December 2014 – Alex Woodard

I took the Christmas tree down last night…

I took the Christmas tree down last night. It’s the same little tree that stood up proud in the back of my truck as I drove down Highway 101, on the way to our For The Sender Holiday Show at the Belly Up. I lost about half of the ornaments on that short trip along the coast, and by the time the tree was loaded back up to come home after the show, it had been a long night and all I wanted to do was get in the truck and drive.

As I headed back north, I could see the shadow of an ornament in my rearview mirror, hanging on furiously to one of the top limbs. The wind coming off the ocean met the drag from the truck and the shadow whipped around and around and around, but I could make out the shape. It was a tiny surfboard, emblazoned with ‘Ma ‘n Pa’s Grocery’ on the top, which was the little store down the block from where I grew up. I gave a silent prayer for the old ornament to hang on and I don’t know why I didn’t stop, but I didn’t. I knew it would probably be gone by the time I got home.

Which it was. Over the next couple of weeks when I’d take out a saddle or a bridle from the back of the truck I’d check the crevices of the bed just to be sure, because the ornament was sort of a historical marker to my past. But it was gone, likely resting in a gutter on 101, so I had to let it go.

Probably just as well, because this Christmas was different for me. My family’s flights into town were canceled several times so I was on my own for the first time and struggling with the idea of letting go of someone close to me, which I still am, and sometimes all you can do to lessen that kind of pain is hope for a change in the season. And so last night, when my mom asked me when I usually took the Christmas tree down, I said, ‘Now.’

When the tangled lights and ornaments were put away and the needles swept up, I dragged the proud little tree out to the curb. A stray something or other caught my eye as I turned to walk away and I bent down to pull whatever this debris was still clinging from the small branches.

My breath caught for a moment and I gently took the small wooden surfboard from the fingers of the tree to my own.

Maybe some things don’t ever let go once they take hold.

That’s ok by me.

“Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

Last year around this time I was on a plane when a little girl in a puffy pink jacket became what will be my eternal Christmas reminder.

Maybe she can be the same for you, too.

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“Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

The question came last night from the little girl in a puffy pink jacket sitting next to me. She had been in my seat by the window when I boarded the plane and I had told her as much, so she fumbled with her seatbelt and had already slid over to the aisle before I realized how Grinch-like it was for me to tell her she was in my seat. She probably wanted to look outside.

So I asked her if she wanted to sit by the window and she said yes please and thank you and scooted back over. I settled into the seat next to her as she pulled out a beat-up Hershey’s chocolate bar from her coat pocket. She unwrapped it, broke off half, and held it out to me.

“Do you want to share?”

She introduced me to her stuffed animal and we spent the flight playing Rock Paper Scissors and talking about the important things. She asked me if I was married and then why I wasn’t. She guessed my age and I guessed her’s. I showed her a picture of my horse and she asked me if I was sure my horse wasn’t really a camel.

She asked me if believed in Santa and told me she’d asked him for three things: to be good, to be able to study hard, and to be with her mama forever. But she knew she was getting something else too, because she had peeked in a bag her mama had brought home a few days ago.

She asked me what the tallest mountain in the world is and I said I thought it was Mt. Everest.

“Do you think God sits on top of it and watches over me and everyone?”

I sat there for a second, looking at this little girl whose face was shining and curious and real and beautiful and so full of promise and gratitude and sharing and love and all these things I think I’ve sometimes lost. All these things that were now being given back to me by this angel sitting in seat 7E.

And I told her yes, yes I think He probably does.

The plane touched down and rolled to a stop and she crawled over me into the aisle. As she started to walk away she turned back to say that it was nice talking to me and she hoped I’d have a Merry Christmas.

And then she was gone.

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

If he can look like a little girl in a puffy pink jacket, then yes.

I do.

For the Sender Holiday show profiled on Examiner.com

Is a letter for the receiver or “For the Sender”?

Confronting loss and heartache is difficult enough but to write a letter then share your personal beautiful memories, aspirations and heartache is quite another. For the Sender, a book and album created in 2012 by Alex Woodard consists of inspirational true-life stories of hope, love, loss and remembrance. A tribute to life and love the “For the Sender” letters are nostalgic, somber, healing, most of all written with love – appreciative of the blessings to have had the time and experience.