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Santa on the roof

Started by n/a, December 18, 2000, 18:54 hrs

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n/a

Christmas is a time for telling stories and sharing memories, so here's one of mine.



I grew up on a farm in western Oklahoma, and when I was about six or so, I got to see Santa on the roof. And Rudolph too.



After a big dinner on Christmas Eve with Grandma and Grandpa there to spoil us, my sister and I were so wound up with excitement that the house could barely contain us. We pestered our parents continously with the usual, "When is Santa going to be here? When is Santa going to be here?" until finally my dad said, "Well, why don't we go out and look for him? We can take the car and see if we can see his sleigh on the way."



"That's a great idea," Mom said.



So off we went, bundled up and nearly bursting on that cold moonless night. My dad drove slowly down the rutted dirt roads, pointing out stars and asking us if they were Santa.



Obviously they weren't. We grew tired of that game in a hurry. As our excitement began to wane into disappointment, Dad had another idea.



"Maybe we should go back and park on the hill and wait for him to land on the roof," he suggested. "We can see him good from there."



That sounded like a pretty good idea to us. So we drove through the pasture to the top of the hill above our house.



Dad turned off the car lights. "If he sees us, he might not even stop," he explained.



So we waited, our eyes to the north. We watched the sky, we sang Jingle Bells, we saw shooting stars, we sang about Rudolph, we chattered about what we hoped to get for Christmas.... And we waited. The night and the darknesss stretched out forever around us.



"You guys aren't watching," Dad said after our eyes had strayed too long from the northern sky. "I think we must have missed him. You know he's in a really big hurry with all the kids he has to visit. Or maybe you weren't very good this year and so he didn't--"



We groaned to shut off the very idea.



"I think we better go on home," he said. "You guys really need to get to bed. Maybe if you behave he'll show up next year."  That made us groan again. "He's kidding," I told my sister.



But he started up the car. Of course we pressed our faces to the window for one last desperate look, and as the car swung around in a big circle in the pasture--I saw something.



Not in the sky, but on the roof of the house. A light!



My sister saw it too. "Daddy, Daddy!" she screamed in my ear.



He slammed on the brakes. "It's Santa!" my sister shrieked.



"Where?" Dad asked.



"On the roof! Look! Look!"



There wasn't just one light, there were two. One looked like a flashlight bobbing around on the roof's peak, the other was a flashy red glow on the side of the roof at the very edge of the car's headlights. In fact, the red light seemed to shimmer and dance in place much like the car as it idled there on the hill.



"It's Rudolph," my sister whispered in ecstacy.



"Why does Santa need a flashlight?" I asked.



"Well, I guess he's not Superman," Dad said. "I hope that is Santa, it could be a burglar."



"Oh, Daddy. Can't you see Rudolph's red nose?"



Then the lights began to move--first the red light, dipping and swaying toward the peak of the roof, with the white light behind it moving in a straighter line. Then the white light seemed to fly way high in the air and vanish, then reappear again just for an instant halfway down the roof. The red light by then had disappeared.



The roof was suddenly dark and empty.



"Ouch," Dad said softly.



"Where did he go, Daddy? Is he gone?"



"He took off," I said. "Didn't you see it?"



Dad started up the car without saying anything. I don't remember that he said anything all the way home, but I wasn't paying that much attention. Santa had been there. I had seen him.



And when we got home, in the excitement of all those presents spread out like jewels under the tree, the torn knee in Grandpa's pants barely registered. He was smiling, that was the main thing.



Everyone was smiling.





                  *****

 















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