This little ornament doesn’t really fit in with the rest of
the decorations on The Beast, the Gunnels family Christmas tree.
It’s a little too cloying and precious for my taste. I can
be sappy, too, sometimes (guilty pleasure: Hallmark Christmas movies; I know),
but this one is just a little TOO cute, a tad TOO cuddly.
Regardless, I keep hanging it up each year because of a gift
my sister got from Santa Claus when she was 3 or 4.
Santa Claus was a big deal at our house when I was a kid.
The family opened wrapped gifts on Christmas Eve in order to clear the decks
for Santa’s overnight toy dump.
Since we didn’t have a fireplace, my sister Kathy and I were
always a little worried about how the Fat Man would gain entrance to Castle
Gunnels since my mother made sure every door and window was locked tight before
retiring for the night.
She always herded us off to bed early. As a parent, I now
know why. Toy assembly at 3 a.m. can be a real drag, particularly when you do
it in an open garage on a frigid December night in order not to wake the
young’uns.
We always slept fitfully, our hearts beating wildly at the
prospects of what awaited us Christmas morning. By 5 a.m. we usually were
already sneaking down the hall for peek at what awaited us under the tree.
On this particular Christmas morn, we made our usual haul,
my gifts arranged carefully on one side of the tree, Kathy’s on the other. (Santa
sure was a neat old cuss!) Joyful pandemonium ensued until Mom could herd us
away from toy central to gulp down breakfast.
As Kathy worked her way through her bounty, she came to a
pink plush pixie doll with a soft rubber face, cherub cheeks and round, soulful
eyes. She examined it carefully, then got up and walked into the kitchen, where
she deposited the doll in the trash bin and returned to the living room.
“I didn’t ask for that,” she said in explanation.
Horrified, my mother retrieved the doll before it could be
permanently stained by cranberry juice or turkey gizzards. She brought it back to
my sister and attempted to convince a skeptical Kathy that it was beautiful and
soft and that Santa had wanted to surprise her with an unexpected present.
“Well, OK,” she said dismissively and tossed the doll aside.
The story has become part of Gunnels family lore. I still
enjoy telling it. The funny thing is, the pink plush pixie eventually became my
sister’s favorite doll, the one she took to bed with her every night until she
became too old for such things. By that time, the bedraggled pixie had been
loved almost to extinction.
When I look at this ornament of two kids – brother and
sister? – wrapped in a wreath, I see that sweet little unloved pixie doll. I
imagine a similarity in the face of the pixie and that of the girl in the
wreath. It’s hard to explain, but that’s the way memory works sometimes.
Don’t get the wrong idea about my sister. She’s a wonderful
person, generous to a fault and always thinking of others. She’s the loving
mother of two beautiful daughters, the eldest of which has never believed in
Santa Claus a day in her life, thus robbing Kathy of one of the delights of Christmas. I sometimes wonder: Is that fate’s punishment
for her unappreciative treatment of Santa’s gift?
She and her husband moved to the lake near Corsicana not too
long ago and built their dream home. It’s on a peaceful cove just off the main
shore of the lake. I like to sit on their back patio in the late afternoon and
watch the ducks and a family of beavers slowly paddle the length of the inlet.
It is a welcome haven in a crazy world.
At Christmastime, I’m always a little apprehensive about
buying my sister a gift. I frequently chicken out and just give her a gift
card. That way, she can buy something she wants and needs. There’s another
reason, too. Who throws a gift card in the trashcan?
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