stocking.

what is the Christmas season, i ask you, without a good old fashioned reversion to infancy? i'm not talking about returning to that child-like spirit when, for a moment, your heart believes that perhaps the North Pole really is populated with elves. i'm talking about reverting to the four-year-old that lives inside each one of us -- the one who throws a tantrum when things get rough. ah, how i love that little christmas four-year-old in me.

she made quite an appearance this Sunday. it was one of those days when things just don't go the way you expect them to...one of those days when you have to have everything timed to the second because there is so much to do and so little time to do it in, but then everything goes wrong, so you feel like giving up on the whole world and cancelling Christmas because it just isn't working out for you and if it isn't working out for you then it shouldn't work out for anyone. you know the day. i decide to do something special for my mom whose Christmas stocking (that her father who passed away when she was 19 made her) is falling apart. i decide to make her a new stocking -- a stocking befitting of such a beautiful, elegant woman. and as i work on it (as quickly as possible since she is coming home in a couple of hours), i realize that it's really not beautiful at all. and as far as elegant goes, instead it's asymmetrical and facing the wrong direction. all the other stockings are left footed. this one faces awkwardly to the right. and as i try to fix it, it just keeps getting worse, and i'm running out of fabric. at this point, i can feel the four-year-old fighting to find her way out. so i decide, though time is not on my side, that i need to set this project aside and work on another, simpler project to cool my nerves. of course, almost immediately, i tear the expensive, store-bought box i was working on. and, of course, it is at this time that my mother comes through the door with me staring at a should-be-beautiful disaster of a stocking with a should-be-beautiful torn box in hand. my mother looks at me, confused, and i burst into huge tears...the kind of tears that are so big and thick that your voice gets high and squeaky because it doesn't fit through your throat anymore on account of the big, thick tears. "it was supposed to be special," i hear the four-year-old blubber. "it was supposed to be beautiful and special and i ru-hoo-i-hi-ned it." i toss the box aside, lay my face down in my hands and sob. (true story.)

my mother picks up the shreds of fabric that vaguely resemble a stocking and begins to cry just like her four-year-old daughter, "it is beautiful. it's the most beautiful stocking i've e-he-ver-her seen."

it was reminiscant of the "but mommy, the macaroni wouldn't stick and jimmy spilled all the gold paint" episode we've all had. only i graduated from preschool two decades ago.

so i cried for about half an hour until the four-year-old was tired and needed a nap. i put her to rest and hope she doesn't return for at least another year or two. and the stocking? my mom's fixing it. that's right. she's sewing her own christmas present.

i don't know what it is about this season that gets so confused. how it is that sometimes we get so distracted with having to do all these things that we forget the people we're doing them for. i get to where i resent the list of items i have to buy because it stresses me out, instead of realizing that i give because i love to give and i love the people i give to. what a joy to have people that mean so much to me. what a joy to have an income that allows a little gift giving now and then. what a gift that i can even have gifts in the budget. i want to get it this christmas. i want to rid myself of the four-year-old that has to have things just right for her temper to stay intact, and i want to let the four-year-old that slept under the tree on christmas eve hoping to catch a glimpse of santa out to play...the one that just loved to snuggle with mommy and hear daddy tell the christmas story...the one that knew it was enough to give mommy a piece of torn up macaroni art because each piece of pasta was glued with such love, such adoration. my mom loves that stupid stocking. and that's the point. so, now i'm crying again. geez, christmas, what are you doing to me?