Christmas 1949
Starla Jones
Christmas morning dawned in Irving, Texas. I prayed for a bike but Santa left me clothes. My older brother Dan got all his wishes. Outside my nine-year-old feet crunched the snow. Bare trees dangled in white icicles. The pristine snow provided a blank canvas-my sadness lifted away into a cloud drifting by in the clear blue sky. God had given me a beautiful day. Quiet starkness filled me with visions of Baby Jesus.
New to town, brotherly love flooded me. I thought of my friend Betty, an eighty-year-old Cherokee woman, living alone with her cats and memories. One day I helped her carry three sacks of groceries and she invited me to visit often to hear great stories of the Cherokee.
That morning the cats ran to me in her old kitchen-Betty lay in bed with a bad fever. I called the sheriff and Betty went to the hospital. After feeding the cats, I locked the door. The brush of an angel's wings on my face calmed my sadness.
"You've saved her life, Betty's Christmas Angel," the sheriff said. He took me to the station to get a life-size boy baby doll with a box of baby clothes and booties from Santa. I traipsed home with Bobby in my arms. Perhaps, I should have named him Jesus as he came to me on Christmas morning. I decided Bobby would do. That summer Papa bought me a secondhand blue bike for my birthday, even before Dan.
Starla Jones lives in the California foothills taming horses. When she isn't reading you can find her crafting magical stories from her childhood.
