Kids These Days:

The 5-year-old walked home a few blocks in the snow of a Chicago winter. Home was a cramped apartment where he lived with his parents and three brothers. When he got to the door, he saw on it a sheet of paper affixed with a thumbtack. Although he was a good reader, he had never seen the word “notice,” but he did recognize the number “three” and the word “day” that appeared just before the mystery word.

The boy’s clothes were hand-me-downs from his two oldest brothers. He did not mind because, like a lot of his friends, he thought that wearing his big brother’s clothes was cool. Dinner that night was fried baloney and mashed potatoes, not because that was what everyone was asking for, but because it was all his mother could afford.

His mother did what she could given the limited income she had. She tried to work as little as possible so that she could spend time with her children, but, more and more, she was finding herself having to fill in the gap between her husband’s paycheck and their expenses. So, she worked weekends, when her husband could watch the kids. That schedule, however, meant less time as a complete family when it would have mattered most.

The parents missed their three-day deadline and had to move quickly. The next stop was down to a two-room apartment overlooking a gas station. The four boys slept in one small room. Rent was paid by the week. The holidays came and went as just another year that the family did as much as they could with their meager resources

The boy’s mother thought many times about leaving — about taking the kids, or perhaps a couple of them, and trying to start over somewhere else. But in 1960, the options for someone in her situation were limited. Besides, it was not in her to quit, even though common sense told her it was time.

Today, there are many options for families on the brink and families that are broken. Today, abused women and children do not have to take it anymore.

One of the best options anywhere is right here in Newport-Mesa at the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa. Yes, there is shelter, but there is much more, including job training, financial planning and instructions on how to run a home.

To you and me, it may seem absurd to have to teach someone how to shop for food or budget or do any of the things we sleepwalk through each day, but these broken families did not have the same training or examples you did. On occasion, there is someone threatening to do them harm.

In the many years I have been writing about the priceless effort by the staff at the shelter, this is perhaps the most important.

As with many other charitable organizations, donations have suffered. And when that happens at the shelter, we all suffer, for we create what could be another family not only taking resources from the government, but a family that is losing the one thing it needs most: hope.

This year, I am asking you to skip one dinner out or a movie, and donate even that small sum to the shelter to help the families in need; families who do not want to be dependent but are looking for a way to achieve the life like the one you have.

Or, go to that dinner and make a donation anyway. As an adult, those tough times made the little boy in Chicago realize that the best moments in our lives have no connection at all with money or a bank account. A baby’s smile, a compliment, a hug — all things we love and yet a couple of those we are too stingy to give in abundance even though they cost us nothing.

But no one should have to find that out the hard way.

To make a donation, visit www.ocinterfaithshelter.org or call (949) 631-7213.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com .