Editor’s Note – Because this is a holiday week, our Relationships post has been written by our Sense and Centsibility author, Jenn Wallis. It’s a Christmas parenting story. About Santa.
For years, we went to great lengths to make sure my oldest son Kyle kept believing that Santa is real. After he would go to sleep on Christmas Eve, my husband Justin would get out one of his Doc Marten’s boots from the 90’s (that he still wears – but that’s fodder for another blog) and imprint the sole into the fireplace ash and on the hearth, as proof that Santa had come down the chimney. Justin would even go out into the driveway and make a few muddy reindeer hoof prints. We’d take bites out of the cookies and pour out a little of the milk to look like Santa had sipped it (it had been sitting out for hours, after all).
I can’t quite remember what I got for Christmas last year. Or the year before. And definitely not the year before that.
In fact, for the most part I can’t remember what I got for Christmas for the last ten years. (No offense to my husband I promise.) I can however, remember what I got for Christmas when I was six years old.
You see, those gifts changed my life. I remember finding them in my mother’s closet…
I had waited until she was asleep on the couch to go poking through her room. I knew my presents were in there because she had forbidden me from setting foot anywhere near her small closet about a week before. I might have been six, but I wasn’t an idiot; something was hiding in there.
