miracle

King Moonraiser is explaining that there is no place for Rudolph and his friends on the Island of Misfit Toys, that they really must return to the land of the living and make a go of it, and my daughter says, "Can you leave this on? I like it in the background."

Bedtime on a snow day a little more than two weeks before Christmas, and the miracle and the magic of the run up to that holy day are tucked in with the sleepy child, the better to dream and feel the peace of the routine of Christmas.

Our snow day gave us the chance to enjoy all of that. Together, Dell and I watched Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch, and Rudolph and listened to three or four CDs' worth of music. And none of this junked-up contemporary hooey for us. We invoke the dead at Christmas: Burl Ives. Bing. Mitch Miller. There is only one way for the "Little Drummer Boy" to sound (because it is a song about humility, not about Alicia Keyes....). No rock stars here. (OK. Cheryl Crowe, but we don't know who let her in....)

The movies played and we put out the decorations we enjoy the most, wrapped the rest back up for another time, assembled our tried and true white vinyl tree that is the last word in tacky but suits us just fine, and filled out Christmas cards for the people we love. Truthfully, we don't love the same people, so she picked up where I left off, though we didn't exactly plan it. Just that symbiotic mother-daughter thing, maybe.

She wrapped presents for her friends, we went for a long tramp in the snowy woods. She discovered that even large, wild animals pee near trees. This seems to be the walk we take after every first snow, though the discovery of the wild yellow snow was a new thing.

She went out to play with a friend, she held the neighbors' new baby, she came back and made presents for the child and the older sister, who is her friend. We ate dinner and the apple pie I made for her because the stuff was there and she was busy playing.

That was the day that fed the dreams of good sleep. Thank you, Mother Nature.