Free Being Santa Claus : What I Learned About the True Meaning of Christmas (9781101600528) by Jonathan Sal; Lane Lizard, Jonathan Lane Page B

a fairy-tale castle, I saw a cushioned chair with several stockings placed on either side of it. And next to those stockings—in bright red dresses with white fur on the sleeves, collar, and hemline—were two of the loveliest “Santa’s helpers” I had ever seen.
    “Over here, Santa,” Lisa said, leading me toward the chair.
    Upon hearing the word
Santa
, almost every child suddenly stopped whatever he or she was doing and began jumping up and down and shouting my name. I had to smile, even though I felt a little guilty because the poor cartoonist and juggler had found themselves quickly abandoned and forgotten as the children began to spontaneously form a line leading to Santa’s chair.
    “Santa,” Lisa turned to face the two attractive young helpers, “this is Dr. Kelly and Dr. Stockton.”
    “You’re
doctors
?” I felt suddenly embarrassed by my surprised reaction. It wasn’t their gender so much as how young they both looked. On the other hand, at the age of almost fifty-five, more and more folks had startedlooking young to me. Nevertheless, I tried to hide my little faux pas by adding, “Aren’t you supposed to be wearing white coats?”
    The two doctors smiled. “This is our uniform for the week,” one of them said.
    “And the male doctors are all dressed as elves!” the other one added.
    “Okay, Santa,” Lisa said, as a young fellow wearing normal clothes and holding an elaborate camera walked up to join us. “This is Paul, our photographer, and he’ll take the pictures that we’ll give to the parents. Each child will come up and sit on your lap for a minute or two. Then Dr. Kelly will pass you a toy, and Dr. Stockton will hand you a candy cane to give each one. Sound good?”
    “Just perfect,” I said. As I looked at the line of excited children, I had almost forgotten that we were all in a cancer treatment center.
    The first few children all went very smoothly. It felt just like being at a mall. They would sit on my lap, we’d talk for a brief time, Paul would take a few pictures, and then the next child would hop up.
    But then I saw a little girl with a tube inserted into her nose, snaking back behind her ear, and then down her chest. She seemed too weak to climb up onto my lap herself, so I reached out for her incredibly carefully so as not to knock out the tube and gently brought her uponto my knee. Everything seemed okay, and I made certain to put her back down just as carefully when we finished.
    I didn’t want to inadvertently do something wrong and cause one of the children harm, so before the next child came forward, I quickly turned to one of the doctors. “Is there any special way I should be picking them up when they have tubes?” I asked quietly.
    “Exactly the way you just did it,” she answered.
    “Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “I had no idea how to do it.”
    “Really?” she looked surprised. “You did that so naturally, I just figured you’d done it lots of times before.”
    As the line moved on, I realized that not all of these children were patients. Families traveled to the clinic together, with brothers and sisters joining their siblings, and many of the healthier children had gotten into line first. But slowly and steadily, I began to notice more sick and weakened children—their skin a paler color, tubes in noses or arms, a lack of hair on many of their heads, and even a number of children in wheelchairs, too weak to stand up.
    All my hesitations vanished as my Santa Claus persona took over completely. I refused to see these children as anything other than children—not sick children or weak children, but just children who each wanted or needed to see a jolly Santa. And so I pushed aside myfears and simply put myself fully at ease with each and every one of them. In turn, they all seemed to be totally comfortable with me.
    By the time we got further down the line, some of the children appeared too weak to be lifted out of their wheelchairs. For