yes, virginia

Today is St. Nicholas Day. This is the first year I woke up and thought, ya know they might just bust me and say, "Mommy, you TOTALLY just bought all this stuff at the Disney store and put it on the kitchen table."

It brought back memories of grammar school when I would come to school and was like "St. Nick came and left me a Sean Cassidy album and some flavored chapstick!" (LOVED the Dr. Pepper one, by the way). And some of my friends would be like, "What are you talking about? I didn't get anything?" I tried to remember my exact "I don't believe anymore" moment but I can't. What I do remember is what might be someone else's. It was Fourth Grade. (oh no! that's just two years away from E so somewhere between where E is now and all to soon, I stopped believing) I had a friend Aimee, who was very sweet. At lunch she said something about Santa and I don't know who it was, but they laughed at her and told her he wasn't real. I remember that I no longer believed at that point but I felt awful for her. I vividly remember being at the end of the line to go up to our classroom with her and she was crying.

She said, "You believe, don't you?"
I said, with as much earnestness as I could muster, "Yes."

I remember feeling like I was a grown up and hoping she believed me. How do I save my kids from that?

When I wrote the title of this post, I just came up with an expression I've heard so many times. But I never knew its actual source; I thought it was a movie quote. So I looked it up and found that it is actually from this editorial written in the late 1800's. I think it is beautifully written, and I'm going to save it to read to E or K, whomever comes first, when the question arises.

Here it is if you are interested:
http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/