So This Is Christmas

I wasn’t going to write this close to Christmas, but something happened early this afternoon that made me think of a lot of you parents out there.

After church, Sherrod and I made one last dash to the grocery store to pick up the turkey I had ordered and multiple smaller things I had forgotten to buy. The store was bustling, as it always is on Christmas Eve, and most people—customers and employees alike—were friendly and talkative. One of them was a kind woman who was shopping with her six-year-old child.

She was polite and a bit tentative about approaching me, but once we started talking it didn’t take long for me to ask if she was a single mother. She nodded, and said she knew from my writing that I had also been a single mother, for a decade. Our conversation shifted. It was part shared experiences, part pep talk, all of it in soft voices.

I remember those early days as a single mother, when it seemed everyone around me had made better choices and was happier than I was. Fortunately, I’ve lived long enough to now see that as a mirage of my own making, and to recognize fear and self-doubt as hallmarks of the freshly wounded. It’s hard to see a path forward with your eyes squeezed shut.

I liked this young mother, a lot. She was trying hard to be upbeat for her son, and her efforts were working. He was all smiles and jittery energy, dancing in place even when he spoke to me.

Quietly, I told her my daughter was about his age when I separated from her father, and that she has grown into a kind and remarkable woman. I wanted to offer more words of encouragement, but that was a conversation for another time, away from her son and the Christmas Eve crowd. I hope she felt my faith in her.

On the drive home, my mind wandered through harder times, harder Christmases. My first Christmas as a single mother is the most stubborn of those memories.

It was December 1994, and my 7-year-old daughter was adjusting to so much change. Cait and I had moved out of our house and into a bottom-floor apartment a suburb away. Virtually none of our furnishings—from furniture to dishes to bedding—was familiar. A few pieces were new, but most were borrowed or bought in antique and resale shops. Cait’s beloved brother, Andy, was still away at college.We had no pets, as we hadn’t yet adopted our two cats, Reggie and Winnie; our pug, Gracie, a gift from my parents, was years away. It was just Mom and Cait, in a place that was too new and different to feel like home.

On top of all of this, perhaps because of it, she had begun to doubt that Santa existed.

“Everyone knows he’s not for real, Mommy,” she said, her big blue eyes pleading for evidence to the contrary. I was feeling so guilty about all the disruption raining down on her. I couldn’t bear to have my little girl lose that bit of magic in her life.

A friend suggested I take her to meet a Santa who worked at a mall across town. He was a popular Santa, the subject of ample media coverage over the years, but I had never met him. But then, I had never had to.

I was desperate. My editor didn’t even let me finish my explanation before insisting I leave early. “Go!” she said. “Go find Santa!” I picked up Cait after school and off we went.

Cait was quiet during the drive. She was bracing, I feared, for another disappointment. We stood in the long line for about a half-hour, slowly making our way up the stairs to the platform stage as Christmas music played. Finally, the little girl who had been waiting in front of us hopped off Santa’s lap.

“Caitlin,” I said, loudly. “It’s your turn to see Santa.”

Santa broke into the biggest smile.

“Caitlin!” he bellowed. “Is that you?”

Cait gasped and grabbed my hand. “Mommy,” she said in a breathless whisper. “He knows my name. It’s him!” She ran across the stage and into Santa’s open arms.

That’s Cait in the fuzzy Polaroid picture. My girl and Santa, for one more year.

In that moment, on that wintry day, we both believed. A stubborn memory—and a happy one. That’s also the life of a single parent. We don’t talk enough about that, do we?

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. If this is a hard time for you, may the season land gently.