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that we would have a nice holiday.

About a week before Christmas, after she had received her bonus, she wanted to do some shopping and pick up some things she had ordered from Alden'swhich was a smaller version of Sears or Montgomery Wards. We didn't have a car back then, but our Grandmother Miller offered to take her to the Alden's catalog center that was located in LaSalle, about three miles away from Oglesby, two town on the other either side of the Illinois River, about 90 miles southwest of Chicago.

Mom must have felt so embarrassed that December afternoon when it came time to pay and she was about fifteen dollars short. There was no way she could come back another time to get them so she swallowed her pride and told me to go outside and ask my grandmother if she could borrow the fifteen dollars. The look of desperation on my mom's face when she came up fifteen dollars short told me everything, told me how hard it had been for mom to raise two boys.

I don't know if that was a cruel thing to do, to send me outside and ask my grandmother for the money, with the promise to pay it back the next time she got paid and knowing very well our grandmother would not say no to me, but I was also too young to know what it must have been like for my mom, who was only 31 years old to have to swallow her pride and ask for help. Of course my grandmother was willing to help out and wouldn't have expected the money back because she knew what hardship was, having to raise three boys by herself during The Great Depression.

When I walked back into Alden's with the money, one of the clerks had already brought out the merchandise my mom had ordered. My mom had not intended me to be there to see what she had ordered, but it was too late. I immediately saw the Stanley Cup Hockey Game I had asked from Santa during a visit to his "house" on First Street in LaSalle in early December.

I didn't say anything but mom could tell that I was having a Christmas epiphany of sorts looking at the hockey game and wondering what it was all supposed to mean. I had my suspicions that mom was Santa the previous Christmas when it came time for us to leave some milk and cookies for Santa, she said that Santa preferred Coca Cola. Later that night, when I woke up to go to the bathroom I caught Mom rearranging presents under the tree. Her explanation: Santa was in a hurry. I was nine and bought it.

Now, it looked like the cat, or should I say, if you can excuse the pun, Santa was out of the bag.

My mom could have lied and said she was helping Santa, but it was beyond that now. It was time for me to grow up.

"I'm sorry," my mom said. She looked so tired and sad. "Please don't tell your brother."

My brother was only seven and it would have been cruel and unfair for him to have to stop believing the same year.

"Sure mom," I said. "I won't tell Randy."

And I didn't. (My brother would find out on his own the following Christmas.)

My mom smiled and the two of us walked out together carrying the presents she had ordered. It would turn out to be a very nice Christmas for us; mom made sure of that. That year I found out who Santa Claus really was and how special my mom was for what she had to go through and endure to take care of her family.

And on Christmas Eve, now knowing that there wasn't a Santa Claus per se, but that there was a little Santa in all of us, I got to stay up and watch those black and white images of the moon being transmitted back to earth from Apollo 8 and hear Commander James Lovell say, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."

Learn more about this author, Jeffrey Miller.
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