The Raffle

An Obsession with Star Wars

My six year old son Sebastian has developed an obsession with Star Wars toys. Many times while in a store he would go to the toy section and come find me with an arm load of them. We could have afforded to buy them but my intuition in these situations was telling me that this was not the right time for him to get these toys. So I would say to him that we were only at the store to buy what we need and together we would go through an exercise of sorting through the cart items, separating needs from wants and putting everything back that had slipped outside of that category. Since even Mom had to put some items back on the shelf, he would leave the store a little disappointed but with the sense that it was fair. I would end these trips with telling him that this is not his only chance…there will be another opportunity to acquire what he wants…all he need do is wait patiently and imagine how fun the toys are; as if he were already playing with them. Since we did not bring the toys home and sulking was not an option, he took to sitting for endless hours in front of Lego catalogs dreaming up adventures with the Lego sets and telling us excitedly about them.

An Unlikely Place

It was a busy Thursday the school selected to have their Celebration of Learning event where they open the school and classrooms for parents to tour what the kids have been working on, host the annual Spaghetti Feed, have the book fair open late and raffle off the gift baskets that each class was responsible for putting together. It was also the night of Sebastian’s song and dance performance class, so our schedule on the night of the Celebration of Learning was as follows:

5:00pm Arrive for Sunshine Generation Class
6:00pm Drive to Glacier Park Elementary
6:15pm Meet my husband and daughter at the school
6:45pm Go to the Book Fair
7:00pm Check out the raffle baskets, then go home and eat the chicken that was thrown in the oven before we left

A Funny Name

When we finally arrived at the school cafeteria it was late and we were all hungry. The smells of the spaghetti wafted on the air taunting our stomachs as we perused a long series of tables set up end to end, holding the marvelous array of gift baskets assembled by the different classes of the school. My husband Jason inquired about buying some tickets and we left it up to Sebastian to decide which baskets he’d like to try for. Sebastian looked carefully at each basket until he came to one that made his jaw drop…it was a Star Wars dream! Inside the basket were Star Wars Lego’s, movies, books, stickers, bubble bath, pencils, action figures and even a Lightsaber…it surely was enough to put a smile on any young padawan’s face and our little guy was no exception. Jason wrote our name and phone number on the back and handed him the tickets. One by one, he placed them all in the raffle box next to the basket, his eyes shining with delight.

We stood, watched and waited for each winner to be selected and announced while our stomachs growled in protest. Chloe wanted me to pick her up so I held her, rocking her gently from side to side while we waited. I leaned over and asked Jason what he had written on the back of the tickets. He said he had simply written ‘Kawal’ and our phone number. My husband (an enneagram type five) is a master of minimalization, a more typical format would have been something like Sebastian Kawal or Kawal Family and the oddness of his answer was just overwhelmingly funny to me, as an incredibly clear vision of the ladies picking up the box, a child drawing the ticket and a look of confusion coming over the announcer as she tried to decipher the name written on the back of ticket flooded my mind. I shared this vision with Jason…and we amused ourselves while we waited by taking turns reenacting the reaction the woman announcing the winner would have to what he had written.

A Sea of Children

As the raffle conductors made their way down the line toward the Star Wars basket, children materialized out of nowhere…there were so many kids waiting, we had to step back several times to make room for them. The announcers smiled good-naturedly at the excitement, picked up the box containing the tickets for the basket and gave it a shake. A child was selected to draw the ticket and just as we had been joking about…a puzzled look crossed the announcer’s face as she read the ticket several times to herself. When she finally spoke she said, “I know I’m going to butcher this last name…is it ‘Kawal’?”

Trusting it to Come

It took a few seconds for Sebastian to realize that, he had indeed, won the basket. Walking on air he went up to claim his prize. He absolutely beamed with joy. My heart sang for him in that moment as I recognized his wishes manifesting in a way that none of us would have imagined. I remembered him bringing to me some of the exact items that were in this basket on our store trips…and the intuition that told me to wait. Later we talked about it and I told him to always remember the joy he felt when they called his name…to know he can trust the universe to create his desires in ways he’d never expect. His mind has been opened to the fact that a myriad of paths exist for his desires to travel into the material world…he is starting to understand that abundance can strike unexpectedly, right out of nowhere…showering him in ways only limited by his imagination.