At age nine, I believed in Santa
primarily as the spirit of Christmas
and not so much as corporeal reality.
Children understand myth in a way
that adults do not—perhaps can not.
Children understand how things
can be real and more than real
at the same time, and at some point
grown-ups reject or forget this truth.
Anyway, that Christmas when I was nine,
around two or three o’clock in the morning,
I awoke to a noise that drew me
to the window, where I saw the shadow
of a sleigh on freshly fallen snow
in our backyard, clear as day in the bright moonlight.
Looking back, I see that night as a demarcation point,
not between childhood and adulthood,
but between believing and understanding.
