An Exchange Of Gifts

I grew up believing that Christmas was a time when strange and
wonderful things happened; when wise and royal visitors came
riding, when at midnight the barnyard animals talked to one another,
and in the light of a fabulous star, God came down to us as a baby.
Christmas to me has always been a time of enchantment, and
never more so than the year when my son Marty was eight.

That was the year that my children and I moved into a cozy trailer
home in a forested area just outside of Redmond, Washington.
As the holidays approached, our spirits were light, undampened
even by the winter rains that swept down Puget Sound, dousing
our home and making our floors muddy.

Throughout that December, Marty had been the most spirited,
and busiest of us all. He was my youngest; a cheerful boy,
blond-haired and playful, with a quaint habit of looking up at
you and cocking his head like a puppy when you talked to him.
Actually, the reason for this was that Marty was deaf in his
left ear, but it was a condition which he never complained about.

For weeks, I had been watching Marty. I knew that something
was going on with him that he was not telling me about. I saw
how eagerly he made his bed, took out the trash, carefully set
the table and helped Rick and Pam prepare dinner before I
got home from work. I saw how he silently collected his tiny
allowance and tucked it away, not spending a cent of it. I had
no idea what all this quiet activity was about, but I suspected
that somehow it had something to do with Kenny.

Kenny was Marty's friend, and ever since they found each
other in the springtime, they were seldom apart. If you called
to one, you got them both. Their world was in a meadow, a
pasture broken by a small winding stream, where the boys
caught frogs and snakes, where they searched for arrowheads
or hidden treasure, or where they would spend an afternoon
feeding squirrels peanuts.

Times were hard for our little family, and we had scrimped
and saved to get by. With my job as a meat wrapper and with
a lot of ingenuity around the trailer, we managed to have
some elegance on a shoestring. But not Kenny's family.
They were desperately poor, and his mother struggled to
feed and clothe her two children. They were a good, solid
family. But Kenny's mom was a proud woman, very proud,
and she had strict rules.

How we worked, as we did each year, to make our home
festive for the holiday! Ours was a handcrafted Christmas
of gifts hidden away and ornaments strung about the place.

Marty and Kenny would sometimes sit still at the table long
enough to help make cornucopias or weave little baskets
for the tree. But then, in a flash, one whispered to the
other, and they would be out the door and sliding cautiously
under the electric fence into the horse pasture that separated
our home from Kenny's.

One night, shortly before Christmas, when my hands were
deep in Peppernoder dough, shaping tiny nutlike Danish
cookies heavily spiced with cinnamon, Marty came to me
and said in a tone mixed with pleasure and pride, "Mom,
I've bought Kenny a Christmas present. Want to see it?"

So that's what he's been up to, I said to myself.

"It's something he's wanted for a long, long time, Mom."

After wiping his hands on a dish towel carefully, he pulled
from his pocket a small box. Lifting the lid, I gazed at the
pocket compass that my son had been saving all those
allowances to buy. A little compass to point an eight-year-old
adventurer through the woods.

"It's a lovely gift, Martin," I said, but even as I spoke, a
disturbing thought came to mind. I knew how Kenny's
mother felt about their poverty. They could barely afford
to exchange gifts among themselves, and giving presents
to others was out of the question. I was sure that Kenny's
proud mother would not permit her son to receive something
that he could not return in kind.

Gently, carefully, I talked over the problem with Marty. He
understood what I was saying. "I know, Mom, I know!....
But what if it was a secret? What if they never found out
who gave it?"

I didn't know how to answer him. I just didn't know.

The day before Christmas was rainy and cold and gray.
The three kids and I all but fell over one another as we
elbowed our way about our little home, putting finishing
touches on Christmas secrets and preparing for family and
friends who would be dropping by.

Night came. The rain continued. I looked out the window
over the sink and felt an odd sadness. How mundane the
rain seemed for a Christmas Eve! Would wise and royal
men come riding on such a night? I doubted it. It seemed
to me that strange and wonderful things happened only on
clear nights, nights when one could at least see a star in the
heavens.

I turned from the window, and as I checked on the ham and
bread warming in the oven, I saw Marty slip out the door. He
wore his coat over his pajamas, and he clutched a tiny,
colorfully wrapped box in his hand.

Down through the soggy pasture he went, then a quick
slide under the electric fence and across the yard to Kenny's
house. Up the steps on tiptoe, shoes squishing, he opened
the screen door just a crack; placed the gift on the doorstep,
took a deep breath, and reached for the doorbell, and pressed
on it hard.

Quickly Marty turned, ran down the steps and across the yard
in a wild effort to get away unnoticed. Then, suddenly, he
banged into the electric fence.

The shock sent him reeling. He lay stunned on the wet ground.
His body quivered and he gasped for breath. Then slowly, weakly,
confused and frightened, he began the grueling trip back home.

"Marty," we cried as he stumbled through the door, "what
happened?" His lower lip quivered, his eyes brimmed.

"I forgot about the fence, and it knocked me down!"

I hugged his muddy little body to me. He was still dazed and
there was a red mark blistering on his face from his mouth to
his ear. Quickly I treated the blister and, with a warm cup of
cocoa, Marty's bright spirits returned. I tucked him into bed
and just before he fell asleep, he looked up at me and
said, "Mom, Kenny didn't see me. I'm sure he didn't see me."

That Christmas Eve I went to bed unhappy and puzzled. It
seemed such a cruel thing to happen to a little boy on the
purest kind of Christmas mission, doing what the Lord wants
us to do - giving to others - and giving in secret at that. I
did not sleep well that night. Somewhere deep inside I think I
must have been feeling the disappointment that the night of
Christmas had come and it had been just an ordinary,
problem-filled night, no mysterious enchantment at all.

However, I was wrong.

By morning the rain had stopped and the sun shone. The
streak on Marty's face was very red, but I could tell that the
burn was not serious. We opened our presents, and soon,
not unexpectedly, Kenny was knocking on the door, eager
to show Marty his new compass and tell about the mystery of
its arrival. It was plain that Kenny didn't suspect Marty at all,
and while the two of them talked, Marty just smiled and smiled.

Then I noticed that while the two boys were comparing their
Christmases, nodding, gesturing and chattering away,
Marty was not cocking his head. While Kenny was talking,
Marty seemed to be listening with his deaf ear. Weeks
later, a report came from the school nurse, verifying what
Marty and I already knew. "Marty now has complete hearing
in both ears."

The mystery of how Marty regained his hearing, and still
has it, remains just that - a mystery. Doctors suspect, of course,
that the shock from the electric fence was somehow responsible.
Perhaps so. Whatever the reason, I just remained thankful to
God for the good exchange of gifts made that night.

So you see, strange and wondrful things still happen on the
night of our Lord's birth. And one does not have to have a clear
night, either, to follow a fabulous star.

Diane Rayner.