The Stocking

A shriek of frustration came from the dining room.

I poked my head in from the kitchen, where I was drying dishes. The table was cluttered with wrapping paper, boxes, ribbons, bows, scissors, felt, thread, buttons and a sewing machine. Half draped across the sewing machine was a red felt Christmas stocking. It looked like my wife, Kate, had just thrown the stocking.

“It’s ruined!” she cried.

“What?” I asked.

“That.” She jabbed a finger at the stocking. “There are moth holes in the back. How could I not have noticed? Now Frances won’t have a stocking!”

Kate had been working on it for weeks. “My brothers and sister and I all had handmade stockings,” she’d explained. “So I have to sew Frances a stocking.”

Frances was our one-year-old daughter, at that moment asleep in her crib. It didn’t matter that Christmas is one of the busiest seasons for Kate, a priest at an Episcopal church. It didn’t matter that she’d had to trek all over Manhattan to finally find a tiny fabric store in Chinatown with the kind of wool felt she needed. It especially didn’t matter that I’d pointed out Frances was too young to care about stockings, or that I’d pleaded for a peaceful, stress-free Christmas.

“You could try being more supportive,” she’d replied.

Now Christmas was just days away. Soon my mom, her friend and my brother would be arriving to stay with us. Kate had to write a sermon. Gifts were waiting to be wrapped. And there was the stocking. Kate picked it up and ran her finger over the holes.

“The felt must have been old,” she said. She’d already sewn ribbon across the top. Flower-shaped buttons and gold thread to write Frances’ name lay on the table. “I don’t know if I have time to start over.” She looked at me. “Frances needs a stocking!”

“Well,” I said, “I tried to tell you—”

Her face hardened. “Jim, I don’t need a Christmas lecture right now. If you’re not going to help, let me figure it out.”

She turned back to the stocking. I retreated to the kitchen.

The counter was cluttered there too. Kate was baking sugar cookies to give to her colleagues. One batch cooled on a rack. Powdered sugar spilled from a bowl. The oven timer ticked down. Gift bags of chocolate from parishioners lined up next to presents for Frances, some from people I didn’t even know. The timer beeped.

“Could you take those cookies out?” Kate called. I set down the dishtowel. I don’t even like sugar cookies, I thought.