Happy Birthday Mom, and thanks for the Christmas gifts.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the first full day of winter and every December 22 I think of my Mom, who was born on this day in 1916. Yes, my Mom would be 93 today if she were still alive.

My Mom was quite the story teller. As a woman who ran a foster home, she needed to have stories at the ready for every occasion.

When I was around twelve years old, we had a Christmas where the house was literally full of kids.

I had abandoned the whole Santa thing as early as first grade, but there were a couple staying with us who still counted on him.

That Christmas Eve we had a lot of snow, but at 6 PM Mom and Dad herded the half dozen staying with us the half block down East 6th Avenue to St. Thomas Church for the Christmas vigil mass.

I was an altar boy then, and I remember being on the altar, looking out at my parents and the unruly mob of orphans seated on the pew between them and smiling at them.

Today's blog is not about going to church on that Christmas Eve, it is about the story my Mom told the three kids under the age of seven to get them to go to sleep later that night. They had doubts that Santa would find them. They even argued that one of them should stay up to keep watch, and make sure he found them. So My Mom took a seat on one of the beds and called all of them over to it. Then she told them what she said was one of her tales from her own childhood.

The story was about how Santa got back to the North Pole just before dawn, and realized he had missed a stop at an orphanage. Despite being what my Mom described as "Bone Tired", he went into his shop, gathered up some toys, and headed back out. He delivered the toys as the sun was breaking the horizon, and the children in the orphanage rose just in time to wave to him as his sleigh lifted from the building's roof.

She told this story because one of the kids, I am not sure which one, asked her if Santa would be able to find him. He was worried because he had moved around so much and lived in so many different homes. This put doubt in the mind of a couple of the little girls, so my Mom decided to put that doubt at ease.

My Mom's point in telling that story was to reassure him and the other foster kids who were only staying with us on a temporary basis. She told them that Santa would always find them, no matter where they were.

In retrospect, I see it as the extraordinary act of kindness that it was. Every child in our home got a gift that Christmas, as they did every Christmas.

I feel very fortunate that I learned at a very early age that at Christmas time we don't always get the gift we want, but somehow we always end up with the gift we need.

Sometimes whether we want it or not.