Christmas 1960

I nudged Fred. "Can I wake up now?" I nudged him again and this time his eyes opened a bit. "Can I wake up now?" I repeated.

He looked at me like I was from outer space and then he remembered and pushed back the window curtain to see that it was almost light outside. "Yeah. Gimme a sec."

He rubbed his eyes and then went to pee while I sat on his bed in my pajamas. When he came back, he put on his robe and handed a flannel shirt to me and said, "Here, put this on. It's cold." My brother was like that.

"Do you think he came?" I whispered.

"I heard him! Didn't you?" he whispered back. He looked straight at me, so I said, "What did you hear? When? Tell me!"

He thought a second and said, "I guess I heard the hooves - sometime in the night, maybe 3:30 or so."

"What are hooves? What is that?"

"Their feet. On the roof. Clump, clump clump. You didn't hear it?"

I thought about that and said, "Maybe I heard it," but I was impatient and whined, "You ready yet?" He was looking and looking for his slippers but finally he put heavy socks on instead. I already had my slippers.

"Yep, " he said. "Let's go."

We tiptoed across the hall and started down the stairs. I held Fred's hand on my left and the railing on my right. When we got to the landing, he squeezed my hand and whispered, "Merry Christmas, Peg!"

We could see the Chrismas tree with the packages piled in front of it from there, so we raced to it. Fred got there first, but I didn't mind because there was a Chatty Kathy doll for me. Oh, yes there was! I pulled her string and she said, "I love you," and so I said, "I love you too, Chatty Kathy!" There was a baby carriage for her too, so I tucked her in it, then pulled her string from behind. She said, "Take me with you!" so I pushed the carriage as far as I could going one way across the room and then turned and went the other way across the room. The carpet made it hard but I was so happy with my gift!

Fred got the new electronic basketball game that he wanted, too. He opened the box and got it all set up - it had baskets at both ends so it looked like a real basketball court. He wanted me to play it with him but I didn't know how to work the levers so the ball could aim at the hoop, so he played it by himself - he was both teams.

Then Fred dug around and found some other stuff - socks and underpants for both of us. He found our stockings - each one filled with walnuts and an orange and a candy cane. We didn't have any way to open the walnuts and it was too early for a candy cane - even for me - so he peeled an orange and we shared it.

We had gotten up so early that we were both really tired. We collapsed back on the underwear-socks pile and stared up at the tree. Fred had plugged in the lights and since the living room was still dark with the drapes closed, it looked nice. You could hardly even see the fishing line Dad had to use to tie the tree upright on each side, or the branches Mom had shoved into the bare spots.

There would be other Christmases - the ones with Dad too drunk to put up a tree and Mom too angry to buy presents with Dad in jail. There would be Christmases filled with yelling and screaming and times when the cops came. There would be Christmases where Mom was just too broke to buy anything so we both got soap on a rope which is like getting toothpaste, so it doesn't really count as a Christmas present. By then, of course, I'd know that Santa Claus was just a story somebody made up.

But for this Christmas, for me, Santa was very real.