Christmas once again and an angel gets his wings

I love Thanksgiving. It is a no-stress, no-pressure holiday. A bunch of people who generally like each other get together and eat fabulous food, and, if necessary, watch a football game or two. Wine is always included, as is dessert, and everyone is happy at the end of the day.

Christmas is another story.

Did I get the right present for _________ (fill in the blank)? How do we visit all the parents, in-laws, step-parents, and other dear ones in such a short time period? How do we not tell someone that we like the other house better? Do I have enough poppy seed bread to go around? Have I forgotten anyone? Stress, stress, stress. Pressure, pressure, pressure.

Add to that the fact that my husband and I cannot tell time, and so our daughter was born on December 30 (Really, I didn't want a December baby. I said that loud and often. However, after years of infertility, I would have done a back flip whenever she was born!).

What that means is that for about three weeks, I am on the go all the time. I bake presents. I buy presents. I clean house. I decorate the house, usually alone, but my husband is getting the idea that I would rather have lots of help. I wrap presents. I find a suitable birthday present for our only child. I stay up late asking the questions in the third paragraph. And I grade final exam papers. By the time Christmas is here, I am worn out and don't really care about much of anything.

I have dreaded this Christmas more than usual because it has been a hard year. My mother-in-law died in February after a long stint with liver disease. I taught two really hard on line classes this past fall. My brother-in-law had a stroke-like event that has left him lying in a bed unable to do anything for himself, and unable to communicate at all. My daughter has begun and finished her next-to-last semester in college, and she and her boyfriend of over a year broke up. One of my best friends has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. And yet Christmas was coming on like a freight train.

At first, things went better than expected. My husband won tickets to the December 26 Chiefs game. Emily had planned on giving tickets to that game to her boyfriend, but with the unexpected crash of the relationship, was not going to go. So she got an extra Christmas/birthday present, and was ecstatic. We had our usual Christmas Eve tradition, visiting dear friends, going to a fabulous Christmas Eve party, and then finishing the evening with our friends of almost 26 years. We got up late on Christmas day, my mother, step-father, and sister came over, and we had brunch. We opened our gifts, and everyone was happy.

The next day, Emily and Max went to the freezing game, and I intelligently spent the time with my ex-sister-in-law (who got custody of us during the divorce) and her siblings and nieces and nephews. The Chiefs won big and are going to the playoffs.

I slept late on Monday. A friend came over to dinner, and dinner was good, and we had a good time.

Until.

We noticed that our little 15-year-old, deaf, blind, Bichon Frise was not in her usual place upstairs in the chair. She wasn't in the dining room on a chair. She hadn't gotten lost in the basement. She was gone. We were beside ourselves, and couldn't remember who had let her out, or who had not brought her back in, or when any of that might have happened.

We put on our coats and hats and went looking for hours - until 1 in the morning. Nothing. There was no trace of her. We came home and tried to sleep, hoping some kind soul had found her, picked her up, and taken her home for the night. The next day, we called the veterinarians in town, the animal shelter, the police, and the radio stations. We made fliers and took them to all our neighbors. Then we sat and waited. Nothing happened.

Last night, Emily completed applications for graduate school. I tried to get a headache. Max feigned interest in the Missouri game. And we tried to come to grips with the fact that the little dog, Fluffy, was probably gone. We were sad and cried a lot over little things, but never really said why we were crying.

Then we went to bed.

At 7:30 this morning, we got a call from animal control. Fluffy was found. Someone, obviously an angel, had found her, taken her in, and then taken her to the shelter, where someone put two and two together and figured out she was ours. A few minutes later, the big white truck pulled up in front of our house, and a tired and disoriented Fluffy was handed over to us. I got the angel's telephone number and called him a little later.

Fluffy was a little over one mile from our home. I have no idea how she got there or why she felt compelled to go. She was out all night, and when the angel found her, she was cold and hungry. He took her home, got her warm, fed her, kept her all the next night, and when he called the animal control people, he told them that if the owners didn't claim her, he would take her. I started crying again, and called my husband, and he teared up, and then he went by the man's house to personally thank him.

So all in all, this Christmas season has been better than most. An angel appeared to me and said, "Fear not," which is what Christmas should be about, anyway - a miracle on earth. I have a couple of other miracles I would like to offer up for consideration, but the one we got was just fine, and I am grateful for it.