Is Christmas Here Yet?

I heard my phone ring and, as I went to grab it, I could see “Dad Cell”. I was at work, but I couldn’t pass up the oppor­tu­nity to hear his jolly voice in the morn­ing. As soon as I picked it up, I could hear the rea­son for the call. Their lit­tle voices filled the back­ground noise and their excite­ment imme­di­ately put a smile on my face.

He always calls me when he has the kids, my two nieces and nephew. Today he was tak­ing them for a trip to the zoo, Mom’s Deli, and Ted Drewes. I was fine until he men­tioned Mom’s Deli and Ted Drewes. Then not only was my heart miss­ing St. Louis, but my stom­ach was grum­bling at me too.

First, he put Bella on the phone. But know­ing Bella, she demanded to talk first. “Hi, CC!” she says. CC is the name I was given ever since Bella’s older sis­ter Kyah was first born. “We’re going to the zoo today!” Since I’m only talk­ing through the phone, I pic­ture her in my mind talk­ing to me. Her big smile is stretched from ear to ear and, if I were there, she’d be jump­ing up and down as she spoke. Every­thing is a party to Bella. We chat about this and that and I can hear my dad in the back­ground telling her to be quick because I’m at work. Then she does it. With the sweet­est five year old voice you can imag­ine, she says, “CC, when you get off of work, can you meet us at the zoo? We’re gonna be there for a half an hour.” She melts my heart every time.

I’m laugh­ing and I can hear her sib­lings in the back­ground laugh­ing too. She is still too young to under­stand how far away I live. I hear Ash­ton, her big brother, say, “Bella, she can’t come to the zoo. It’ll take her two whole nights to get here.” Kyah, the old­est of all three who prides her­self with how smart she is, snaps back, “No it won’t Ash­ton! It will take like 4 hours.” Bella starts to process it all and I explain to her how both of them are right. She gives up and knows its time to pass the phone to the other two, but before she goes she has one more thing to tell me. “CC, can you tell Uncle V that I miss him?”

And then it hap­pens again. My heart melts into a big pud­dle beneath me and all I can think about is “Christ­mas can’t come soon enough!”