scribblechic

This holiday tradition above all others is perhaps my favorite; wishes stretched into words. I can see each child’s age clearly in the evolution of their penmanship and the colorful missteps of uncertain spelling; personalities as certain as their signatures in each messenger of memories.

This year, my daughter drafted a wish that is a most wonderful work of fiction; an impossible request that celebrates her confidence in magic. It is the second year I have wondered at the vastness of her faith while embracing the certainty of her impending disappointment.

It must be said that my children ask for little, they navigate need and want in a language my husband and I first shaped for them. The holidays are steeped in tradition over extravagance and togetherness over selfishness. We temper our wants with logic, but in these letters to Santa there is an expectation of magic that invites the impossible.

As my daughter sounded out her dream last night in lines drenched with hope, I hesitated to guide her pen. To critique her wish would cast judgement and to contrive to manipulate her wants would only postpone the inevitable reality of unavoidable disappointment. Instead, I let my daughter send her wish, knowing it would be met with a measure of heartache, and crafted my own wish into words.

Sweet Girl, One day I hope you see magic in the love that guards your dreams. I hope you live in possibility with eyes that see potential where others see limitations. Mostly, I hope your faith is always greater than your doubts, your joy greater than your disappointments. Love, Mom

This holiday my favorite gift was the product of disappointment. It began when my daughter first drafted a letter to Santa asking for a pet bunny. Her words were carefully drawn and conscientiously void of spelling errors; she elaborated over important details and wrapped her request in an elegantly fashioned envelope that was sealed with faith in magic.

At my first opportunity to interfere with her wish I consciously held each rational word to myself. It would have been simple to undermine her request and direct her to a more attainable dream, but the moment begged silence in place of reason; instead I dwelled on the accomplishment between the lines of her letter. The clarity of her perfectly formed letters and tidy punctuation.

The letter itself is a time capsule of my daughter’s dreams and literacy. Gone were the hurried, phonetic scribbles adorned with artwork that had always marked her creative individuality and youth. In place was a more mature and lovingly intentional letter that bound us to a new moment in time.

Throughout the month of December my daughter’s anticipation increased in proportion to each calendar day. On the eve of Christmas morning, I was as quiet in my doubt as my daughter was joyful in her faith. My sleep was interrupted with my daughter’s dreams and I wished fervently for the impossible to delay disappointment.

Christmas morning a toy bunny sat motionless beside the tree and a letter of explanation rested beside the lovingly fashioned treats that had been sampled in our sleep. I gauged my daughter’s reaction through the camera lens, looking for signs of her response.

The note simply stated the practicalities of traveling across the world with an animal unsuited for extreme weather while acknowledging my daughter’s maturity. Somewhere between the lines of explanation I saw the first light of a most genuinely pleased smile spark behind my daughter’s eyes.

When she looked up it was with joy and content resignation to say: It is enough that he understood. It was a gift that was born of innocence and maturity, faith and frustration; a moment I could not singlehandedly purchase or craft and a culmination of days unorchestrated but informed by the promise of wishing without the certainty of knowing.