..'Twas the night before Christmas

Growing up, I never knew of Santa other than in the colorful pages of Gold Key comics that my mother would buy so we could read about lives of Richie Rich and Audrey. I probably spent more time over the inside back cover that had fascinating things like 'xray glasses' and 'spy telescope'. All you had to do was collect these little Gold Key's at the top corner of the back cover and mail them in to some distant place in the USA and they would send you these things. Surely this guy Santa lived in the USA. So I collected they keys assiduously. At the rate at which we bought comics I would be just about ready now to mail in my required 200 odd keys that you needed for that spy telescope ,just in time to place under the Christmas tree for my son.

But we did celebrate Christmas. Every Christmas morning as far back as I can recall, at my mother's insistence my siblings and I would go out into the garden and pick out flowers to make into a bouquet to take down to the 'Fathers' and 'Sisters' at our school. For some unknown reason I would insist my bouquet have some giant fruit in the middle, a pear, an apple, a guava...did they actually tear into the bouquet to get to the fruit wedged in there ? I wonder what possessed me to want this piece de resistance in the middle.

"Make sure you find them and give it to them personally and wish them a Merry Christmas, don't just leave it in the church office, it's like Diwali for them, you have to wish them." she would yell after us, as we rode off into the misty winter morning.

Today I yield to the pressures of gift buying,card mailing and tree decorating for no reason other than wanting to create memories with him that will last him a lifetime, so he doesn't feel left out and isolated. In a land of less than 2% Christians devoid of any of the retail trappings of Christmas she knew what the holiday was about. I can only hope I am half the person she was.

For some reason this Christmas has brought on a tone of sadness probably more than any other in the past. Maybe because I realize that this is probably the last Christmas that my son will believe in Santa. I have seen the signs, "Ashton,said Santa was really his Dad, are you sure you aren't just lying to me ?"

Much as I would like to believe otherwise, growing up isn't optional..I will miss the "Wake up, Santa has been here !" at 5 am and the light in his eyes seeing the presents under the tree.

There but for the grace of God...

I spent the day at a spinal trauma hospital meeting with employees who are soon to be clients of my business. As I sat there in the family waiting area for the meeting to begin I watched the activity around me. Patients and their families struggling with the trauma of crippling spinal injuries, often a result of violent accidents. People learning to use walkers, patients learning to control 150 lb motorized wheelchairs, famlies walking a few steps behind them their eyes filling with tears as they struggled to control the emotions that threatened to overwhelm them. Here it was the day before Thanksgiving and they were learning to lead a whole new life as or with a person with severe disabilities, that in most cases, would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

What karmic twist of fate had chosen these people to be destined to spend the rest of their lives in a wheelchair? What spared the rest of us ?

As I walked out into the brisk air of a cold winter morning I saw a little boy not much older than my own son fiddling with the controls of his father's wheelchair saying "let me show you how it's done."

I knew what I had to be thankful for the next day around the dinner table.