It was the type of Thanksgiving that set the tone for what sort of Christmas she would have. The accident was terrible. In one brief second she lost her mother, father and, almost, her brother. The family always went to church on Thanksgiving. They usually missed church the rest of the year, but on Thanksgiving their Father said they had a lot to be thankful for. So they went to church. It's amazing with some people, the less they have the more they are thankful for what they have. She stayed home because she wasn't feeling well

They didn't have much, except for each other. They lived in a two-room apartment. The city doesn't matter, except that in most cities the building would have been condemned. And most people who live in a building like theirs were derelicts, winos, and drugies. A place no one would want to raise a family in unless it was their last option before the street. But it was still better than living on the street. The landlord of the building wasn't bad; it was the circumstances that made it that way. He tried his best. Some say his best should have been torn down. Others say his best was still better then what anyone else would do. It was an eight-story building, and the top four floors were reserved for those who had children. Those floors were even locked and actually had security to prevent others from entering. The problem is you had to get to the fifth floor, and the only way up was by climbing up the stairs past the first four floors. The elevator hadn't worked for years. The children who live in the building claim that someone is still stuck in the elevator. But everyone else believes, or at least hopes, that is just child's talk.

At one time they were living in a nice home in a decent part of town. It wasn't a great place, not even a fair place, but it was somewhere the kids could actually walk outside by themselves during daylight and still return home in one piece. Luck was something that never seemed to work for them. Not from a lack of trying, and not from a lack of determination; it was just their fate. They were one of those that the recovering economy just zipped right past them and they fell through the cracks of society's help. The wife was sick, she was always sick, at least for the last ten years. She had a job once, it didn't pay much, but it helped. But the rheumatoid arthritis came on so gradually forcing her to equally cut her working hours so that by the time she was totally disabled she no longer qualified for benefits. When she first applied for social security they said she could still work partially, so they refused to classified her as disabled and finally when she reached the point that even they couldn't deny the fact that she was too crippled to work they than said that she had passed the time that she made enough to qualify for benefits. By then she couldn't even dress herself in the mornings.

But they still managed to get by. The boy had just turned sixteen and found a part time job making enough to help pay for the groceries. The girl was only fourteen. The father suffered from a lung condition brought on by a war. A condition that they claimed doesn't exist. It prevented him from working for more than several hours a day. He was too sick to work full time, but not sick enough to qualify for any type of disability. With the new welfare rules he ran out of benefits years ago. Even if he did qualify, it really wouldn't matter, since the benefits wouldn't pay enough to keep up their run down little shack they called a house. As he got sicker, they were forced to move out of their house and into that run down apartment complex they now call home. No one called it by the building's name anymore; the name on the outside of the building had fallen off years ago.

When the boy reached seventeen he had one-year left in high school but quit so he could work full time to help pay the bills. By that time their father could only work several hours a week. The boy couldn't make much without a high school diploma. The boy worked hard, always showed up on time, and tried very, very hard. But the stress of supporting the family at seventeen took its toll. He did insist, however, that the girl would not work so she could graduate from high school with honors and get a scholarship to college.

It started like any other Thanksgiving Day. The weather was cold, the water on the street was frozen, wind seemed like it was blowing from every direction at the same time. The only inhabitants were those who lived in that apartment building, and a few homeless that were too mentally ill to realize that winter was coming. ,Some of them didn't even know enough to find a warm spot for them to keep from freezing. Most of them didn't survive the winter. But the city was big enough to absorb the statistics of a few homeless deaths.

It was an overcast day, so overcast that someone couldn't even tell the time of day by locating the sun's location. There was no snow accumulating on the ground, so the little that was falling was blowing around mixed with dirt to give it a grayish color, more black then white. This just adding to the dreariness that already existed from the poverty surrounding the area. The blowing snow was the only thing visible for blocks, and if someone stood on the corner it would take him or her at least thirty minutes before they saw any other motion. Except maybe a stray cat or dog.

Several days before Thanksgiving they had found a wheelchair outside of the store that sells such items. Normally, they don't throw away wheelchairs when they are too old resell; they give them to a charity that fixes them up and gives them to the needy. But this wheelchair was in such bad shape, no one wanted it, not even the charities. So it was thrown into the dumpster. But by what the father called fate, they found it and were able to fix it up to hold the mothers weight. It didn't have to hold that much weight, she was a small woman to start out with, everyone was amazed that she could actually carry let alone give birth to a child when she was so small herself. But by comparison, those days would make her look fat.

But now, side by side, the biggest difference between the father and mother would be the father was taller. He was just as thin, except he could walk, more or less. He moved very slowly, laboring just to breathe. Breathing was difficult for him, just by the motion of his body it would cause his diaphragm to hurt. A pain that was so sever that he would pass out at times. And then with only the slightest exertion from moving his breathing would become so labored and that would cause even more pain. But he never complained. He was happy in life because he had two kids he was so proud of. They had a plan for life. The boy would work so their daughter could go to college, and then she would get a job and work until he finished college. They were so proud of their children. He felt his life was complete. His kids would be better off than he was, they would break the cycle

It was that fateful day on Thanksgiving when the three of them were crossing the street, on their way to church when death struck. The church was only two blocks away, they had managed to travel six blocks. A task that most people couldn't do with one person so ill, yet the boy managed to do it with two. To keep the mother warm they had every blanket they owned. They stripped the mattresses lying on the floor, where they slept, of all the blankets. There were only a few of them. But they used them all to wrap around the mother and father to keep them warm. It was difficult to keep them warm, with the cold wind blowing, and getting worse by the minute. It didn't help any that they were so very thin and had no body fat to help them keep warm. The boy was shivering cold, his fingers and ears were turning blue for the cold; he had giving up his coat to try to keep his father from freezing. The boy was especially worried about his father catching pneumonia with his bad lungs and tried to talk him out of going to church. But it was useless. The daughter wanted to go with them to church, because she knew her brother would have his hands full trying to get both of them to church but they insisted that she stay home. She was just getting over a case of bronchitis due to the cold drafty apartment they lived in. And this would give her a few days to recover before she had to go back to school. It was the boy who insisted the most that she stays behind.

Halfway across the street the wheelchair broke down. It wasn't unusual, they only had it a few days but it was broken down more than it worked. It was hard to get it to move around in the house, and that was a small two-room apartment with a floor that was flat, more or less. The only car in five blocks came speeding towards them. It was a couple of kids who were out for a joy ride with a stolen car when they spotted the three pedestrians standing in the middle of the street. Never in their wildest imagination would they have thought that someone would actually try to hit them. So they didn't panic when they saw them coming. They only waved their hands to make sure they would be seen. The car just kept increasing in speed. By the time that they realized they were going to deliberately hit them it was to late. The boy could have made it to safety, he could have jumped out of the path of the car. But he refused, trying instead to get his parents to safety first. The parents were killed instantly. The boy lay on the street fighting for his life for thirty minutes before an ambulance came by.

The three of them had no identification. They didn't have driver's licenses, they had no need for them. It was obvious that they were poor, destitute, and maybe even homeless. The boy was unconscious for two days. After church they were going to stop at the local shelter for Thanksgiving dinner and then bring a plate home for the girl. But they never showed returned. She waited for them and waited for them. They did not come home. She waited for a while longer. By then, with the days getting shorter due to the onset of winter, it became dark. And there was no way with everything being deserted like it was on a holiday that she would venture out into the night. There was a telephone at that security desk that they would let her use but she was too scared to even use that. She didn't sleep that night; she sat up all night on her mattress, cold without even a blanket, crying.

When it started to get light outside the next morning she called the only person she thought would help her. It was a teacher that encouraged her to study hard and occasionally when the girl stayed too long in school for her to walk home safely, she would drive her to the front door of her apartment. It was seven o'clock in the morning when she received the call from the girl. It took five minutes before the teacher could get her to settle down enough to even understand what she was calling about. It was two hours later when she located the boy in the hospital and learned the fate of the parents. The teacher along with her husband drove down to the apartment complex and took her to the hospital.

Before they reached the hospital they explained to her what had happened and the loss of her parents. They, as the doctors, didn't know what the fate of the boy would be. They didn't even know if he would come out of his coma. If you want to call it a miracle, many wouldn't, some would, but as soon as the girl walked into the room the boy came out of his coma.

The teacher took the girl home with them for the two weeks the boy was in the hospital. When the boy was able to leave the hospital the girl insisted that she go back to their apartment. There was a little financial aid they were able to get the children. The girl was turning eighteen before Christmas so social services would not get involved. The teacher made sure that the girl kept attending school. Her grades faltered a bit, but the teacher managed to convince her fellow teachers to cut her some slack to keep her straight A's intact.

It was Christmas Eve when things took a turn for the worse, if one could imagine things getting worse. The teacher and her husband went to visit her parents across the country for the two weeks of Christmas vacation. The boy had just caught pneumonia and was so sick he couldn't walk on his own, he couldn't even stand up. She used the telephone by the security desk to call an ambulance, but it never come. They had no food and she refused to go to the shelter for a free meal, the shelters would no longer let someone take a plate of food back with them. They said it was being abused, the food was being traded for drugs. She did remember across the street from the apartment house there was a mission that gave away coffee and donuts. The locals refereed to it as "The Donut Shop.' It wasn't what most people would call a donut shop; it was a charity, some church that offered free donuts and coffee to anyone who wanted it. They asked for donations, and most people managed to give them something. Usually it was five cents, maybe a dime, but for many it was only a penny or two.

That evening an older gentleman walked into 'The Donut Shop.' There are not too many people in the neighborhood that qualified to be called a gentleman, but this one did. He had a beard. It wasn't white, but it was mostly white. He hair was longer than what you would expect from a real gentleman, but it wasn't too long either. His cloths looked new and in spite of the fact that it was almost zero outside with the wind blowing and it was trying to snow he was not wearing a coat and he did not look cold. He had rosy checks and a warm smile with a sparkle in his eyes that make you like him. Of course, many that saw him walking around in this kind of weather with no coat or gloves thought he was just a senile old man, someone typical for the neighborhood. .

As he opened the door to come inside, the person giving out the coffee said, "You better come in, and get warm. You don't have a coat on."

He walked in, but instead of sitting down and waiting for someone to come over and offer him a cup of coffee and a donut he walked over the counter and asked, "How much is it for a cup of coffee and donut?"

They then knew he was not from the neighborhood, because everyone knew that you only paid what you could.

"We don't really charge for them, you pay what you can afford."

Just then, the door opened in the girl walked in. He turned to the girl and said, "My child, can you take me to see your brother. I'm here to help."

She may have the look of an angel, but her innocence was long time gone. She understood the real world, more then anyone should be expected to. "I can't let you go with me. I don't know you."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Santa Claus. And I came here to help you and your brother."

"Leave me along, old man. I don't believe in God any more, so why should I believe in Santa Claus."

"The woman at the counter said, "Don't say that. You must believe in God."

The Old man turned to the woman at the counter and said. "If there's anyone who has the right not to believe in God, it's this girl."

He then turned towards the girl and said, "No, really, I am Santa Claus. What do you want for Christmas?"

"Leave me alone or I'll call the cops. Although what little that would do me. You'll have raped me and killed all of us before they get here."

"I think you should listen to him," the women at the counter said. "I think he really is Santa Claus."

"That's just because you are one of those religious nuts and you believe in such things."

"No, my child. I am really Santa Claus."

"If you are Santa you would already know what I want for Christmas."

"Ok, I'll tell you. You would like your parents' back. But since you know that isn't possible you want your brother to feel better and to have you and your brother to live with your teacher. Don't you."

The girl started crying and sat down. "I'm so lost, my brother in dying, my mommy and daddy just died and no one will help me. I don't know what to do. I'm so lonely."

"That's why I'm here. I'm going to help you. We must go back to your apartment and help your brother before it's too late. Now please follow me."

"How do you know were I live?" She asked.

"I know everything about you. I also know that even though you said you don't believe in God that you prey to him every night, even last night, and this morning. Now your prayers are being answered."

He took her by the hand and left. On the walk over, even though she wasn't dressed very warm she remained warm just by his very touch. When they arrived back at the apartment her brother didn't answer when she called his name. When she approached him he was very still and very cold and not breathing. She shook him and he didn't wake up. She started to cry but the old man said, "He's just sleeping. He's going to be fine."

"He's dead," She said. She had no more emotions left in her.

The old man reached over and touched the boy on his shoulder and the boy grasped for air and opened his eyes and started to breath. He sat up; his breathing was back to normal.

There was a knock on the door and when she opened the door her teach was standing in the doorway. "We just couldn't stay with my family and celebrate Christmas knowing that you needed us. I had a dream last night that I should come here. It just isn't right that you are alone on a night like this."

The girl then turned around and said to her brother, "Where's Santa, he was just here."

"You mean that old man that was here. That wasn't Santa. He was from my dreams. He was the one I saw in my dreams. I dreamt I died and he was God."

"You weren't dreaming, she said. You were dead when I came back from the donut shop with him."

"I think both of you need to come and live with us. You aren't making any sense."

"No," The girl said. "He was real and I can prove it."

"Gather you stuff and come home with me. From now on you're going to live with me and my husband."

"I'm not leaving my brother."

"You both are welcomed to stay with us as long as you want to."

Before they got into the car, the girl insisted that they walk across the street so she could ask the women in 'The Donut Shop' about the old man she left with. The donut shop was closed and there was a sign on the door that said, "SORRY. CLOSED PERMANENTLY ON DECEMBER 20."

"I know it was opened. I was just there."

"It doesn't matter. You are safe with us."

As they got into the car the old man was standing on the sidewalk. He smiled and waved at them.

"See, there he is. He's the one." Both children said together.

"Oh my God,' The teacher said. "He was the one I saw in my dream last night that said I should come back here tonight and have you two live with me." Top of Page