This Christmas memory begins on a sunny day in June on the upper level of a red double-decker bus. A tour bus weaving through Victoria in summer is an unlikely setting for a Christmas memory, I know, but nevertheless, that’s where it starts - at the exact moment my six-year-old daughter turned to look up at me.
Her eyes wore that double-edged innocence that both heartens you at the sight of such hope, and then devastates you with the thought of hope unfulfilled. Life, after all, is a hard place, and every parent knows it. It is a secret we keep from our children as long as we can, hide from their early discovery with the same tenacity as Christmas gifts stashed under the bed.
But like most secrets, we can’t hide it forever.
“Found a quarter under my pillow,” Samantha said.
A hole gaped in the front of her mouth in that all-I-want-for-Christmas-is-my-two-front-teeth way.
“Told you the tooth fairy would find you at Grandpa’s house,” I answered.
“The tooth fairy didn’t find me,” Samantha said. “Grandpa did. He sneaked into my room, and I pretended I was asleep.”
It took only two city blocks for Samantha’s mind to work its way through the logic.
“Is there a Santa Claus?” Samantha said.
“Of course,” I answered. “Do you think we could afford to buy all those presents that somehow end up under the tree each Christmas morning? And they’re always exactly what you wanted, how would Dad and I ever get it right? You know your Dad. If he bought the presents, you’d get all Winnie-the-Pooh things.”
It was one of those family jokes that has survived to this day – her Dad’s obsession with buying young Samantha Winnie-the-Pooh gifts. As if A.A.Milne could protect his little girl from life.
“But is there really a Santa Claus?” she persisted.
The question, asked again, meant I would have to directly lie to my daughter to preserve the fantasy of Santa Claus. She was only six years old. What is wrong with fantasy? Nothing.
But lying... there is something wrong with that. She had asked a direct question, and deserved a direct answer.
“No,” I said quietly.
The red double-decker bus stopped, and we got off to inspect the Haida totem pole. Samantha stood dwarfed at its base. Her eyes followed the long shape upward. Raven and bear and hawk and whale, piled one on top of the other, like her thoughts. Tooth fairy, Santa Claus…
“Is there a God?”
Her eyes were solemn, wanting the truth, whatever it might be.
And so I told her, the truth, as best as I could. “I don’t know for sure, I hope there is a God. I believe there is a God.”
Or perhaps a Goddess. The feminine divine. I’ve always had difficulty reconciling the patriarchal God sitting on a throne in judgement with the beauties of creation.
Today, thirteen years later, Samantha is a beautiful young woman, strong and independent, and still not shying away from the hard questions and hard answers. She has grown up in spite of her parents, and it is her parents that are reminded, every time she steps out that door, that life is a hard place. And they have to let her go.
Tonight, the wind is blowing in our hometown of Kitchener, Ontario, in a way it never blows in Victoria. Gusts pick up snow, white swirls, like small tornadoes. The night is dark, and the street of our small crescent empty. Christmas bulbs outline the houses. There are borders of ribbons lights and dangling icicle lights, nets of lights spread over bushes, and necklaces of light twined around trees. And somehow, the lights against the night make the season, make life, seem even more wondrous.
Samantha is out of town, visiting friends in Ottawa.
I learn what happened later.
She is driving alone along a highway for the return trip home when a deer suddenly appears at the side of her car, emerging from the night as if by magic.
Samantha hits the deer, and her back tire flies off.
She works to regain control, but can’t.
The small red car full flips over once, twice, three times. It crashes through brush, and comes to a stop upside down. The windows are shattered, the car smashed.
The call comes soon after. It is Samantha. She stands alone, crying at the side of the road. She is bruised. She is frightened. But alive. And miraculously, uninjured.
People come to help her.
Samantha worries about items scattered across the field and in the ditch. Her watch and jewelry have been flung out of her purse with the force of the crash. She isn’t thinking straight. I can tell. She’s in shock.
“Leave them,” I say. “They aren’t important. You’re important.”
I hear the sirens in the distance, and I thank God, thank Goddess, for the people who have stopped to help. Christmas is about all kinds of miracles.
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The Miracle was published several years ago, and distributed inside a coffee can! Storyhouse, a gourmet roaster of coffee beans, is also a publisher. The stories and poems start on the outside of a can, and then continue on an insert within the can, along with a trinket. My story was included with the “Holiday Blend.” I suggest, in keeping with the spirit, you go get yourself a cup of coffee, and then come back to read the story while enjoying your java...