TAMRA DAVISSON

Editor’s note: Christmas Bureau recipients come to the bureau for food vouchers, toys and candy. Every person has a story to tell. Reporter Rebecca Nappi is collecting some of those stories.

Age: 38.

Lives in: Nine Mile Falls.

My husband got laid off Monday. He’s a toolmaker, in manufacturing. People aren’t ordering medical equipment and they’re not ordering fitness equipment, and then the U.S. companies are getting underbid by foreign companies. We’re losing it overseas, mainly to China and Korea.

He was afraid to tell me, but I don’t see it as his fault. If he had been fired, that would have been a different scenario. I was already pretty aware of food resources in the community. This Christmas Bureau will help. It’s providing the Santa presents for our four kids. I’m willing to wait in this long line for my kids.

When I look around this line, I notice all the cultural diversity. It reminds me we are a melting pot. Where we live in Nine Mile Falls, it’s a typically white, middle-class suburb. We’re all about the same age, and we have the same-age kids. You come here and see a huge variety of people and you don’t know their stories. There are a lot of reasons they are here.

We’ve tried to figure out a way to spend more time with each other, because my husband worked all day long. It’s scary to change when you have a secure income, but now that we don’t we might as well go for something else. So I’m looking at the layoff as a possible positive change.

I’m grateful that all my children are healthy. My husband and I are healthy. We have a lifestyle that allows us to raise a lot of our own food. I’m grateful to live where we do. Our country is a great country when you look around the world. We are just going through an economic slump.

My friend and I wear hats all the time. I have a crazy Dr. Seussy one I just got at a barter fair. I wore a conservative hat today – a black beret – because I didn’t want to be too flashy.