Post Christmas Post - Christmas Parents

Anyone who knows me can surely say that I am stubborn, independent, and tenacious. This hasn't always bode well for my relationship with my mother, but I have to say, as I get older, I come to understand her better and I'm still trying to understand her more. Often these days, we are getting along quite well and enjoy each other's company. This has been quite a gift but also something we've both worked toward.

This past Christmas, my parents just plain amazed me. It wasn't through a grandiose way or anything like that, but through the smallest, most subtlest, most loving gesture I've seen in a long time. 

I was on the computer in my room at their house, reading through the news and dozens of posts and tweets when my mother called me to the kitchen with a bit of urgency in her voice. It alarmed me slightly so I sprang out of bed and went to see what was the matter. My children were fast asleep in their beds luckily. As I approached the kitchen, there I saw standing in his thin, burgundy, chenille robe from my childhood, was my step-father reading something over. I greeted him as he looked up at me with a serious look on his face. He then asked me, "Have you read her letter to Santa?" 

I sighed in relief and chuckled inside but didn't dare let it slip to the surface. I thought it was going to be something about my life, my children's lives, my recent split - you name it, I thought it, but it was about my daughter's letter to Santa.


"Yes," I said, "but what she's asking for is all news to me. He's already brought what she had asked for from before."

"Well we don't have any of these on hand, so what are we going to do?" he asked. 

Then he continued writing Santa's reply to her, concentrating and being very careful of what he was going to write. He would surface here and there and remark how clever she was to notate some things for Santa. "I was the little girl in the store that day at the photographer's," she wrote. My mother and father were both highly amused and I gainsay, proud, at her level of precociousness.  


The conclusion they came to was for Santa to apologize to her for running out of presents in this region. He had more of these presents when he was near her home but none now unfortunately. Instead, he would leave a little money and when she returned home, she could venture out to the store and buy her heart's desire in the toy section. Problem solved, crisis averted. Then they ate Santa's cookies & milk and went to bed.



So there you have it - my parents. Of all the important things they do each day in regards to their businesses, their properties, their animals' myriad of illnesses, their friends, and their friends' problems, nothing was more important at that moment than keeping the magic and Christmas spirit alive for that wide-eyed, little girl. 


There was no better gift this year, my dear friends. No better gift.





I hope you and yours had a bright, magical Christmas! Now onto New Year!