the trip, my son was excited to be going to New York. The weather going up was great untill we got to the New Jersey Turnpike, where it began to snow.

The roads were in good shape so I still made good time, even the trip into the city was good, but my nerves began to get on edge, all I could think of was getting home for the holidays to spend time with family and friends. We made it to the farmers market and delivered the load in good time. Things looking up I began to feel more at ease. As we traveled to lower Manhatten we passed a park on our left and I noticed a large cardboard box and out of the box three young children exited, they looked sad and a little dirty and I only thought of them for a moment.

After our second drop we began to work our way back to the Turnpike. I noticed my son who had talked much of the trip had gotten quiet, so as I entered the turnpike I ask "are you alright"? He said yes but he wanted to know if the kids we had seen where homeless. I told him i didn't know but it looked as if they could have been. He then said something that brought tears to my eyes, "do you think when we get home we could bring my christmas back to them"? From the heart of a six year old was the compassion that we as adults should have.