Dear Santa,

When I was little I would write you a letter every year. Then, for some reason I stopped sending my letters to you. I still write one every year because I still believe. I believe because I still remember.

I remember waking up on Christmas morning when I was eight.  That was the last year that I actually mailed you a letter.  I walked into the living room and the first thing I saw under the tree was a large, black leather glove laying on the floor with a folded piece of paper sticking out of it.  

I cried, as I picked up the glove and removed the paper.  Mostly because I knew that you were riding home in your sleigh with one cold hand that night.  As I held that glove in my hand, I unfolded the paper, and saw that it was the letter that I had written you the month before, with a short note on the smaller piece of paper folded up inside of that.  I remember my older brother and I asking both our parents to copy the little note you gave me; to make sure that it wasn't one of them who had written it.  It wasn’t.  

I stopped sending my letters to you after that, because I could never think of anything you could possibly bring me that could be more special than answering that letter, and the gift you gave both me and Michael that year.  

I’m writing you again because now I have a daughter of my own.  Granted, she is too young to write you a letter of her own, but I have a new request for myself.  What I want for Christmas this year, and every year, is to be able to be as good a parent to my daughter, as my father was to me.  He was the one who encouraged me to write that letter, even though my brother was teasing me, and insisting that it was childish to believe in you.  If I grow to be like either of my parents, I want it to be him.

                                                            Thank you for every gift you ever gave me,
                                                                                                     Megan

P.S.  Every year, I leave that glove out for you to take, but you never do.  Why?