Dear Santa(4)

“I lost my boyfriend and my best friend. Losing Brian isn’t so bad, but Celeste? I have lots of friends, but Celeste and I were so close. We shared everything. I just didn’t expect to have to share my boyfriend.”

“The two of them deserve each other,” her mother said.

Lindy expected her mother to champion her.

“As far as I’m concerned, Brian isn’t half the man we thought he was,” her mother continued. “It’s painful for you now…I remember…” She paused.

    “You remember what?”

Her mother’s eyes darkened with sadness. “I remember how I felt when your birth father walked out on me…It seemed as if the entire world had collapsed around me. As soon as he learned I was pregnant with you, he took off for the hills. He couldn’t get away fast enough.”

“Oh, Mom,” Lindy whispered. Looking at it from her mother’s point of view, Lindy had gotten off lucky.

Scooting back her chair, Ellen gestured for Lindy to remain where she was. “There’s something I want to show you.”

“Show me?”

“Something that will make you feel better.”

While that sounded promising, Lindy wasn’t sure anything her mother had to show her would lift her spirits from this funk.

Her mother disappeared and returned a few minutes later. With a big smile, she handed Lindy a child-size shoe box.

“What’s that?” she asked, genuinely puzzled, not knowing what to expect.

Her mother’s face glowed with excitement. “I went through some of those boxes I packed away in the garage years ago and found this. I’ve been saving it to show you. These, my precious daughter, are your letters to Santa.”

“While they might amuse me, Mom, I doubt they will do anything to take away this ache in my heart.”

    “I think you might be surprised,” her mother insisted. “Now, open it up and read the first letter.”

Lindy couldn’t imagine anything she’d written back when she’d believed in Santa had the power to influence her life now.

“Trust me,” her mother whispered. “Read the one on the top. You wrote it when you were five.”

“This is silly.” Still, she couldn’t help being curious.

“Don’t be so sure,” her mother said, with a twinkle in her eye.





CHAPTER TWO





Lindy had a hard time believing her childhood letters to Santa had any significance to her current messy life. Nevertheless, she was curious, and reached for the letter at the top of the box.

Opening the envelope, she pulled a single sheet from inside and spread it out on the table. In her childish, awkward print, she’d written:

    Dear Santa,

Please bring me a daddy.

Lindy



Lindy glanced at her mother and smiled. “I didn’t ask for toys? I can remember wanting a bike around that time.”

    “That came later. All you wanted that Christmas was a dad.”

“I don’t remember any of this.”

“Honey, you were only five. You’d started kindergarten, and for the first time noticed that the other children had fathers and you didn’t.”

Lindy shook her head. She had little recollection of that Christmas. What she did remember was that bike. As she thought back, she realized her mother was right in that all she had asked for was a dad.

“I remember when I read your letter. No way was I going to be able to give you a father. My heart sank,” her mother said. “The only man I’d ever loved had left me. I hadn’t heard from him since the day I told him I was pregnant. Through some friends of mine, I learned he’d married someone else shortly after you were born.”

“We were far better off without him.” Lindy believed that with all her heart. She wouldn’t have had the father who loved and raised her if this sperm donor had stuck around, although at the time she understood how his rejection must have badly hurt her mother. Over the years, Lindy hadn’t wondered about him herself. Because she was loved by the dad who’d adopted her, she’d never felt the need to know anything about the man responsible for her birth.

“We are much better off,” her mother agreed. “Of all the things you might have asked for, a father was the one thing I couldn’t give you. It broke my heart.”

    “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry.”

“You need to understand. That year, Christmas was bleak. My parents left to spend the holidays with my brother in Kansas, and it was just the two of us. With everything in me, I wanted to make this special for you, because you were going to miss Gamma and Papa.”

Lindy knew how dearly her mother loved Christmas, and how hard it must have been for her to be alone, instead of with her family. And then Lindy had to ask for the one thing her mother couldn’t provide.



* * *



—

Relaxing against the back of the chair, Ellen’s memories returned to that fateful Christmas. With her parents gone, she was alone over the holidays for the first time in her life. She’d done everything she could think of to make it as perfect as she could for her little girl. With a single income, making ends meet was difficult.