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On Christmas morning since medieval times, church bells have been rung to announce to the world the coming of the saviour. It was customary from the 18th century to wear clothes and carry a small bell to signify the birth of Christ. The ringing of the bells was to signify the importance of the His Birth.
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First the snow came lightly. I watched it out of the window, the flakes flying in the wind the bus made as it sped from Cincinnati, where we lived, to Canton, Ohio, where we were going to spend Christmas with my uncle and cousins. My brother and I were traveling alone because our parents were on the way from Pittsburgh, where they had gone to take care of things after my grandmother died. It was a family emergency and though my mother did not like the idea of leaving us with her best friend, or having us travel alone, she did not have much choice.
Soon we would all be together in my uncle's house playing the rowdy games and eating too many sugar cookies, which my Aunt Alice made in the shape of snowmen. They always had little stubby hands and feet too. For some reason I liked to eat the feet first. My brother always ate the cherry nose.
I had the window seat for this leg of the trip. My mother always made us trade off to avoid fighting about it and we did that even when we were by ourselves. There was a very big woman sitting across from us who talked to us at the last stop. She thought we were young to be traveling alone and she
bought us each a doughnut even though she seemed poor. Her name, she said, was Mrs. Margaret Mills and her husband was dead. I don't know why she told us that.
Before long the snow got heavier and heavier and the bus began to slow down. It slowed and slowed and before long it was just kind of crawling along and the world outside had turned completely white. I heard the driver talking on his radio about what we should do. So I woke up my brother in case we
were about to hit a snowdrift and be boarded by bandits. He always hoped for some big adventure that just never seemed to come our way. Now might be his chance, I thought.
The other passengers began to stir about and go stand in line for the bathroom and make each other nervous. I gave my brother my seat and he kept his face plastered to the glass.
"Look, look," he would say every once in awhile. "More snow. More snow."
It was about an hour later that we eased into a gas station that had a little restaurant shaped like a railroad car attached to it. We all bundled up as best we could, pulled our hats down over our ears and ran for shelter. The wind was making a very weird sound...like a bird screeching. Finally we were all inside and the bus driver told us we were likely to have to spend the
night here and might make it out in the morning if the storm stopped and the plows came through.
Now I was frightened and my brother was crying. I told him we would be all right and the weird woman took us to the counter and ordered hot chocolate. My mother had pinned a card inside my coat pocket - she pinned it there because I was always losing things I needed, like mittens - with my uncle's name, address and phone number.
While we were having hot chocolate, the bus driver asked us if we had a phone number for whoever was going to meet us and I gave him the card.
People were very upset. After all, we were about to spend Christmas with a handful of strangers and no one wanted to do that. All the joy and anticipation of being with family and friends was replaced by disappointment and sadness. We were a sorry lot. Some people drank coffee and some ate chicken salad sandwiches and some just sat staring at their folded hands.
I wanted to talk to my parents, and just as I had that thought, the bus driver called me and I went to the phone. He had my aunt on the line. My parents were out at church with my cousins and Aunt Alice was very calm about our situation. She said we would be all right and that we should do what the bus
driver said. And that we should not leave the place where we were because my family would come get us in the morning when the roads were plowed.
That made me feel a lot better. But my brother was hard to console. He wanted to be home, to be singing carols while Aunt Alice played the piano, to be having the kind of Christmas Eve we loved. I didn't know what to do to help him and it was beginning to make me mad that he was crying all the time.
Then a strange thing happened. People began to talk to each other and to us. And then they began to laugh and tell stories about their families and where they'd been and where they were going. The man who owned the restaurant turned on the lights of the Christmas tree he had in the corner of the room. They were shaped like candles. And together with the colored lights that bordered the big front window, the room began to seem a little festive. I hoped it all would cheer my brother up, but it did not.
"What are we going to do? I want to see Mama, I want to have cookies, I want to sing the manger song with Aunt Alice, I...I..." and then he would lean against me and cry some more.
The weird woman watched us from time to time. I thought she disliked his sniveling as much as I did, but finally she came to the booth were we were sitting by ourselves and said, "I believe I'll just join you, if you don't mind."
She sat down before I could say anything and she took up quite a lot of space doing it, too.
Then one of the strangest things I have ever seen happened. Her face, which I thought was a little scary - she had a very big nose and this huge neck - softened and gentled as she looked at my brother. And then she began to sing. Out of her strange body came one of the loveliest sounds I've ever heard. She put her arm around my brother and pulled him close to her. And softly, very softly, she sang as though singing just for us, "Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head."
He looked up at her. I think he was startled at first to hear his
favorite carol sung to him by a strange woman in a snowbound bus stop. But soon the sadness left his face. Soon he put his hand in hers. And then they sang together, louder now, "The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay, the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay."
After that a young man unpacked his guitar and the bus driver pulled out a harmonica, and before long, everyone was singing just about every Christmas carol you ever heard in your life. We sang and drank hot cocoa with marshmallows and ate cupcakes until people finally settled down for the evening,
huddled in the booths, sitting on the floor, leaning against each other for comfort and support. And so we spent Christmas Eve.
The roads were cleared by eleven the next morning and we said good-bye to everyone on the bus. Our parents had called the restaurant and were on their way to pick us up. The last person we saw was Mrs. Mills. She hugged us and I thanked her. Then she bent over and kissed us both on the forehead.
"I'll never forget you two boys. You were my Christmas present. That's the way I'll always think of you." Then she got on the bus and I never saw her again.
Later that night, when we were all comfortable and warm before the fire at Aunt Alice's, I asked my dad what the strange woman could have meant. I'd told him the whole story, of course, except for the part about getting mad at my brother for crying so much.
He said, "That's the thing about a true gift. You can only give it. You never know how much it means to another person."
"But what was our gift, dad? We didn't give her a present or anything."
"I don't have any way of knowing that. It might have been your cute faces. It might have been that you liked her, or weren't afraid of her because of the way she looked. Or it might have been that you sang along with her in a strange place she never planned to be in. Just be grateful that you had something to give that woman, something she treasured and would remember. Make that a part of who you are and that will be your gift to me."
And then Aunt Alice went to the piano and we, all of us, began our annual caroling, the singing of songs together that I liked better than almost anything in the world. But what I was thinking about most that evening was Mrs. Margaret Mills and what a wonderful voice she had. And as I thought about her,
I missed her. Truly missed her. And I hoped that wherever she was, she was singing for someone who liked her as much as I did.
By W. W. Meade
The Unexpected Gift
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
