-”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.
