I let the idea float around in my mind for a moment before replying, “I kinda got the feeling from her that she wouldn’t accept a handout. She seems very proud. And to be honest, we really don’t have a lot of money to be giving away at the moment either.”
“How about we just buy them a Christmas tree, then?” Linda suggested. And in that instant, a wonderful plan started coming together, almost fully formed from the moment it entered my mind.
We needed to find a Christmas tree merchant close to where Donna lived. As it happened, there was one nearly around the corner from Donna’s apartment. Fortunately, even though it had gotten pretty late, we saw the vendor still open when we drove up, probably for last-minute Christmas shoppers like us.
I told the man there that I would be buying the tree that night, but I wouldn’t pick it up until mid-morning the next day. And when Linda explained to him that we were giving the tree as a surprise to a family that couldn’t afford to have Christmas, the man threw in a wreath along with the tree and said both would be ready for pickup the next day.
Once we got back home, I made a very important call to the taxi company dispatcher. “Hi, Ron, it’s Sal Lizard,” I said. “I need to ask you for a big favor. I’m going to start my shift early at 6:00 A.M. tomorrow, but don’t send me on any calls before 6:30 because I want to pick up that woman and her daughter who we pick up and drop off every day.”
“Why?” Ron sounded quite suspicious. Requests like this were frowned upon. Calls got assigned randomly or based on a taxi’s location at any specific time. If drivers were allowed to request specific fares, they would likely try to get the good tippers or the easy runs. Asking to be sent to pick up a regular customer, as I was now doing, would raise a major red flag.
“Well, Ron,” I explained. “The woman told me earlier today that she didn’t have any Christmas presents to give her daughter this year. So my daughter has put together a bag of her old toys to give them. But tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and so tomorrow morning will be my last chance to get those presents to her before it’s too late. If I can pick her up in the morning, I can give her the presents before I drop her off.”
Even Ron got in on the excitement and agreed to bend the rules just this once. At 6:00 the following morning, I put on my red Santa hat to wear for the day and drove my cab over to Donna’s apartment, the bag of toys hidden from sight in the trunk so Donna’s Ashley wouldn’t see them.
Shortly after 6:30, I heard the dispatcher’s voice on the radio: “Cab 33, your call came in.”
A few minutes later, Donna and Ashley came downstairs and got into my cab. Ashley saw me in my red hat, and her jaw dropped open for a second, then she broke into a big grin.
After we dropped off Ashley and headed for the strip mall, I started a casual conversation. “Do you remember I told you that I have a daughter named Ashley, too?”
“Yes,” she said with a smile.
“Well, last night I told my Ashley that your Ashley wasn’t going to have any presents for Christmas. So my Ashley collected a whole bunch of her old toys, most of which are in very good condition. Some of them even have the name Ashley on them. Anyway, I’ve got them all in a bag in the trunk, and we’d like to give them to you so you’ll have presents for Ashley tomorrow on Christmas.”
Donna was silent for a few seconds, as her mind seemed to be trying to process all that I’d just told her. “Are you joking?” she asked in a shocked, disbelieving voice.
“No, I’m absolutely serious,” I said and smiled. “My family wants your family to have a Merry Christmas.”
Suddenly, I felt her reach over the seat to give me a huge hug. Fortunately, we were stopped at a red light. She hugged me so tightly, I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much! Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said over and over again.
When we got to our destination, I opened the trunk for her. I suddenly worried that the bag—very large and quite full—might be too much for Donna to carry all by herself. But she helped me get it out and didn’t seem to care about the size.
“I can’t afford much, but let me at least give you something for all these presents,” she said, taking out her wallet from her purse.
“Oh, you don’t understand,” I said quickly. “These are a gift, from my Ashley to your Ashley. Put your wallet away. I don’t even want you paying for today’s taxi ride. That’s my gift for you.”
Donna began to cry.
I started moving to get the box of tissues when she threw her arms around me and hugged me even tighter than before. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…,” she whispered in a quivering voice. I hugged her back. “You are an angel,” she said. And then she paused. “No, your daughter is an angel. You are Papá Noel!” and she smiled as the tears ran down her cheeks.
I watched Donna carry the bag of toys into the back of the sandwich shop as I started driving away. It was only 7:30, and I still had a bit of work to do. My Christmas mission wasn’t completed just yet.
I drove back to the Christmas tree lot by Donna’s apartment, picked up the tree and wreath, and put both into the trunk. The tree stuck out, and I had to drive with the trunk open. Fortunately, I didn’t need to go far.
Of course, my biggest challenge still lay ahead of me: getting into the building and delivering the tree and wreath. Thanks to the dispatcher, I knew Donna’s apartment number was 214. So I waited outside the front door of her building until someone came out. During the daytime of Christmas Eve, almost no one gave a second glance to a fellow who looked like Santa with a red and white velvet hat carrying a Christmas tree and wreath. The person who came out even held the door open for me and wished me a Merry Christmas.
Once at Donna’s apartment, I leaned the tree against the door, placed the wreath on the floor mat, and taped a note to the door that read, “For Apartment 214. Merry Christmas.”
I exited the building and returned to my cab, feeling quite jolly and imagining the surprise on Donna’s and Ashley’s faces when they saw what Santa had left for them. It was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, indeed.
The rest of the day was a busy one, and I decided to pull a double shift because so many other drivers were heading home to spend Christmas Eve with their families. (Back in 2003, I hadn’t yet started doing my pajama visits, and so I had the night available to earn a little extra money and then spend all of Christmas Day with Linda and Ashley.) By nightfall on Christmas Eve, I had almost forgotten about the tree and wreath that I left for Donna and Ashley at their door. Then, at about 10:00 P.M., I heard the dispatcher on the radio. “Sal, you there?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“I’ve got the lady from Somerset on the line. She just called in. Did you drop off a tree at her place?”
“A tree?” I tried to sound shocked.
“Yeah, she says there was a tree outside her door when she got home, with a note saying it was for 214.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Sounds like Santa visited her.”
“That wasn’t you?”
“Now, why would I do something like that?” I responded back into the two-way, trying to sound completely innocent.
“Hold on,” I heard the dispatcher say. After a short pause, he came back on. “Okay, I told her it wasn’t you, and she said she knows that it was. She was crying, and she said to tell you that no matter what you say, she’ll always know it was you, and that you made Christmas magical for her and her daughter.”
A rush of pure joy filled my heart. For all my years playing Santa Claus, talking to children, taking pictures, and handing out presents while wearing the red suit, I had never felt quite this wonderful before. I looked forward to returning home and telling Linda and Ashley everything that happened.
I knew before going out on my runs that Christmas Eve that it would be my last night working for the taxi company. The week before, one of my computer clients had asked me to do some work for a few weeks that would require a bit of travel on m
y part. At the end of my shift, I drove back to the main garage, turned in my cab and keys, collected my final paycheck, and rode off into the sunset.
About four months later, I ran into the owner of the taxi company at a local coffee shop. As we exchanged pleasantries and caught up, he told me that, right after Christmas, Donna called asking for the driver who looked like Santa Claus.
“What did you tell her?” I asked, curious to hear his answer.
“The truth,” he said. “I told her that the last time I saw him was on Christmas Eve, and then he was gone. We haven’t seen him since. It’s really funny, but you leaving that way when you did, I guess it made her believe even more that you were the real Santa.”
We laughed at how my abrupt departure on Christmas Eve just added to my Santa mystique, and I smiled as I imagined the joy of little Ashley and her mother Donna on that Christmas morning. That night, I was the real Santa.
I KNOW I CAN’T BE A REAL-LIFE PAPÁ NOEL TO everyone out there, as much as I wish I could. But I like to think that we all have a little bit of Santa soul in us. As my family and I learned that Christmas, you don’t have to wear a red velvet suit or carry a sack of toys to be Santa Claus to someone in need. If you think about it, there are hundreds of little ways and chances for us to be that shining light of hope for one another, especially during tough times. We can give money, sure, but we can also give our time, love, attention, creativity, or even just a shoulder of support. If we all looked for and acted on these opportunities, even on days that aren’t Christmas, well…imagine the kind of world that would be.
THIRTEEN
Make a Wish
SANTA CLAUS CAN DELIVER A LOT MORE THAN just toys and gifts. You just need to know what you really want most in your heart and ask for it.
When I was a Santa-in-residence at a mall in New Hampshire, I enjoyed getting to know most of the shop owners, managers, and employees. They were a very warm and friendly bunch, and during slow periods of the day, many of them would wander over to the Santa set to hang out and chat.
One of our frequent visitors was Dennis, the assistant manager of a jewelry store on the second floor of the mall. From my big chair, I could look up and see the many sparkles of the beautiful pieces of jewelry placed in the store’s window, and I would often wave at Dennis when he stepped outside into the mall atrium.
I suspected that Dennis came down to the set not so much to visit Santa as to hang around the many attractive young ladies who worked at the North Pole Village. I’d watch Dennis flirt with some of my helpers, and I figured that a young, handsome man in his mid-twenties like Dennis had no trouble finding dates.
But apparently Dennis didn’t have the kind of dating success that I had imagined. I discovered this during a Tuesday late morning lull. Dennis had come down to flirt some more with Santa’s helpers, and I noticed that the young ladies did their best not to flirt back. Instead, they went about their business of cleaning the set and checking supplies. I suspected that most of these attractive helpers already had boyfriends of their own, but I can’t say for sure. All I knew was that Dennis seemed pretty dejected standing there alone, despite trying to look suave and debonair in front of the giant glittered candy canes and snowmen. And so I sauntered over to him to say hello.
“Santa,” he said (everyone called me Santa), letting out a bit of a frustrated sigh, “do you know what I want for Christmas—what I really want more than anything else?”
“What’s that?” I asked, guessing that I already knew the answer.
“I want to find a nice girl that I can settle down with.”
Yep, I was right. I gave Dennis a playful smile. “I think you have me confused with Cupid.”
Dennis laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “Hey, I had to at least try to ask Santa. You never know, right?” he said. As he rode the escalator back up to the jewelry store, my heart broke a little for this poor fellow who only wanted to find love for Christmas. But it turned out that serendipity would be on Santa’s side that week.
Two days later, a mother and her college-age daughter each sat on one of my knees to get a photo with Santa. After we took the picture, I asked them, “So, would you ladies like to tell me what you want for Christmas?”
The daughter immediately said with a bright look on her face, “Well, I love jewelry!”
“What’s not to love?” I kidded her, and I turned to her mother. “And how about you?”
“Santa,” the mother said with a tone of seriousness and loving concern in her voice, “the only thing I want for my daughter is to meet a nice gentleman and be happy.”
The daughter rolled her eyes. “Mom! Really!”
Her mother just smiled. “Santa asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and that’s my Christmas wish.”
Hmmm…
“Well,” I said, feeling slightly mischievous, “if you were to go up to that jewelry store over there on the second floor and ask for Dennis—and tell him that Santa sent you—well, let’s just see what happens…”
The two ladies looked a little surprised but also intrigued, and I thought I saw them heading up in the direction of the second floor when they left. But the customer line had suddenly gotten longer, and I needed to concentrate on the children who were waiting their turn to see Santa Claus. Within a few minutes, my mind had moved on to completely different things and I forgot all about the Christmas Cupid wish.
A couple of years later, I returned to that mall in my everyday clothes to say hello to all the wonderful merchants and good friends I’d made there. I wandered in and out of stores, getting handshakes and hugs and catching up. But when I entered the jewelry store, I couldn’t find Dennis anywhere. I was disappointed, as he was one of the people I’d most hoped to see.
So I asked a couple of the other shopkeepers what happened to him. I quickly learned that Dennis had been promoted and started managing a store in a different part of the state right after he got married.
“He got married?” I asked, surprised. “The last I knew, Dennis was still looking for a girlfriend!”
“Oh, didn’t you hear? Dennis loved to tell the story of how Santa Claus introduced him to his wife.”
“Really?” My ears perked up.
“Yeah. He told everyone about that day you sent a girl and her mother up to the store. Dennis and the girl hit it off immediately and started dating. Within six months, they were married, and now they’ve got a one-year-old daughter and another on the way.”
“Well, how about that,” I said, grinning from ear to ear.
So, while I can’t promise anything for sure, you might as well go ahead and make that one true wish that’s in your heart. In the immortal words of Dennis, “You never know, right?”
FOURTEEN
He Knows If You’ve Been Bad or Good
ANOTHER WAY I SOMETIMES MADE ENDS meet in my non-Santa months was by filling in as a substitute teacher in our local school district. It gave me a chance to work with children all year long and, amusingly enough, provided me with a fun opportunity to remind them that Santa is always watching.
Imagine what might go through a student’s mind when his or her substitute teacher for the day looks a lot like Santa Claus! Naturally, the reactions varied from school to school, and different age groups jumped to their conclusions in different ways. The youngest ones nearly always questioned my identity as soon as I walked in. “Are you Santa Claus?” they would always ask immediately.
“My name is Mr. Lizard,” I’d answer truthfully, with a little knowing smile.
“That’s a silly name!” one of the children would almost always shout out. “I think you’re really Santa Claus.”
“Well,” I would say in a matter-of-fact tone, “if I said I was Santa Claus, how would you behave?”
They would then all reply that they’d try to be good.
“But wouldn’t Santa Claus want to know how you behave when he isn’t there?”
“Yeah,” they would answer.
“
So do you think Santa would tell you ahead of time that he was coming to your classroom?” I’d ask. “I bet he wouldn’t! That way he could see how you behave when you don’t think he’s around. Does that sound about right to you?”
The kids would uniformly bob their heads in agreement.
I would then try to look thoughtful. “Hmmm…I doubt Santa would use his real name, though. He’d probably make one up. He’d likely come up with something fun, like an animal or something…”
“A lizard is an animal!” one of the smart kids would usually exclaim. “And you’re Mr. LIZARD!”
“Yes, I am. But I didn’t say I was Santa Claus,” and I would smile and wink at the class. The kids would then figure out the “truth” for themselves, and usually behave extra well for Mr. Lizard.
By the time most kids reached seventh grade, few if any believed I was really Santa Claus. But one class of older kids surprised me in a big way….
One day I got a call asking me to sub for a class of what they called “troubled” ninth graders. These students had difficulty focusing their attention, so teachers often struggled to keep them engaged. In fact, only the regular teacher could consistently keep these fifteen-year-olds under control, and most substitute teachers would be scheduled for just half-day shifts with these kids before being relieved by a fresh sub who hadn’t yet been terrorized that day by these unruly kids.
I drove to the school to take the morning shift, and the headmaster walked me to the classroom before the students got there. He seemed to be juggling a thousand things at once and clearly wanted to set me up as quickly as possible so he could get on with the rest of the chaos of his morning.
“Here’s the seating chart and class assignments for the day,” he said, handing me a binder. “The kids will be here soon, and I’ll check up on you occasionally. If you have a problem, we’ll get somebody in here to relieve you later. But no matter what, you can’t leave until I’ve brought in a replacement, got it?”
Being Santa Claus : What I Learned About the True Meaning of Christmas (9781101600528) Page 12