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Every
Christmas Eve when I was small my father and I would
take the subway to downtown Manhattan and go shopping
for presents for my mother, my aunt, my friends, my
teacher, and other important persons in my life.
These were special, even magical times. Everything
was decorated for Christmas. The windows of the
stores up and down Fifth Avenue were magnificent, and
some even had whole mechanical villages that moved or a
mechanical Santa that waved. It was almost always
cold, and the nighttime streets were crowded with
smiling people carrying beautifully wrapped packages,
the women in furs and the men in overcoats with velvet
collars. Thinking back on it now after more than
fifty years, it seems to me that I could see the joy in
people shining in the streets. Christmas music
poured out of every open doorway. In my memory, it
is always lightly snowing, and everyone had snowflakes
on their coats and in their hair.
We would start at Rockefeller Plaza and stare in awe at
the enormous, beautifully decorated tree, debating
whether this year's decorations were more beautiful than
last. They always were. We would watch the
skaters for a while. And the we would move slowly
down Fifth Avenue, stopping in every store, thinking of
the people I loved, one at a time, looking at many, many
things until I found just the right one for each of
them.
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At some point during the evening, my father
would hand me his big gold pocket watch and tell me that
when it chimed I was to come and meet him right where we
were standing, and then I would go off alone in whatever
store we were in to find his present. While I was
gone, my father would do a little shopping of his own.
I got to stay up late, far later than my
usual bedtime, and it was often close to midnight when
we got home, our arms filled with boxes, each of which
had been specially wrapped at the store. My mother
always had cocoa waiting, and we would show her the
beautiful boxes and tell her about the wonderful things
we had found for everyone--but not, of course, what we
had found for her.
It was a chance to think about each one of my beloved
people, who they were and what might make them
glad. I remember the indescribable feeling of
finding each present and the joy of recognizing it as
just the very thing. There was much pleasure in
choosing the paper and ribbon and watching it wrapped in
a way that was as special as the person it was
for. I loved finding these presents. It made
me feel very lucky.
In thinking back, I realize that I never actually saw
many of these presents opened. They would be
mailed away or left under other people's Christmas
trees. Somehow this never mattered. The
important moment wasn't in the opening, or in the
thanking. The important thing was the blessing of
having someone to love.
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