Penny Post #2: Good Ol' Saint Nick
He sees you when you're sleeping...
When I first got the inkling that Santa Claus wasn’t real, I locked my mother in a room until she told me the truth.
Normally the story goes: You are sat down by your parents one day and delicately shown your old decaying teeth in a ziplock bag. You realize there is no such thing as the tooth fairy, and if there were, she certainly wouldn’t go around collecting children’s teeth. You realize the absurdity of that notion in the first place and you wonder why you ever believed it, while still believing that a very large, white-bearded man travels with a group of magical reindeer, manages to slide down your chimney each year, and deposit that American Girl doll you specifically requested in your letter to the North Pole below a billowing spruce tree.
You chalk it up to the power of imagination and you let go of the shadow of the doubt about the rest of these made-up creatures.
Not me. Not nine-year-old Kiera.
I heard about Santa Claus’ nonexistence in the hallways of my middle school. That very day I went home and cornered my mother. She would tell me the truth or she would never leave the room I had just locked us in. She fought valiantly. She tried to rid a childish Kiera of an unrelenting need to be an adult. She pleaded with me to respect and preserve my imagination. She knew the grass wasn’t always greener, even though I insisted it was.
After several hours of solitude and expert persuasion, my mother relented. What a brave soul. Combatting the fierce, unrelenting desires of a nine-year-old is no easy feat. And I know that I wasn’t an easy nine-year-old.
I don’t remember wanting proof that Santa Claus was real. I do remember wanting confirmation that he wasn’t real. I don’t remember giving my mom any credit that she had been the best Santa Claus for nine whole years and 4 very fussy children. I do remember the countless Christmas’ I would complain that I hadn’t gotten enough or exactly what I had wanted. I don’t remember my mother ever complaining once after not having received any presents from Santa Claus for the fourth year straight. I do remember thinking it was strange that Santa Claus ignored the adults under my roof.
My memory is fraught, but my memory also serves to tell me that my mother was/is nothing short of exceptional. I never questioned Santa Claus because of the lack of presents, the lack of reindeer magical dust sprinkling our driveway, or the lack of a note written by a clever non-dominant hand on Christmas morning. I questioned Santa Claus because I hated the thought of not knowing. Or knowing wrong. Or being humiliated for knowing wrong. Middle school hallways can be venomous places.
In asking my mother if Santa Claus was fake, I was asking my mother to spare me from humiliation. And she did. She knew my imagination was not worth fifth-grade venom. She was right. Yet, in telling me Santa Claus wasn’t real, she was also letting go of a child who wouldn’t stop until she was recognized as an adult. She was letting go of her child: a child who was willing herself not to be a child anymore. Although I wasn’t willing myself out of being her child, I was willing myself out of being a child, which is perhaps the same thing. I don’t know if she thought of that day as a sad day, but I do know that as I’m approaching graduation, sad days are coming. I’m that much less of a child now than I was then, and I know that if it is sad for me, it must be sad for her.
As a child, I was desperate to be an adult. Now that I’m at the cusp of adulthood, I recognize what I asked of my mother that fateful day locked in a room together. I willed her to give up a part of her, so I could try to force a part of me into being. She did it. She has done it more times than I could ever know. She undoubtedly will continue to do it.
What’s most remarkable of all is that my mom has never stopped being Santa Claus. Despite being found out, despite being let off the hook, and despite being a mother of adult children, Santa Claus has not disappeared from our chimney. He still mysteriously climbs down every Christmas Eve and deposits more joy than I could ever deserve.
Although I stopped being a child a long time ago, she never stopped being my mother.
Thank you for being my Santa Claus, my tooth fairy, my Easter bunny, but most of all, thank you for being my mom.
Questions I leave you with:
Who is your Santa Claus?
When have you wished time away?
When you wish your time away, do you wish others’ away as well?