-”Close the windows, the door and your eyes. When you find yourself unconscious, you will find the shiny lights, the green pine tree and ribboned boxes underneath. Your eyes will race with exuberant warmth through this battle of color, a sigh of unavoidable joy, in bursts of shimmer and twinkling sounds. The tree is so tall it barely fits the room leaving us tight against each other, it will warm us and bring songs into our throats. You will see my dear, just sleep tonight that tomorrow our work starts, to bring Santa down to the chimney. And tomorrow as light touches your eyes, we will make it just so!” - She toke her daughter tight and kissed her long, while a slow drop rolled her tired craved cheeks. Tonight, once more, she would stay late, packing in colorful magazine pages the knotted neckerchief and matching gloves. Her daughter was growing so fast, she just thanked god for her own mother's taught, for she could sew and knit her daughter warm, just as her mother before. She got inspired and took a pen from the daughter's school bag, she used nice new recycled gray paper sheets and stared at it for a while.
Forms of the small room's shadows gave shape to fine drawings she gave life and words just followed. She told the tale, in several pages, of a mother's greatest hope, the conquest of her daughter's smile each day and why love enriched their pain. For cover she draw a special place, much like their room but with lights, shadows and joyful porcelains, with ribbons and a tall tree, its feet filled with presents and dreams, so many dreams. She took her daughter's coloring pencils and filled the tree with several greens, the bands of blue and red twisting around it and balls of all colors hanged with shadows and volume. In the walls Christmas paintings hang of red and gold, and the table next to it held a nice brown turkey with pees and potatoes all around. Another tear fell down her face, threatening to ruin this perfect picture but she moved fast and caught it with her dress. Tomorrow came and she spent all night wondering what she could use to approximate her room to the one she draw in the coloring book.
As the day rose, she saw that sparkle of anticipation in her daughter's eyes and knew for once what had to be done. -”So what do we do?”
-”We do the perfect environmental Christmas” - Her daughter smiled in reply, suspicious and incredulous of this idea of hers.
-”First we need our tree!”- So they got this small plastic tree from the closet and her daughter's smile changed with worry.
-”You will see, it will look much bigger with lights and colors!” - That earned her the daughter's smile back, which proved it all worth.
Once they spread all the needles and branches of the bold poor plastic creature, she mounted it on top of her biggest pan, a reminiscence of when she would cook so much for Sunday lunch and had more to feed. The pan was already turned upside down in the corner of the room.
-”Now we need some paper!” - And they rapped the vase in gray recycled paper hiding the clumsy tree feet.
-”Now we need color, so get your scissors!” - And she got up to get one for herself. They cut from old magazines she found outside ready for recycling, and divided the red paints they could find, from the white and the blue and the green. Then she instructed her daughter to glue the greens and blues in a toilet paper as long as she could, while with the red and white patches she made a Santa Clause face in a red vase, occupying the whole front of the pan's recycled paper cover. Now the tree was tall, smiling cold on the top of Christmas. The toilet paper ribbons wore around its skinny arms made it fluffy, warm and proud, like a real Christmas tree. With this, the daughter's enthusiasm was growing.
-”Now we need the hangings!” - They went hunting around the house for small sparkling metal objects. Small playing pans, a plastic tiara, and all they could find hanged freely on the tree, reflecting the doll light everywhere in the room, like a disco ball or authentic Christmas tree lights.
-”Now all we need some fine pictures!”- So she sat her daughter at the dinner table, while she cooked lunch. When lunch was done and she entered the room to stop her daughter and get the lunch on the table, something held her in the door way. To inhale the formidable picture that reached her eyes, she slide silently towards this old player, where she chose a Christmas CD she hadn't thought of in years. The sound rose the daughter's face from the concentrated task with an unmeasurable smile. She hanged the naive drawings on the walls, she couldn't even believe her daughter had time for so many.
They fell on the sofa after a full day, watching “home alone” on the TV. When her daughter fell a sleep on her lap, she reached for the paper and started cutting out semi-circles with a circle in the middle and a leaf shaped peace on each side. Curling the semi-circle she created small angels. For dinner she managed to buy a turkey leg and decided to cook vegetables of all colors. Carrots and pees and yellow peppers were stewed along side the potatoes. They lay a long red towel on the table that had seen many better years, yet with the paper angels standing all around the table it seemed crowded and cheerful. So this evening they ate with candle lights around a crusty turkey.
In the next morning she woke up with the sound of her daughter jumping of excitement on her bed. - “It's Christmas, it's Christmas, and Santa hasn't forgotten us!” They ran together to the leaving room where their previous work shined still endless colors. But she could see her daughter's eyes focused only on the four packages that lay rapped under the Christmas tree. She felt a stab of guilt, afraid of her tiny joy's disappointment. Her own mother had always said that it was more of a feeling than actually the presents that mattered and she could only hope her mother was once more right. The daughter kneed next to the presents and started obviously by the biggest one, the neckerchief.
- “How did he know my favorite colors?” - She could see her daughter's grin widening uncontrolled and it gave her such joy.
-”And it is a collection, though for a handy-cap!” - The daughter's young voice sounded with euphoric confusion, as the small hands opened the first small package with one glove inside. Her daughter opened quickly the second small package and smiled as though she was pranked. The daughter put them on with the neckerchief and ran to her mother showing off the new look on pijamas.
Then the daughter ran back to the last package, a thin package dismissed earlier due to its resemblance to a book, but as the last present it gained a different interest. It was a coloring book, with a colorful cover, telling the story of a small family in Christmas.
All that she could think looking at her daughter's gaze, was how glad she was that he was gone. That he wasn't there to complain about the money or regret the lack of it, or the little they had, when they had so much. He left and it was his lost alone. And she was thankful that her mother prepared her to trust her own strength and never give in. Because there will always be Christmas while children can teach us to make believe and need us to make them smile.
