An Exchange of Gifts

by Diane Rayner, Bellevue, Washington

Copied from Guideposts, December 1983 Issue

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

little Child.

Christmas to me has always been a time of

enchantment, and never more so than the year

that 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 holiday approached,

our spirits were light, not to be dampened even by the

winter rains that swept down Puget Sound to douse our

home and make 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 that he never complained about.

For weeks I'd 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, and 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, spending not 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'd

found each other in the springtime, they were seldom

apart. If you called to one, you got them both.

Their world was in the meadow, a horse pasture

broken by a small winding stream, where the boys caught

frogs and snakes, where they'd search for arrowheads or

hidden treasure; or where they'd spend an afternoon

feeding peanuts to the squirrels.

Times were hard for our little family, and we had to

do some scrimping to get by. With my job as a meat

wrapper and with a lot of ingenuity around the trailer,

we managed to have elegance on a shoestring. But not

Kenny's family. They were desperately poor, and his

mother was having a real struggle 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 would

whisper 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 carefully wiping his hands on a dish towel,

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 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 settled in. 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 lefse 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 pocket.

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 tiptoes, shoes

squishing; open the screen door just a crack;

the gift placed on the doorstep; then a deep breath,

a reach for the doorbell and a press on it hard.

Quickly Marty turned, ran down the steps and across the

yard in a wild race 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 tingled 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 beginning to blister

on his face from his mouth to his ear. Quickly I

treated the blister and, with a warm cup of cocoa soothing

him, 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 while on

the purest kind of Christmas mission, doing what the

Lord wants us all 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.

But 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

and gesturing and chattering away, Marty

was not cocking his head. When 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

remain thankful to God for the good exchange of gifts

that was made that night.

So you see, strange and wonderful 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.

 

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