LETTERS FROM HOME: EXCHANGING GIFTS AND LEFTOVERS FOR THE GOOD OF DOWNTOWN

Dec. 16, 1999

Dear Leslie,

Every Christmas, the Downtown Neighborhood Association holds a party at our city councilman's house. Munching crackers and crab dip with others who have defied their parents' and friends' real estate advice, we chat about the joys and trials and errors of living downtown. There are many of all the above.

We have parking problems, neighbors who shoot neighbors, neighbors whose parenting skills are less than zero, child-endangering speeders and drive-by stereos that rattle the living room windows.

DC and I think about moving elsewhere and sometimes even look wistfully at other houses. But there also is a multiplying critical mass of people who are transforming the downtown house by house, business by business, into a vibrant place to live. We'd like to help that happen.

DC and I love going to this party every year. The house is warmly decorated for the season, and we get to catch up on new neighbors, neighborhood news and lobby the councilman.

The highlight of the party is a cutthroat gift exchange in which numbers are drawn and each person in succession chooses either the unknown a wrapped present under the tree or the known, a gift someone else already has opened. If your gift is confiscated, you can take someone else's or choose again from beneath the tree.

Once the bottles of chardonnay and Bailey's Irish Creme have appeared, the tendency is to covet them rather than take a chance and get stuck with the drainage pipe-size stick of peppermint that has appeared at three straight Christmas parties. As in life, desperately we tried to hold onto the things we thought we wanted to avoid the booby prize.

The prized gift this year, the one that kept getting passed around with much more than a soupcon of innuendo, was a product called Honey Dust. The edible white powder comes with a feather brush applicator.

In this game, you can spot the negotiators. Like countries making self-defense pacts, they try to make bargains with others: I won't pillage your bottle of Kahlua if you leave my Honey Dust alone.

In the end, the gift exchange almost imploded. Nobody wanted to give up a good gift for the possibility that something exquisite might be waiting for them under the tree.

It's a choice all of us make every day, to do what we've already done, to keep what we have, or to do something entirely new, to let go.

Seated around the room were a lawyer, teachers, a musician, businesswomen and businessmen, an artist, a professor, students, people necessary for a healthy community. But there were ghosts of Christmas future at the party, people who must be included if the downtown is to become a true community. So far, the people of color who live downtown haven't been included in our dream of what it can become. We need to know their dreams, too. We need to teach each other.

Also missing was DC's pal, "Benjy like the dog," a guy from the neighborhood who often asks to borrow money, especially near the end of the month. Sometimes he rakes leaves for her or does some other odd job for money. Sometimes he asks for food, even leftovers.

She doesn't think his real name is Benjy. He has a limp, but I don't think his name is Tiny Tim. I could be wrong.

Awhile after we'd returned home from the Christmas party, a knock on the door set Hank and Lucy barking. Benjy didn't back away from the door.

He wanted to know if DC would wash his clothes.

He thinks I don't like him because I often tell him no: Not to come by so late at night, that we have no jobs at the moment, that DC doesn't take in laundry.

He does not seem discouraged. Bengy is teaching me humility.

Love, Sam