Christmas morning...

Christmas morning...5am, a small child crawls oot of bed. He does his best to quietly creep down the stairs from his bedroon to take a look to see if Santa Claus has visited him yet. He spies the tree still lit up from the night before when he was told to go to bed many times over by his parents if he wanted Santa to come.

He sees his most asked for gift setting in front of the tree as well as stockings that have been stuffed with surprise magic by Santa himself. Knowing it is to early to wake his parents he grabs up his stocking and carries it upstairs to his room. After quietly retturning to his roon, he sits on the floor with the glow of his bedroom nightlight and with his heart pounding, peers into his stocking...

Christmas morning 5am (45 years later)... The Man wakes up and makes a sigh as he crawls out of bed early on Christamas morning. His back is slightly stiff so he eases out of bed in a sideways manner. He makes his way to the shower and tries his best to wake up. It enters his mind that he should not have been up so late the past couple of nights wrapping presents as he is getting to old to stay up late and get up early. After a quick shower he puts on his clothes and grunts as he sits up from putting on his shoes. He then goes outside into the cold morning darkness to warm up the car and hurries back inside for a few minutes. He sits in his chair and a bit short of breath, as the car engine runs outsde, and thinks to himself that he should have quit smoking a long time ago.

He then gets up and goes to the car. He pulls down the dive and into a foggy darkness. All that is really visable are the faint glows of the neighborhood Christmas lights as he makes his way to the end of his street. He thinks to himself; " How beautiful, just like when I was a kid".

6am... the man sits inside the county jail. He has signed papers and now waits. He thinks about his life and how things could have been. As his patience grows thin, as it has over the years. His mind begings to wander... He thinks to himself that perhaps he could have tried harder, spent more time at home or been a better father. As his mind then gradually takes a downward spiral, He begins to think; that maybe, just maybe... it would have been best after showering this morning to take his pistol, walk out into the backyard into the foggy darkness and free himself from this earth. Afterall, he is old, his body aches, and this is not what he really expected from his life.

He then hears his name called and the locked door buzzes. He gets up from his seat and goes to the door. He pulls the door open and his son emerges. It is Christmas day and the man's son is free to come home. The man looks into the face of his son... now he knows why he did not take that walk into the darkness this morning.

Because this Christmas morning, unlike the Christmas mornings of years past; the man's return of his son was better than any wonderment Santa could have left him.