……Christmas is all about memories. The magical ones live forever in our hearts. Unfortunately, death, tragedy and sickness observe no holiday and those memories also take up space in our memory bank emerging at unexpected moments. But time often softens the edges of the memories that are too hard. It also dims the brilliance of the magical memories so we don’t compare them to todays’ memories in the making..
……..But, there is one memory that is as fresh in my mind today as if it was in 1975. When your child reaches the age when doubt about Santa creeps in, you become vigilant about preserving the magical man. I was determined to preserve Santa as long as I could when my kids were little. Doug was eight when he came to me a couple of months before Christmas to say that the little boy who lived behind us had told him there was no Santa. I handled it like the enlightened Mom I was,
……”You know MarkMott lies,” I said. I didn’t even bother to cross my fingers, “Just ask your Dad when he gets home.” The kids’ Dad, who worked for the telephone company confirmed that Mark Mott was lying to Doug. He then told a super-lie by claiming there was a direct telephone line to the North Pole to report such lies at the Central Office of C&P Telephone.
……We had no conscience when it came to proliferating Santa’s existence. I made two special cookies, one for8-year-old Doug and one for 5-year-old Shannon to leave for Santa on Christmas Eve. A glass of Green Valley Dairy milk was left cause we knew those cookies would make Santa thirsty. The cookies and milk would be placed in the kitchen on the kid’s small table. After they were sound asleep we would gobble up the cookies careful to leave crumbs and drink the milk.
……We thought we were home free for a few more years until it all came crashing down the Saturday before Christmas. Hometown folks are special because they work hard to hold events for the holidays. No event was more special then the Christmas parade because both of the kids got to march in it. Doug with his Little League team all in uniform. Shannon with her beloved Daisyettes, a baton group of little girls coached by the late Nona Katzenmeyer.
…….Saturday dawned dreary and rainy and I seriously tried to talk both kids into not marching, but they were dedicated to their groups and would not hear of it. They donned their outfits and begrudgingly put on their coats over the uniform. The lineup was at Marshall’s field and when the whistle blew signaling the beginning they threw off their coats and joined their friends. I walked alongside Shannon for I was sure she would ditch this nonsense and I could scoop her up and take her home.
…….The parade had no sooner turned the corner to the Ridge when the rain turned to sleet and about Field’s Funeral Home it turned to ice. The kids were having difficulty standing up as we neared Station Hill and I feared we would slide down the hill enmass only to be stopped by the sign at the bottle of the hill. The kids, however, were laughing. I, on the other hand, was crying.
……..When we got home, I knew my schedule had me baking pecan tassie cookies. I stripped the kids leaving their clothes to form puddles in the kitchen and got them into warmer clothes. I fed them tomato soup and grilled cheese, the old standby to warm up your tummy.
……..Shannon took her special blanket and thumb and went off to dream of sugarplums and fairies, the icy parade but a distant memory.
…….Had Doug been a dog, I would have said he had the ‘zoomies.” He was exhilarated by the excitement of the parade and was in search of something to match it. He spied me as I rolled dough balls for pecan tassies. That looked like fun. He perched on a stool and formed little spit balls from the dough which he flung at our paneled kitchen walls. It stuck (of course it did, it was paneled and our floor was fake brick on linoleum. The crowning glory was the brown and beige shag carpet in the living. Did I forget to tell you about the extra, extra long telephone cord we had courtesy of the telephone company. It was the seventies.)
…….I can only imagine why I said what I said next.”
…….”Doug can’t you find something to read?” Any other kid would have picked up a Hardy Boy’s mystery or at least a comic book. Not Doug. He was in the Red Birds’ reading group at school, but read far above that level. He spied a group of magazines and grabbed a Woman’s Day.
…….I was gleefully putting pecans in cups, congratulating myself for solving the problem when from his bedroom I heard a mournful ‘Mooo -ooom.”
……When you kid separates your name into two syllables, you know it’s bad. In an instant I knew that Doug had read a story in the magazine about a little boy who finds out there is no Santa.. Tears were already forming in my eyes as I rushed to his bedroom to explain that all the people that loved him brought those presents and that Santa existed in each one of us. He shook his head. He either understood or was waiting for me to turn my back so he could wake his sister up and tell her the truth.
……And just like magic, we looked out the window and the ice had turned to big fuffy snow flakes.
……And I learned two hard lessons that day: Christmas comes without cookies and that “Yes, Tamara there is a Santa. He lives in the hearts and hopes of our children.”
