Santa in the Pond




Maybe it was the medication the doctor prescribed to correct Dad’s irregular heart beats. Or maybe he added a bit too much pepper to the kale and carrot salad I prepared to neutralize the rich sauces of the leg of lamb I roasted for our Christmas Eve dinner. Or maybe he was telling us another tale from his overly active 80-year-old imagination.  

“It’s the same dream. Every night.” Dad started off after swallowing a forkful of lamb. 

“Was it in color, Grand Dad?” Melissa, my teenaged daughter asked. With the precision of a surgeon, she was cutting the fat away from her serving of lamb. 

Dad thought for a moment. “Color? No, not Technicolor. More like a film noir movie. Murky and dark.”

“What’s film noir?” my pre-teen son Adam asked. He was shaking salt vigorously over his salad.

“Let Grand Dad get on with his story,” my husband Stacey said. He refilled Dad’s wine glass with Pinot Noir.

Dad took a sip of wine and then continued. 

The dream starts out soon after I fall asleep. I am walking along a path strewn with pine cones. I scrape my bare feet through the cones to the edge of a precipice overlooking the pond.

“Pond? What pond?” Melissa interrupted. She was always a stickler for detail.

“There’s a pond in Grove Park,” Adam suggested. “Me and Stevie go frog hunting there.”

“Stevie and I.” The English teacher in me emerged. “Go ahead, Dad. What happened next.”

I could see a path between rows of pine trees snake its way to the pond. Then I noticed a figure of a man stepping from behind a pine tree near the entrance to the path. He calls up to me.

“Did you bring your seabag?”

“Ricardo? Is that you?”  I couldn’t believe my eyes. Ricardo was alive and as young as I remembered him when we both served on a riverboat patrolling the Mekong Delta. But that couldn’t be him. He got killed in a skirmish with the Viet Cong. 

“Weird!” Adam remarked a bit too explosively.

“Not weird,” Dad said, wiping remnants of mint jelly from around his mouth. He liked smothering the lamb with it. “The feeling was one of warmth at meeting an old friend you hadn’t seen for ages.”

“So what happened? Did you and Ricardo talk about old times?” Stacey asked.

I wondered why I needed a seabag. I had gotten rid of it long ago.

“You need to report for duty in uniform,” Ricardo shouted above the rustling of the pine trees.

“Report for duty? But my old uniform won’t fit any more.”

“Uh oh. You’ll need to have one reissued.”

“Reissued? What are you saying? Reissued? Where?”

“At the pond. Come on before the light of the moon fades.”

“Wait up. I’m not as young as I used to be.” 

“Let your mind float!” 

I released my mind from its earthly shackles and levitated. Within a blink of an eye, I found myself standing at the edge of the pond. 

“Ricardo, where did you go to?”

I was alone in the mist. The murkiness of the pond water magnified the reflection of the moon.

“You’re out of uniform, Senior Chief Taylor!” A voice boomed at me from deep within the pond. I squinted my eyes to sharpen the image of a face rippling in the moonlit water.

“Sir, I’m retired. I don’t need to wear a uniform.”

“You’re to report for duty tomorrow night IN uniform.”

“But, Sir, . . . .”

“You’ve been reissued a new uniform.”

“Report for duty? Where? What?”

“You have your orders!”

“And that’s when I woke up.” 

“Weird!” Adam remarked, this time with less volume.

“I know why you had that dream, Grand Dad,” Melissa said with the confidence of an Internet educated psychiatrist . “You wish you were back in the Navy again.”

“Or maybe something deeper,” Stacey said. “Maybe you miss your old buddies. Maybe it’s your desire to return to the days of your youth.”

“Honey, now you sounding like Melissa!” I scoffed. I gave Stacey’s hand a gentle squeeze.

“But there’s more to the story.” Dad interrupted. “When I woke up this morning, I found a bundle wrapped in brown paper on the floor near my slippers. I tore the paper away, and what I saw took my breath away.”

“What was it, Grand Dad?” Melissa asked.

“A uniform!”

“Oh, cool! Can I go see?” Adam yelped.

“Not until you finish your meal,” I commanded. His curiosity, I knew, was prompted by his desire to avoid eating his Brussels sprouts.

“After dinner, I’ll put it on and show you all.”

We had finished our meal and the children helped Stacey and me clean up in the dining room. Dad went into his bedroom to put on the uniform.

Later, we all gathered near the Christmas tree in the living room. 

“Ho, ho, ho!” 

The laughter was coming from the hallway. We all looked at each other with bemused expressions. 

“Oh, I know,” Melissa exclaimed.

“Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas!” Santa Claus burst into the living room. "Merry Christmas!"

“Oh, Grand Dad!” Melissa laughed. 

“No, not Grand Dad,” I corrected. “It’s Santa Claus reporting for duty.”



Can you see Santa Claus in the pond?





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