The Stocking

My Christmas stocking was handmade and passed down to me from my mother. Due to the fact that my mother was a child during the depression years, the stocking was small. Everything, including the world, was a lot smaller in those days. Now, this stocking was a green and yellow plaid cotton - nothing like the bright red stockings belonging to my friends.

"You don't need a new stocking." Dad said, "This one is special. It was your mother's when she was a little girl. Appreciate it."

This didn't particularily impress me as it was a lot easier to believe in Santa Claus than to believe that My Mother was ever a little girl. I started to worry. Santa would be looking for a red, Christmasy stocking and wouldn't notice mine, especially in the dark. Or worse, he would notice it and would think, "Well, obviously this little girl doesn't take Christmas seriously." Either way, awful visions of an empty green plaid stocking loomed in my imagination, haunted my childish dreams.

I tried to avert disaster. I regaled every store santa I met with a detailed description: "It doesn't look like a stocking, but it is." I had my mother write letters to the North Pole. I drew a chalk arrow on the floor pointing to where my stocking would hang at the foot of my bed. But, despite all my careful preparations, empty stocking syndrome possessed me that year. It was one worried four year old who went to bed that Christmas Eve in 1958.

The next morning dawned silent as large, fat flakes of snow drifted down outside my window. I snuggled deeper under my blankets until reality hit. Then I peered down to the end of my bed, and saw that my worst nightmare had come true. There hung the green plaid stocking - limp, forlorn - Empty! How could Santa have done this to a little girl, especially to a little girl who had been (mostly) good all year? I crept cautiously out of my bed, fearful that he may have omitted the presents under the tree too. As I grasped my bedroom door knob, I heard the sound of jingle bells. There, on the door knob, hung the most beautiful red stocking I had ever seen. It had a snowy white cuff, bells on the toe, and it bulged with all sorts of mysterious lumps. But best of all was that it was RED. I don't remember much about that Christmas so long ago, but I do remember taking that stocking to bed.

As an adult, I've learned to appreciate and treasure old things. I wish I could tell you I grew to appreciate the uniqueness and history of my mother's well-used green plaid stocking. I wish I could say that I decided to use it after all and passed it on to my son. But childhood is short and children are callous. I never used it again. However, I did try to pass it on to my son, but in the battle of Nostalgia vs The Superheroes, the heroes won. Spiderman hung from my son's bed every year.