Christmas Miracle

No excuses except that it is Christmas and I am having difficulty staying focused long enough to write something. I kinda feel like a little kid during Christmas and I feel I am just too full of the season and its true!! Every year I sit hear at my phone line and am lucky to be part in someway 'Christmas Miracles' all over the Utah area-some of the miracles are more grand then the others but I feel they are all miracles. Sometimes it some one who gets their water or power turned on—unexpectedly, or their rent paid or a wheelchair found. Its not like everyone gets a miracle but the miracle does happen and many times I am lucky enough to be a past of the miracle in some small way.

Last week was the Christmas party put on by the Utah Independent Living Center (UILC), an organization I was part of for over ten year when I first migrated to the Salt Lake Valley. The UILC

is a good, no, great organization serving folks with disabilities. I cannot quite remember when I first did the deed but for one reason or another I began playing Santa Clause at the Center's Christmas function. I usually am paired with a “Mrs Clause” another employee of the Center and together, provide the back drop to holiday images. Over the years Kim, part of the Center staff, or sometimes Al or someone would operate a Polaroid Instamatic camera, taking images of the visitor with the Clauses and a few seconds later the little camera would spit out a developing snap shot: instant Christmas happiness. Verifiable proof that they were worth something, that they were,period. They sat with Santa and it did not matter that this Santa was in a wheelchair and sounded like he was making fun of the whole photogenic episode, somehow they managed to dressed up and leave the house, apartment of living center for a meal and a holiday gala and the, by god, had the Polaroid to prove it.

I am old and cynical and perhaps I am not the best choice for Santa anymore but the folks rt the Center keep asking and I keep saying yes—it's a two hour gig and a lunch thrown in along the way. In years past we have bartered for good the Center had usually tires for my manual wheelchair, which were usually bald and thread bare by the Christmas party would roll round. But, the Christmas party is a great place to touch base with to touch base with a lit of old customers/consumers I have served over the decades—those still alive anyway and truth be told every year the number drops a little but I am still surprised to who is still among the living.

The Christmas miracle happened to me this year!! I mean I have been the recipient of my far share of miracles and some have been pretty spectacular as my miracles go but this years was special. I had gotten to the Center early enough to have gotten the proffered lunch and changed into the Santa suite and roared out into the crown when the song Santa Clause is Coming to Town and took my place next to Mrs Claus and started the picture taking and I was pleased to see Mary Lou and Tom,and the folk from the Deaf project and others. I was getting restless, I grew to thinking of how much longer I had to sit there with the itchy beard, smiling under beard smiles no one would ever see. Then it happened , my Christmas miracle, some little kids—and I mean little under five or so, still true believers. These kids were off spring of consumers or employees. This little girl marched right up in front of me held her arms up for me t lift her onto my lap... and I did and then she started rattling off what she wanted and she was positive I was going to bring. But I was touched with Christmas then and there for a split second, but that was all it took. She was so she sure I was he that he was be me for a short millisecond of time I melted and felt the holiday spirit wash over me.

My cynicism has returned, well not all of it, I know the miracle happened to me this year and I cannot forget it and I am charged to make sure I spread the cheer when and where I can all for a short , short time I was Father Christmas.