It's okay to know

Crazy Cat Woman's recent post brought a flash of memory back for me.


Second grade. The day after Christmas. I'm in the living room with my five younger siblings, playing with my brand new, already-beloved Crissy doll with luxurious! growing! hair!

My mom's out shopping. My dad's upstairs on a ladder smearing drywall mud on the ceiling of my soon-to-be-finished new bedroom, which I'll share with two of my sisters.

I'm pulling Crissy's red ponytail in and out of the little hole at the top of her head. Her hairstyle changes from boy haircut to chin-length bob to all-the-way-down-the-back in a matter of seconds. I adore this doll. For several months before Christmas, I'd put a pillow under my shirt when my sisters and I "played dolls." I'd been awaiting the birth of baby Crissy.

So I'm playing in the middle of the living room when, for no clear reason, I'm struck by this thought: There's no Santa. There's NO Santa. I know it as surely as I've known anything in my eight years. A second before, I didn't know it. Now I do.

Nobody's told me. Kids at school haven't hinted about it. Older cousins haven't snickered at my enthusiasm for Santa. Still, somehow, I just suddenly know he's not real.

I place Crissy under the tree and tiptoe to the green couch. I'm trembling. All my brothers and sisters are joyfully playing with their new toys, oblivious to my turmoil. I'm sorry for them, for their not knowing. And jealous of them, of their not knowing.

I sit quietly, hands folded, for a long time. I'm deeply sad. And, somehow, full of guilt. Finally, I decide that I'd better make sure I'm correct. I climb the stairs to my dad, and stand under his huge ladder.

"Daddy," I say. "I have to ask you something."

"Yeah?" he says, still focusing on the ceiling.

I lower my voice to make sure the little kids don't hear me. "Um, umm...is Santa really real?"

He stops mid-smear and looks down, his mud-speckled face pained. "Why do you ask that?"

"I don't know. I just think maybe he's not real."

My dad's (usual) response: "I think you need to ask your mother when she gets home."

I go back to the green couch, too nervous to play with Crissy.

My mom arrives, refreshed from a little trip without her six young children in tow. Her face changes, though, when she sees me. We go back to her bedroom and close the door. By now, I'm crying.

Because I know there's no Santa. Because I know I've (magically?) figured out something I'm not supposed to know. Because I don't want to know. Because I feel different from the little kids now.

My mom hugs me and wipes my eyes and tells me that she was eight years old herself when she figured it all out. That it's okay to know. That I have a special role from now on: helping her make Christmas magical for the little kids.


That was the last Christmas I asked for a doll. Crissy's still my all-time favorite Christmas gift, and she's the only doll my mom saved from all those years of four little girls playing dolls.