The Lost Christmas Girl

Hurrying against the near zero weather toward the post office to mail our cards, I completely forgot the tiny girl without a hat who seemed out of place, all alone in the dark with nobody around. On the way back home, there she was again, a tiny, gray-clad body darting toward the Christmas tree. When we got to the park, she had disappeared again, almost like a ghost. I began to get an eerie feeling. Who was she? Was she lost? If her home was near the diner where we had seen her, she was going in the wrong direction.

Something told me to walk back to the street that went to the depot. There she was, standing at the edge of the street, waiting to cross. I bent down to ask her name.

"Jessica," she said. Even in the dark, this tiny child had the irresistible beauty children have when they are on their own, free from restraint, in search of a new world of sparkling lights and white snow everywhere. It was Jessica's first trip through an enchanted land, and there was so much to see in the bright store windows.

I couldn't catch the last name. "Where is your mother?" I asked. The answer was, gone to a store far away, and she had been left home all alone. Too small for that, I thought. But I couldn't leave her in a snow bank waiting for cars that might not see her.

I was reminded of my dog, Gemini, a tiny black and white puppy that I found on just such a night as this, in car tracks in the snow many years ago on a Christmas night. I was the one who had no place to go, no home to go to, where I could feel welcome. I opened the door of my Volkswagen and he jumped in, never to leave until a few years ago when the abandoned puppy died of old age, the finest pet anyone could have had. Perhaps that thought crossed my mind. If I had been as much alone now, on this cold night, as I was then, how wonderful it would have been to take Jessica, this abandoned girl, so beautiful and captivating, with me so she would have a home. I would never let her wander the dark street taking her chances that a machine, rushing from nowhere, could end her life. There has to be a God somewhere, I thought, who protects abandoned puppies and little girls who have no place to go.

We could not take her back to her empty house. "Would you come with us to the police station where a nice lady can help you find your mother?" my wife asked. She nodded her head "yes" and took my hand. On the way, we asked her to take us to her home first to see if her mother had returned. After a couple of blocks, with cars and trucks darting back and forth, we got down to a little known part of town where two boys were playing. "Where have you been?" one asked, and he ran to call the little girl's mother. "We've been looking all over for you for half an hour!" she exclaimed.

Jessica's mother had not been away, and her brother and cousin had been looking for her. "It won't happen again, you understand?" she said to Jessica. "You're just lucky these were nice people who brought you home and not someone who would take you away."

The mystery of Jessica was over, or was it? What makes little girls make up a story so the adventure of that night can go on? Are they lost or are they just beginning to find their new world is a place of wonder, a fairy land to which there is no end. And why does there have to be an end?