"Christmas wedding bands...."

"I'll be home
for Christmas,
you can count on me..."

Tomorrow, I will walk into a local pawn shop - as I do each Christmas. I will ask the person behind the counter if he/she has a sense that there had been a mom, or dad, over the past few days, who'd needed to pawn something precious to them, in order to make Christmas for their children. Then I will offer to redeem that pawned item.

Later, the person behind the counter will call the owner of the item and ask them to come back and pick it up. I will not know who they are, and they will not know who I am.  This post will be the first time I've shared the details of this very private holiday tradition.  But, it has been the best gift I have given to myself - every year.

Here is why:

The year I turned 11 was especially difficult for our family. The youngest of six children had been born. Dad had been out of work for nine months, and we had lost our home.

In September, Dad found temporary work towing mobile homes cross-country. It was hard work, but he had a large family to feed.

Because we'd lost our own home earlier that year, we were living in a house that was located in a much different neighborhood. We were going to another new school and starting to make friends. Dad was away much of that fall, and in early December he left on another long trip across country. Driving a wide load tractor trailer in the middle of winter was treacherous.

Each day we listened to the weather forecast and hoped that clear skies would allow him to make good enough time to be home for Christmas.

As the other children in our neighborhood talked about the gifts they wanted for Christmas, we, too -- not realizing the financial constraints our parents were under -- asked for new bikes, train sets, a full-size play kitchen, and other childhood gifts.

Mom, being alone with six children, and having no financial support until dad returned to collect his paycheck, could be heard working late into the night. While we were in school she'd gathered orange crates from the local supermarket -- as well as stove burners, knobs, and dials from discarded appliances at the junkyard. She painted the crates, glued on knobs, dials, and burners -- turning another family's junk, into our play kitchen.

A sheet of plywood - found in an abandoned lot - became a miniature town with painted train tracks, twigs glued on for trees, and cardboard houses for neighborhoods and stores. Tiny cardboard cereal boxes with button wheels were painted and strung together to make a train set for my younger brothers.

Slowly our garage became a Santa's workshop, and her treasure bag grew.

While she prepared for Christmas in her way, we prepared for Dad's arrival. In school, each of us had learned a Christmas song that we shared with our younger brothers and sisters. That song, coupled with my new ballet/tap skills, turned us into a song-and-dance troupe that we hoped would "wow" dad on Christmas Eve.

But as Christmas grew near, weather conditions on the other coast became hazardous. Financial constraints prohibited phone calls, so each day we watched and waited, practiced and built.

But no matter how resourceful Mom was at the junkyard, she couldn't come up with the two-wheeler bikes my sister and I dreamed of.

On Christmas Eve, we vowed that we would not go to sleep until we knew that Dad had made it home. But somewhere between Bing Crosby crooning, "The Little Drummer Boy," and "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." we dozed off.

The next morning we woke up and quickly gathered the rest of our brothers and sisters. We ran into the front room, and there on the sofa, still in his work clothes, was Dad. Mom was asleep, with her head on his knee.

The Christmas tree had presents under it, but none were as important to us as the picture of our parents sleeping. When they woke up - to our noisy shushing of the younger children, we performed our Christmas songs, to the generous applause of our parents.

We opened our gifts, and each one drew breathless surprise - a homemade kitchen set, the miniature plywood town with it's painted cardboard trains, bowling pins made from felt-covered cardboard tubing filled with dry beans, a hand sewn ball for the baby, doll clothes remade from our too-worn-for-hand-me-down clothing.

Soon we were bustled off to the kitchen for breakfast. Mom asked me to get the milk from the refrigerator, but there was none to be found. With feigned surprise she said she must have left it in the cold, on the back porch. I headed for the back door, but instead of finding a gallon of milk, there were two beautiful new bicycles.

No one was more surprised than our dad. He just stared at Mom's glowing face. I don't think I had even seen her look so happy or so beautiful as that day, sitting at the kitchen table with chin in her hands and her eyes on us.

It would be years before I would notice that her engagement and wedding rings were missing from her hand. They had been pawned, so that she could surprise us with the bikes we'd dreamed of.

For a very long time, I couldn't understand why it had made her so happy to give up the beautiful rings she loved. Rings that had been given to her by someone she loved.  Rings that she had never been able to get back.

That was until my 16th Christmas. It was the first time I had held a full-time job, and I had saved up enough money to buy a beautiful dress for the Christmas dance at school. I had seen it in the shop window for three months, and after receiving my paycheck, I could finally go and pick it up.

On the way there, with my every penny in hand, I passed the jewelers. Suddenly, I noticed the wedding bands sparkling in the shop window. They were more beautiful to me than anything I had ever seen. I walked in and picked out a very modest gold band for my mom, without giving that dress another thought.

That Christmas, I sat with my chin in my hands, watched with a smile on my face - and finally understood.

offered with Love,

Kate

If the substance of this story sounds familiar, it first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor in the late 1980s.