The Coral Gables Times

Nineteen Stockings by the Being a parent, too, the famous novelist rejoices in the

THIS IS THE HOUR, unique in the whole year. Twenty-seven times the calendar has rolled around the circle of months to this hour of Christmas Eve. It is always the same and always different. The blessed sameness is in the old house, which is our home, and the Christmas tree, the gifts piled beneath it ready for tomorrow; it is in the quiet of the night when all are asleep except the two—or, as now, the one, myself; it is in the great stone chimney piece by which I sit and the row of stockings hanging there. There have always been the stockings at this hour. The only difference has been in the number and the sizes. They are limp and empty at this moment, but I shall fill them. And while I fill them, my mind, as always, goes back over the years when in this room, by this chimney piece, we have filled the children's stockings. It is the final preparation for Christmas. Even when the children grew big enough to scoff at Santa Claus, even when they were big enough to go away to school and then to college, we never let them share this last hour of Christmas Eve and the filling of the stockings. This was our hour, the hour of recall and reflection, of private laughter and tenderness. We remembered, as I remember tonight, the incidents which made up the year so soon to be ended. We compared the children of this year with what they were the year before, the stockings bigger. How can boys have such enormous feet? Have we enough to fill them? These were annual cries. We always had enough, however big the feet were. And how small they were at first! There are still small ones, and the smallest now belongs to the newest baby, the tiny son of my daughter. And the row of stockings grows longer, five little stockings belonging to five little boys, and three little stockings belonging to three little girls, all the children of my children, hanging between the long stockings of their mothers and the big-footed socks of their fathers. Here beside my chair are piled the gifts that I shall put into the stockings. The logs are blazing in the fireplace, and in the library next to the living room someone who should be in bed is playing Christmas carols softly, with the sweet intent, I am sure, of keeping me from being lonely. For I refuse to have anyone with me now for this hour. The tradition in our house has been that on Christmas Eve, for stockings, the parents are Santa Claus. Nineteen piles of gifts on the floor beside me—each carefully wrapped, the size commensurate to the stocking. Inexpensive gifts, of course, amusing rather than valuable, but I like to put one unexpected gift into each stocking, something small enough to fit the toe, but unusual enough to inspire the last search. A ring for a girl who thought she would not get a ring this year, a pair of earrings for a young mother who lost an earring last summer when a baby tugged it off and threw it in the grass, a gold pencil for the young man with a new job, a silver spoon for the middle-sized baby who believes she can feed herself better than parent or grandparent can do it, widespread food notwithstanding, a watch for a little boy who has just learned to tell time—such things are the treasures. EVERYTHING is wrapped and if possible—my time permitting, that is—a nonsense verse or a message of love goes with each gift. Some years I am full of verses, on other years I cannot find a rhyme, however I search my brain. The children, large and small, take me as I come, and they are philosophical about it. Children learn to be philosophical about their parents, for which I am grateful. It is a holy experience to receive into one's arms a newborn human being, but sometimes I think that the highest experience of all is to look a full-grown man or woman in the face and recognize the mature human being that once was the newborn child. A new communication is established and upon equal terms. The satisfaction, the sheer human comfort of it! Next to the primary love between man and woman, I know of no other emotion as deep as that which parents feel when they know their children are grown men and women ready to take their share in life's work. The babies' stockings are full