For the first time since my son was a tiny baby, I set up
the Christmas Village this year. I began
collecting the pieces just after law school, and my husband brought a fire
station to the table when we got married.
We haven’t brought the village out for several years now, for fear that
my son would play with it and demolish it.
This year, we decided he was old enough to restrain himself.
For the most part, we were right. But every now and then, the five-year-old
hurricane would sweep through the village when we weren’t looking. He knew better than to pick up the heavy
porcelain houses. The freestanding, battery-operated
fishing trawler wasn’t so lucky, though.
It lost a flag on the first day.
Not long after, the anchor was broken in two. A lamppost lost its festive red bow, and a
member of the string quartet in the town square mysteriously vanished, leaving
only his feet behind. The violinist now
plays imaginary strings in the air, with an imaginary bow.
When I would notice my son playing with the village, or
standing wide-eyed in front of it, I would often look the other way. If you’re five, what fun is it to have a
Christmas Village in your house if you can’t touch it? While I drew the line sometimes (“No, you can’t
sit on the table!”), I mostly just told him to be careful and let him move the
people around.
One afternoon, I noticed my son was crouching underneath the
table and looking really hard for something.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said quickly as he stood up straight. Yeah, right.
The next day, I noticed the clapping lady who watches her
husband and daughter ice skating was no longer clapping . . . but was now
missing her hands. That would be
something fairly easy to glue back on, assuming we had the hands.
"Oh no!” I exclaimed.
“The clapping lady lost her hands!”
I started looking around the table, in the gazebo, behind trees, under
the brick sidewalk. “I wonder where the
hands went?”
My son pointed under the table. “Well, they’re definitely not under there,”
he said with certainty.
“Mm, thanks for your help,” I responded.
I put the village away yesterday. The hands were never found. Oh, well.
That’s okay. Will I put the
village up again next year and let him play with it again? Of course.
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