Christmas magic returns with children

In the earliest, darkest, hours of Christmas morning, before I make my way to bed for the few hours of sleep I’ll snatch from the busy day, I move slowly, turning out lights, leaving only the glow of the Christmas tree to welcome early risers.

I look at the gifts and the stockings and what remains of a cookie, and I try to see everything the way it will look to young eyes.

That’s when the years curl around me like ribbon.

As a child, I was always the first to wake on Christmas morning. I threw off the covers and crept out of my bed hours before sunrise, tiptoeing out to where Santa Claus left our gifts.

One year, I must have been six or seven years old, I found more than toys.

The room, lit only by the glow of fat multicolored bulbs strung on the tree, silent except for the sonorous ticking of the big grandfather clock that stood by the front door, was alive with possibility. And more. Something wonderful and mysterious was in there with me. I could feel it.

I wasn’t alone.

I remember the way my heart pounded against my chest as the idea took hold, and grew in me, that Santa Claus was still there. I imagined him frozen in the shadows, standing still and breathless, the way you do when you want to be invisible.

I stood spellbound in my flannel nightgown and bare feet, shivering with cold and excitement, waiting to catch a glimpse of the presence I felt so strongly.

I didn’t, of course. The magic of Santa is that we never see him at work, only where he has been.

Finally, unable to resist the toys placed carefully around the room, I grew brave enough to move, and like an explorer, lay claim to everything in front of me. Even what was meant for my younger sister and baby brother was in a small way mine because I saw it first. After I touched and examined it all, I ran to wake the others.

I never told anyone about that morning, and the feeling of having caught Santa in the act.

Time passed and I grew too sluggish and sleepy to care if I was the first one up. What did it matter? I made a list and had a pretty good idea of what would be waiting for me on Christmas morning.

I forgot how it felt to be alone, but not alone, in a space that is sparking and crackling with magic.

It wasn’t until my own children were born that I remembered.

That’s why each year when it’s all done and I should be in bed, I linger. Waiting for whatever it was that I captured so long ago to steal into the darkened room with me.

When it does, I am once again the little girl with serious eyes and tangled curls, and a heart that beat and fluttered against its cage like a wild bird.

Now, I find myself listening for the sounds of other Christmas mornings, when my children – the children who are sleeping later, and moving more slowly toward the tree – were still my babies, soft and tender.

I hear them laughing and calling out to me, and the sandpaper scuffling of little feet in footed pajamas running across the hardwood floor.

Nothing else reminds me as poignantly of how the years have flown, and how fast they will fly, as this moment does.

It helps, some, to know that real magic never leaves us for long. It’s just that we can’t always see it at work.

Sometimes, we have to be content with looking at where it’s been.