When I was a small child, I found out there was no Santa Claus.
I found this out right about the same time I found out I was adopted. It was a crushing blow to my small heart.
I remember laying up under the Christmas tree and wanting to just disappear. I even wrote a letter to an address I found on an old envelope asking my biological father what I had done to deserve being abandoned at birth. Tough things to undertake at such a young age.
When I see parents waiting in line with tender faces, I see so much hope stored up in that one memory. I think the nostalgia we feel puts a heavy burden on the next generation and there is so much stress from the past, we fail to enjoy the present.
As I walked around the gardens with my grand daughter, the one thing that made me smile was hearing her react to the lights and seeing her laugh at other children. She laughs at so much. It is almost like a private joke going on in her little 14 month old head. She finds things amusing that most adults do and she is shrewd. I hope she never loses that edge. It will get her far in life.
I had to administer a dose of tough love to one of my "adopted" kids this week. I got a frantic call from him Saturday morning telling me his mother had tried to kill herself. He was raised by his grandparents and now his mother was living with said grandparents.
After the hospital involuntarily committed his mother, I had to tell him to just walk away. He should call and check on her but to not go see her. He tried to see her shortly after she was taken to the hospital by ambulance for an overdose of pills and she proceeded to blame him for every short coming she has ever had. She killed his spirit and stomped on his love.
This was nothing new and completely within her selfish character.
He is a great kid and he has a new family. He does not need her tainting his new family or his new life. Giving someone permission to do what they know is logical is really simple when you have nothing personal invested in it. This child became my family the minute he sat at my table night after night and ate dinner with us. He became family the minute he told us he felt safe in our house. He is the reason my children all attended the college they did and I made good on my promise to dance at his wedding.
Sometimes people just need pure love. I think that all my "adopted" kids know that they are endearing to me as if they were my very own. It is just my nature. Having a house full of chatter and chaos is a great sound.
I wish his mother appreciated him the way he deserves.
I ended up decorating my own Christmas tree primarily by myself. Usually this makes me sad. I see all the ornaments from the past and I start to miss my kids. I see things on the tree that make me miss loved ones that have passed. I attach a memory to each one. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to go check the mail.
Inside the mailbox was a Christmas card from an old friend who had been suffering after a divorce. We met for coffee a few months back. He had been struggling through one relationship after another trying to get a foothold into what he once had. I could tell he was looking to fill the void. Both of his children were away at college. He was forced to sell his nice house on the lake and downsize. The divorce was orchestrated by his ex wife who had just remarried. At this particular coffee date, I felt the need to tell him something that everyone else was afraid to tell him. I told him that he did not have the perfect marriage when he had been married. If it was perfect, he would not have been over-drinking or working himself to death traveling 24/7. I told him what he was mourning for had been a figment of his imagination and he needed to find what ever it was now that was HIS heart's desire. I told him to stop looking to reinvent his heart and to let it lead him forward instead of looking to the past.
He has a new girlfriend now and the minute I met her, I knew she was going to be good for him. His smile has not stopped since they have been together. His card said that he valued my friendship and that at the time he thought I was crazy with the words I told him but in actuality I had been very wise. I had to laugh at the thought of me being wise about anything.
In going back to work on decorating my tree alone, I realized how much love and care I have been given over the years. Each ornament is an heirloom of heartstrings.
Suddenly I don't feel so alone. I feel very blessed and content.
And isn't that what makes life beautiful?
I discovered around age 7 that Santa was really real, kind of a "yes, Virginia" moment. Two things happened on Christmas Eve, first I heard a thu,p and slide on the roof. It startled me, it was as close to a "oh shit" moment that a child can have. I had begun to suspect that Santa wasn't real, when I heard Santa on the roof. In reality it was likely a clump of snow falling from a tree to the roof, then sliding off the roof, but as a child, I knew it was Santa. Next I heard a car door slam. It was very late, all of us kids had been in bed for hours. I snuck to a window in my older sisters' room. I saw Mrs. Welch (the school nurse) getting out of a station wagon. She went around to the back of the car and pulled out huge armloads of gifts and brought them to our front door where my mom took them from her. I later learned she volunteered for the Salvation Army and that dozens of volunteers spent months collecting money and toys, some fixed or cleaned the toys, other volunteers spent evenings wrapping and labeling them. I discovered that Santa was real and lived in the hearts of all these people who worked secretly behind the scenes so poor children like myself and my six siblings could have a Christmas.
ReplyDeleteDecades later, Mindy came to me around the same age and asked me if Santa was real, and she told me she wanted the truth because some kids at school said he wasn't real and she didn't want to look stupid if he wasn't. So I told her, Santa was a real man, he really did live a long, long time ago. His name was Nicklaus. He loved children and he would make gifts for them. When those kids grew up, he was still making toys and now he made gifts for the children of those first kids he made toys for, eventually he made toys for their grandchildren. All the people of the village loved Nicklaus and they loved the memories they had of discovering the toys he had made for them. They all wanted their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren to grow up with those same memories of Nicklaus making toys for them. Eventually, Nicklaus became very old and died. The village was very sad that he was gone, and sad that no more children would ever have those wonderful memories of childhood of receiving toys from Nicklaus. So they decided to make toys in Nicklaus' memory and give them to children in the village. When they did that, it made it hurt less to have Nicklaus gone. They decided to continue Nicklaus' tradition of making toys for children and that tradition spread to other villages as those children grew up and moved to other villages. Now today, we all give gifts to each other to remember what a good and loving person Nicklaus was. He was such a wonderful man and brought such love to so many people's lives that the Catholic Church named him a saint, St. Nicklaus. That's why Sant Claus is often referred to as Jolly St. Nick. So even though the Santa you see in malls and on t.v. isn't the real Nicklaus from so long ago, people dress like him and give gifts like him so his memory will never be forgotten, and so we can each try to be nicer, more giving people.
I still believe. I have to.
ReplyDeleteI never stopped believing....
ReplyDeleteIt keeps us young.
;)
you just made my Christmas :)
ReplyDeleteAwwww, thank you!
ReplyDeleteHey, Tiger….miss you.
ReplyDelete