Grey Hearts and Flowers

Dear Santa

This is a little story I wasn't expecting to finish, but here it is. A little late, but hope you enjoy! xox

Happy 2018!

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Every year, there's that first turn from fall to winter. When pumpkin everything and hayrides and turkeys made out of handprints on paper plates, make way for gingerbread and candy canes and sleigh rides on freshly fallen snow. But it's not the ringing of bells or the first carols sung—or even that demonic shelf elf I have to hide all over the house—that says Christmas is nigh. No, it's the moment little hands grab markers and write letters on Dad's office stationery to an old bearded man north of civilization, who wears a red fur suit, enslaves an entire race of little people to make his toys (without real pay or benefits, but probably housing and cocoa) and makes reindeer fly his fat ass all over the world to deliver them.

And we're meeting him today.

"Christian, please don't antagonize Santa this year," Ana whispers up to me as we stand in line with all four children at, of all ungodly places, the mall.

It's a higher end shopping plaza with decent decorations and, from what I can see up ahead, a Santa who doesn't need padding and is jolly enough that only half the kids come away crying like they've witnessed a murder.

But it's still a mall.

"I never antagonize Santa," I say and she gives me a look. "What? He was completely out of line last year." Imagine him telling my daughter she couldn't have something.

"What about the year before that?" Ana asks as we watch Phoebe and Teddy chase each other around, singing about how Batman smells and their teacher is laying eggs to the tune of Jingle Bells that's playing on loop over the sound system. It's their perineal favorite and my perennial headache.

"He had a real beard. He was obviously a pedophile," I say. No one grows something out that long unless he's deviantly planning for children to sit on his lap all year and pull it.

Ana rolls her eyes as she tends to a fussy Olly in the double stroller. Archie is smiling at his big sister in the front seat, as she's stopped her singing, and is now rolling his hair around and around her finger.

"What are you doing?" I ask Phoebe.

"I'm making Carrot's strawberry patches curl up for the picture," she says. His strawberry patches being his ginger locks. I've tried to dissuade her from calling her red headed brothers Berry and Carrot, but so far it isn't working, and I think the nicknames may stick for life.

This is the twins first Christmas, I marvel, as I look down at their little faces. I want to make it perfect for them—for all my children. But there's something about first Christmases. Everyone says you can't remember them, so they don't really matter, but I highly disagree. It's that celebration when you're small that seeps into your being. It sets you forth on the journey to who you're going to be and how you're going to believe. Whether you'll see the world as a happy place, where dreams can be reality, or one filled with disappointment. It's when you start to believe that miracles can come true. Or that they don't. I want their first memories of the happiest time of year to be magical. I want them to always believe. 

But I don't think the magic starts outside the food court at the Westside Pavilion.

"Why do we have to wait in this line?" I ask Ana as a couple hundred kids around me scream and sing and basically ruin my life. "I could have arranged for us to get straight to the front." Or better yet, out the back. I could have Taylor don a beard. He'd be a good Santa. Sure, he's not jolly, he looks like a marginally groomed gorilla and he can't carry a tune to a Christmas carol to save his life, but he knows where you are at all times, what you want and pops out mysteriously in the night to deliver things.