Making sprits bright

Three steps from the car, the bag split open. It was a makeshift package for Christmas toys anyway -- a plastic trash bag tied to two others -- and within seconds after the man of the house lifted it from Sally Kanarek’s car, the packages spilled out on the sidewalk. As five women gathered around to fix the bag, the man noticed his son approaching and shooed him off.

“Adam, go back inside,” he said sternly, balancing the bag on one knee as the women stuffed the items back in.

It was delivery day for Parent Help USA, a Costa Mesa nonprofit group that holds a Toys for Tots drive every December, and the founder had laid out a specific rule. When arriving at families’ homes to give out holiday supplies, volunteers would not let the children see the toys. The reason was practical: Having toys around the house would simply prove distracting while the family stocked the refrigerator and hung the lights.

As one of Kanarek’s assistants guided the boy inside, the father got a firm grip on the bags and trudged to the front door. At the threshold, he called the names of his children one by one and asked them to move to the backyard, until finally he turned to the volunteers and muttered, “Clear.”

A moment later, his wife let the children back inside, where bags of food lay on the table and two women knelt on the carpet assembling the tree. The father called his family and the volunteers into a circle and asked them to pray together, holding hands.

“Give them some love, OK?” he told the children after they had finished. Each of the children found a volunteer to hug.

In the car afterward, driving out of a poor Buena Park neighborhood, Kanarek sat watching the Christmas lights outside her window. An hour earlier, she had looked apprehensively at a group of boys on the corner, telling the driver that she usually tried to avoid these areas after dark. Now, with most of the evening done, she ignored the chipped sidewalks and gazed at the spectacle passing by.

“I’m so glad we did it at night,” she murmured. “The lights are so pretty.”

It was Monday, Dec. 19, six days before Christmas and the third day of deliveries. Kanarek, who founded Parent Help 20 years ago, met with four volunteers in a donated Costa Mesa office filled with toys. Parent Help had almost called off its annual drive this year due to lack of space, until the Youth Employment Service and two other locations intervened.

The goods that filled the office weren’t as many as Kanarek had expected; Hurricane Katrina, she said, had stretched the Marines’ donations thin. Still, she intended to keep delivering until supplies petered out, and so Monday found her team once again following Mapquest directions around the dim pockets of Orange County.

“Please, let’s be safe,” she told the other women before they started out, holding a prayer circle of her own. “No rushing. Nothing is worth rushing. This should all be joy.”

Monday’s route started in Costa Mesa and wound its way around Buena Park before returning. Kanarek and some of her colleagues knew the families, had mentored them for years and had watched their children grow. Riding with Kathy Shaw of Newport Beach, Kanarek spoke about her clients with the ease of a woman who had known chaotic homes for years and who had little capacity for shock.

There were four stops on the night’s itinerary, and each had a long story behind it: the elementary school sweethearts who had their first child at 15 and had gone on to have 10 more; the mother who was so unstable as a teenager that her father chained her to her bed; the son who joined a skinhead gang and had been through a dozen foster homes.

“You’ll go home, Kathy, and you’ll kiss the floor when you walk in,” Kanarek told Shaw at one point as they neared a troubled household.

Shaw, who had never joined a Parent Help drive before, drove silently and listened for most of the way. The other three women followed behind in two other cars. Each carried a small ribbon of sleigh bells, provided by Kanarek, which jangled quietly as they walked.

The first stop on the schedule was a small residence on the Westside, headed by a mother who had recently regained her children from Social Services. As she walked out and embraced Kanarek, the other volunteers deposited food and clothes inside and slipped the toys out of the children’s view. Out front, the mother touched a hand to her smallest son’s forehead and complained that he had a fever.

The route next led to a cramped apartment complex in Buena Park, located at the back of a decrepit alley. A boy in a black shirt, alone and almost spectral in the headlights’ glow, stood by the curb staring at the approaching car. Kanarek recognized him as one of the family’s sons. As the car crept down the alley, he ran behind it.

His mother appeared outside the door.

“Albert’s sick,” she announced bluntly, referring to her eldest son. “Really sick.”

“Are you afraid we’ll get it?” Kanarek asked.

“He’s got it real bad,” the mother answered. “He’s in the bathtub.”

As the other two volunteer cars pulled up, the mother motioned them away from the open front door. Across the dark courtyard, three men in hooded sweatshirts stood together, laughing and sharing a beer.

In the dim porch light, the woman told the other volunteers about her neighbors. Criminals lived in her apartment complex, people with available records, and she checked the computer every time a new tenant moved in. One apartment, they knew, housed a child molester. He kept his curtains shut most of the time.

The next two destinations were in Buena Park, just blocks from each other. First was the family of seven, with the bag of toys that split apart; the father, a mustachioed man in a construction worker’s shirt, proudly told the volunteers how his neighborhood was less “rocky” than the ones alongside it.

The family had hit on tough times over the last year, with the father awaiting a new job, but the house was kept immaculately. The small bookcase inside included Mark Twain’s short stories and a novel by Tom Wolfe.

The final stop was also the cheeriest: The two childhood friends, both Catholic, who are in their late 30s and have one short of a dozen children together. Kanarek had counseled the mother in the past and helped her find alternatives to spanking; now the house was vibrant, with stockings hung on the wall and children passing in and out to meet the visitors. The dining room table, made to hold more than a dozen eaters, was a picnic table with a cloth over it.

“Nice family,” Shaw said as she drove away, set to call it a night. “The best.”

“Can you believe the mother of 11 children doesn’t hit her children?” Kanarek replied. “She doesn’t spank. She prays. She should teach our parenting classes.”

The Youth Employment Service office, back in Costa Mesa, was still brightly lighted behind its locked doors. The floor and tables were covered with toys, but the most plentiful items were the family applications that filled a basket by the front desk. Parents had come by the office over the last week to write down their families’ needs, and Kanarek didn’t believe the current supplies, barring more donations, would meet demands.

For Monday, though, the schedule was done, and there was enough for another shift the following night -- and the nights after that, continuing possibly to New Year’s and beyond. As Shaw cruised down the end of the 55 Freeway, the lights of Newport Boulevard coloring her windshield, another volunteer asked what she had thought of the night’s work.

“I’m thinking there’s just a lot of nice families,” she said after a moment, resting her head on the window, “and a lot of hurt and pain.”20051225is0xxyncPHOTOS BY DON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)After delivering food and clothing, members of Parent Help including Kathy Shaw, far left, Sally Kanarek, second from right, and Carrie Blue, right, say a prayer with a recipient.20051225is0w0jnc(LA)Parent Help volunteers Kathy Shaw, Carrie Blue and Sara Cox deliver clothing, decorations and kitchen items to a home in Costa Mesa’s Westside.