From Santa

I’m just not really sure what else you want from me. Haven’t you taken enough now? Haven’t I given enough–more than enough–to satisfy your urges? To appease the way your moods swing like blizzard winds blow through Christmas lights on the rooftop of childhood innocence and goodwill towards all? I couldn’t touch a present for years, always afraid of what attached ribbons and hidden clauses might be wrapped up and called love. Care. Cherishment.

The saintly nature of those around me ever since taints all their plates of goodies, their stamped letters and the packages snuck past my front door (the chimney’s broken) at 5 in the morning with a hand-painted card in calligraphy saying “From Santa”. The way I stood three hours later, staring and staring hard, absolutely terrified and equally convinced that this was not for me and me alone, though I was the only roommate home for the last few days. I had to rally myself to be brave enough to peek into the filled stocking taken down from our mantle to see if maybe just this once, this time, this was for me. And even once I saw items I knew were intrinsically tied to me–the Kinder egg back when the toy was inside the chocolate egg and my half Canadian side had no problem, but it was illegal in the United States; a package of Milk Duds for all the times I missed my dad and needed to take a walk but still wanted to eat my feelings; the small bottle of wonderful smelling hand cream because the holiday season in retail with all its increased inventory boxes and metal plastic hangers day-in and day-out left my hands and cuticles covered in bandaids.

All these things that pointed their north star to me and I still found myself gingerly placing each item back in exactly how I had found it in the off case it really, truly wasn’t for me. Carefully laying it back on the couch by the front door, and standing back to make sure it was in the exact position I found it. Then slowly back away, my body finding the other couch not to sit on, but to sit in front of on the ground instead as I continued to stare. It would take me two hours later to finally realize that this might truly be for me, and the only reason I could muster to go through the stocking again was that if there had been a mistake, I could easily pay this all back. With interest. 

Turns out though, it wasn’t a mistake. No. No, it turns out it was–the whole thing–for me. And just me. My choice if I decided to share it with others or hoard it up like the hibernating bear I’ve learned to become. But the choice was mine, and mine alone. In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting that. Somewhere between the letter writing to Santa and leaving carrots on a plate Christmas Eve for his reindeers (since we figured Santa would probably be stuffed while the reindeers starved), I think I managed to learn that my choices were always filtered through naughty and nice, being watched all year round, even while I sleep. You were told you could decide for yourself, but there was always that subtle pressure behind the statement that there was a choice, but there was a better choice, and naughty boys and girls always fail to choose the better one, and you’re not one of them, now are you? And of course, I was a good girl, so I was going to choose, but really, I was choosing all along what you wanted from me.

So to now find myself sober after years of drinking in whatever eggnog you were serving, and after dumping out the stocking onto the ground and sorting it out exactly the way I did as a child, I sobbed and laughed at the same time. Sobbed over how such a simple act of kindness and gesture seemed to break right through my Jack-Frost-meets-Mr.-Scrooge’s heart for the first time in years. Laughed at how such a simple act broke through my carefully crafted defenses. Sobbed that I wasn’t as clever or well-put together as much as I thought I was. Laughed at how all I really ever wanted was to just be a kid. Sobbed at realizing that I thought growing up meant cutting her out for good. Sobbed more when I realized that I managed to treat her the same way I felt you treated me. Sobbed cathartically when I realized that I would never do that to a child of my own, or any child for that matter, and didn’t have to do that to myself anymore. 

You want to know the strangest thing about this? Ever since, in those drifting cold winter days between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, where it’s not enough momentum to keep doing what you’ve been used to doing, but not quite ready to hard launch the motivation to start something new, my inner child has been coming out to play. Lots of drawing fashion figures and swimsuits, random dance breaks in the kitchen at 11PM, taking a nap on the couch by the living room window decorated in paper snowflakes, and most recently and repeatedly, sitting down in the tub underneath the warm rain of the shower head, pretending to be in some type of Little Women/When Calls The Heart type of open fields during a grey storm. You know the kind–face up to the source, hair so soaked that if you move your head too fast, you’ll give your own self whiplash.

And all of this to say that for the first time all of this winter season, I no longer felt scared of the ice patches on the ground, the way the branches on trees stood barren and bare, or the way the snowflakes fluttered to the ground, glistening as they gathered in piles of thick, blinding brightness on the front steps, the sidewalks, the roads. The danger is still there, and that is something I might never be able to outrun. I also don’t expect myself to start celebrating and decorating for the holidays with zeal and vigour. But I will drink the peppermint hot cocoa and let the steam rise past my face, and I will watch the cheesy Hallmark holidays movies at my own pace. Maybe throw in a Christmas thriller while I’m at it. But never again will I let your ghost of my Christmas Past come to haunt me again.