by Holly Rayner
“You’re making fun of me,” he said. “But that kid was tough. I’m thinking of offering him a job. He would make a great HR supervisor.”
I laughed, “I’m not making fun of you. I think it’s adorable.” I held out my hand to take the Santa and he pulled it back. With a pout I said, “I thought you were winning it for me.”
“I was, but I believe that you owe me something first,” he said.
“What?”
“An explanation about the Santa fetish?”
Giggling, I said, “It’s definitely not a fetish. That makes it sound so sordid.”
“Okay, it’s not an obsession or a fetish, but if you want this big guy, you’re going to have to give me a story.” I laughed again, this time because he was calling the tiny little thing in his hand a “big guy.” What was it with men and size?
“Okay, here’s the story,” I said, as we resumed walking through the market. “When I was eight years old, some kids at school told me that there was no such thing as Santa Claus. I was devastated. I cried all the way home. When I got home, I told my mother what they’d said. I asked her point-blank if she and my daddy had lied to me. I wanted to know once and for all if he existed.”
“So what did she say?” he asked.
“She didn’t really say anything. When I think back on it now, I’m sure that she didn’t know what to say. When you first tell your kids about Santa, it’s a fun fantasy. But when they confront you about his existence later on in life, I’m sure it feels like a lie. My mother never lied to me. She suggested that we bake cookies and talk about it when my father got home from work. I also know now that she knew he would know just how to handle it. So we baked chocolate chip cookies; my mother’s were the best… warm and gooey.”
“Santa Claus?” he said, trying to re-direct me back to the subject at hand. I did have a tendency to get off track, especially with so much stimulus going on around me.
“I’m getting there,” I told him. “Be patient.” We were passing the booth to buy tickets for the carriage rides and I stopped and said, “Ooh! Let’s go for a carriage ride.”
“What about the story?” he said. I could tell right then that patience wasn’t one of his virtues. I guess when you’re Aaron Winters; you rarely had to wait for what you wanted.
“I’ll finish the story in the carriage. Come on, it doesn’t feel like Christmas without at least one carriage ride through the park.” Aaron was eyeing the horse and the cart suspiciously. He seemed to be checking the wheels on the cart to make sure they looked like they’d hold up. “It’s safe, I promise. Have you never been for a carriage ride?”
“I’ve never seen the point,” he said. “I have several cars and…”
I laughed, “There is no point. It’s just fun. Don’t you ever do anything spontaneously just for fun?”
He looked like he was thinking about that and then he said, “Rarely.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
~
ROBYN
I was having a hard time imagining what a sheltered life Aaron must have led. I wondered if he had been one of those children who grew up in private school and with a nanny. I pictured him in a mansion in upstate somewhere with two driven, focused parents that rarely had time for him. My heart ached for the lonely little boy who grew up not learning to have any fun. I’m sure that was where he learned how to be so serious, he watched his parents work hard and succeed, not having time for much else… even Christmas for their child maybe. I didn’t know any of that for sure. It was all just a theory. But, there had to be a reason that as an adult, everything Aaron did seemed to be carefully thought out and planned in advance. There was never spontaneity involved. That may be good for business, but it was not conducive at all to living life. I realized that my imagination was getting away with me, but where Aaron was concerned it was really all I had. He didn’t seem to be opening up much about his life other than how much he disliked Christmas. I wished that he would, I’d really love to know him. I hoped if I kept plugging away, he would crack and it would all spill out. My motto was always that I only got one chance at this thing called life. I was going to do it right.
“You really need to work on trying to be more impulsive,” I told him. “Life’s so much more fun if it’s not all planned out. Plans are necessary sometimes, but other times they actually get in the way of trying new things. Come on, let’s get a hot chocolate and go for a ride.”
“And you’ll finish the story?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll finish the story.”
Once we bought our hot chocolate and were snuggled under a red blanket in the white carriage, he said again, “So, are you ready to finish the story?”
I laughed and said, “Yes, I’m ready. I have to say though that for a guy who hates Christmas, you sure are interested in hearing a Christmas story.”
“I don’t “hate” Christmas,” he said. “I just don’t care for it… and I don’t like the cold weather. Anyways, I’m not interested in the Christmas part of the story. I’m only interested in finding out about your Santa Claus obsession.”
“I’m not “obsessed” with Santa Claus,” I told him with a grin.
“Whatever you would like to call it,” he said, smiling in return.
I resumed my story.
“So, my mom and I baked the best cookies in the world while we waited for my dad to get home. I think I ate like ten of them. I loved to eat back then, anything sweet especially. I was a pudgy little thing…”
“You’re getting off track again,” he said. I think he was actually getting frustrated with me.
“That’s another thing,” I told him. “Sometimes it’s more fun and more interesting to go off track. Life doesn’t have a script you know. Some of the greatest places on earth have been discovered because someone went off track.”
He shook his head at me, but he was still smiling. “Okay, I have to say that you “pudgy” is a hard picture for me to draw in my head, but if you say so, I’ll believe you. Did your father arrive eventually?”
“Hard picture or not, it’s true. I dieted the whole summer before high school to lose twenty pounds, it was excruciating.”
He laughed and said, “Good for you. Now, did your father arrive home?”
I sighed at him; he was as relentless as I was sometimes. “Yes, he did. He looked so tired too. The poor man worked sixteen hours a day sometimes back then. He built cabinets and he was really good at it. I think maybe they over used him a little bit at the plant where he worked. I feel bad now when I think about it. He was doing it all for us and I never realized…” Aaron was giving me that “off track” look again. I rolled my eyes, took a sip of my chocolate and went on, “But anyways, while he had some of my mother’s cookies with a glass of milk, she told him about the kids at school telling me there was no Santa Claus.”
“She wants to know the truth, she says,” my mother told him. “I didn’t see her wink, but when I think about it now, I’m sure that she probably did.”
My daddy stopped chewing mid-cookie. It had to be important to get my daddy to stop eating a cookie. He liked sweets as much as I did. He took a drink of his milk and stood up. “Get your coat,” he told me.
“Where are we going?” I asked him.
“You want to know the truth about Santa Claus, right?” he said.
“Yes, the absolute truth,” I told him. I didn’t want them to think I was too young to hear it, so that’s what the big word was about.
“Then get your coat and stop asking so many questions,” he told me.
“I was also a bit inquisitive…”
“Shocking!” Aaron said with a grin. I narrowed my eyes at his sarcasm and went on.
“I did as he asked and put on my coat and hat and boots. It was a really cold winter that year, the coldest that I ever remembered. It snowed every day for weeks… but I digress again,” I said with a grin. He grinned back, “Daddy and Mom had that look when I came back into the kitchen; I knew they’d
been talking about me. Mama kissed us both and said that supper would be ready when we got back. Daddy and I got into the car and drove into town. We went to a little five and dime store… I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania; we didn’t have malls or department stores. Anyways, he took me into this store where they sold everything from clothes to groceries and handed me twenty dollars.”
“What is this for?” I asked him. We weren’t poor, but at eight years old I already knew that we didn’t have twenty dollars to throw around right before Christmas. My parents taught me how to be responsible with money from a young age. Daddy knelt down so we were eye to eye and he said,
“I want you to think really hard, Robyn. I want you to think about everyone you know, or who you just might see every now and then. It’s up to you to decide who you know that might need something very dearly, something that they are unable to buy for themselves. Then, I want you to take the money I gave you and buy it for them. Have the store wrap it up too, okay?”
“Okay…but Daddy…”
“Go on,” he told me, “The store will be closing soon.”
Aaron was listening to the story intently and as the carriage carried us across the park. Suddenly it began to snow. It was just light flakes, not a storm and to me it added to the romanticism of it all.
“Oh my goodness! It’s snowing! The first snow if the year. It’s magical, you know. You have to open your mouth and catch it on your tongue and make a wish…” I told him. He shook his head again, but he still had a grin on his face.
“One story at a time,” he said. “You can tell me about Christmas snow later. Right now, you’re telling me about Santa Claus. Are you going to finish?”
“Okay.” He was right; when it came to Christmas I had so many stories. It was hard to stay on track. I went on, “So, I took my twenty dollars and while Daddy had a cup of coffee and a piece of pie at the counter, I thought and thought about who I knew that as Daddy said, “Needed something dearly.” I thought about my mom saying she needed a new vacuum, but I was old enough to know that twenty dollars wouldn’t buy that. I figured my daddy would buy her one soon enough anyways. I remembered that my granny said she needed a new sewing machine, but the store we were in didn’t carry any of those and twenty dollars probably wouldn’t cover it. Then I thought about this girl in my class. Her name was Lisbeth and she was always wearing old clothes that never looked like they fit very well. I always wondered why her mother didn’t just buy her new ones. I didn’t understand money at all back then. Anyways, it was really cold that winter, colder than I ever remembered it being and Lisbeth used to come to school every day in the same pair of canvas sneakers that she’d been wearing since first grade. I had no idea how her feet still fit in them. I had gone through three sizes by then. I also didn’t know how her feet didn’t freeze. It snowed every day and Lisbeth walked to school. Her shoes were always wet and she always had a runny nose. I remember one of our teachers had given her a coat that had been left in the lost and found the year before, it was pink and puffy and Lisbeth didn’t care that it was second hand, she loved it. Some of the other kids used to make fun of her, but I never did. I did my best to try and be her friend. She didn’t talk about her home life, so I didn’t know why she needed hand me downs, but I didn’t care. She was a nice girl and the other kids were so mean sometimes. I took my twenty dollars and I went to the shoe department. I found a pair of pink galoshes. They were the same color pink as her coat.”
“You bought them for her?” Aaron asked. He looked like he was really into the story. I was glad.
“I did. I asked the lady for a pair of them in a box and she asked me what size. I had no idea. She asked me if they were going to be a gift and I told her they were and that they were for a girl in my class at school. She asked if the girl was about my height and weight and I said yes, so she gave them to me in my size and said that should work. I asked the lady to wrap them up really pretty and she did. She put a big, pink bow on top and a little card that we could write on. When I went to find my daddy he asked me what I’d bought. I remember not understanding why then, but he got tears in his eyes when I told him.
Daddy drove us to Lisbeth’s house and we ducked behind the car in their driveway. Daddy stayed there while I went and rang the bell. I dropped the package on the doorstep and ran back to where Daddy was. We waited and then I saw Lisbeth open the door and look around. She bent down and picked up the package and took it inside. Daddy had written on the tag. It said, “To Lisbeth, From Santa Claus.”
I was excited, but I was also eight. I still didn’t really understand what it all meant, what the significance was of what we had done. She smiled really big and ran back inside. It made my heart feel good to see her so happy, but I wanted to know why we’d done all of this.
When Daddy and I got back in the car I asked him what that had to do with Santa Claus. He told me first that he knew Lisbeth’s daddy. He asked me if Lisbeth ever talked about him. I told him “No,” and that some of the kids made fun of her because she wore old clothes and hand-me-downs that teacher gave her. I wondered why her mother didn’t take better care of her. Daddy looked sad and said her father was sick and in a wheelchair. He said that he’d gotten sick right after Lisbeth was born and he wasn’t able to work. Her mother worked at the diner in our town. When I got older, I found out that he had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Lisbeth finally told me and she told me that she knew since she was little that he was going to die. We were in eighth grade when he died. It was so sad… I’m sorry,” I said, knowing I was getting off track again.
“Back to the story: Daddy told me that night that they had three other kids older than Lisbeth and money was probably very tight for them, especially around Christmas time. He said that he thought Lisbeth’s mother probably took the best care of her that she should and that I shouldn’t ever judge people by what they wore or how much money they did or didn’t have. People were people. He told me then that Santa was not so much a person as he was a feeling. He lived in our hearts and minds but not in the flesh. He wasn’t the man in the red suit. That man was a symbol of good will and generosity. He said that every time that one person did something nice or helpful for another person it was because we held the magic of Santa Claus in our hearts. He said it was proof that he existed and the kids at school were wrong.” I had tears in my own eyes when I finished the story. That had been my very favorite Christmas. Daddy and I had left several more things for Lisbeth and her family that year. We made a tradition of picking out a family in need every year after that until I graduated from high school. I looked forward to it more than my own presents.”
“Your father sounds like an amazing man,” Aaron said. He looked like he meant it.
I wiped the tears that had spilled over onto my cheeks and said, “Yeah. Definitely an amazing man.”
“But what about Lisbeth? Did you ever tell her that it was you? Did she wear the boots?”
“She did wear the boots, every day for the rest of that winter she wore them to school. She told me and all of the other kids that Santa Claus had brought them to her. I never told her or anyone that we left gifts for. It would have taken away from what we were trying to do. I didn’t want any credit for it. I just wanted to see the smiles it gave them.”
Aaron was smiling when I finished my story. The rest of the day while we played games and rode rides and even sang along with carolers at one point, the smile stayed on his face. It snowed lightly off and on and just about the time it was getting dark, I dropped down into the snow on the grass and started making a snow angel.
“What are you doing now?” he said. I think he may have thought I was a little bit crazy.
“Making a snow angel,” I told him. “Please don’t tell me you’ve never made one. You’ll break my heart.”
“Well, as much as I hate to break your heart,” he started. I grabbed his arm and pulled him down next to me before he could finish. “What are you doing?” he asked, now covered with snow.
“Lie down and make an angel with me,” I told him.
“This jacket is a little expensive to be lying around in the snow,” he told me.