Whether one’s focus is on a very special babe born in a manger 2000 years ago, or on a “big-fat-man-with-the-long-white-beard” that makes annual visits to Xmas trees in homes all over the world bearing gifts – the reason for the season is essentially, to me, about spreading some goodwill and cheer to everybody.
Christmas is about miracles. And
often times, they happen in random acts of kindness when one least expects it.
My first encounter with a real
life Santa Claus was about 40 years ago. Except that in my case, Santa wasn’t
wearing pants but a skirt!
It was a couple of weeks after a
botched surgery on my leg that put me permanently in a wheelchair.
I was only a boy of ten years
old then and thought that my paralysis was only temporary.
However, it didn’t take long for
me to figure out that things weren’t going at all in the way the surgeon had promised.
The surgery had severed my
nerves, causing me to lose all sensations in my leg. I was put in a plaster
cast from my chest down to my foot for three months.
I was completely bedridden in a
children’s ward. I even had to suffer the humiliation of attending to the calls
of nature in bed. Often times it required the help of a doctor or a nurse!
I became extremely depressed. The
medical staff had no time to listen to my feelings. They must have thought that
by ignoring them, my problem would go away.
In utter frustration, I started
throwing the toys the volunteers in the ward brought to me during playtime at
them. They scurried away quickly thinking that I was a naughty little brat.
It was then that I met
Santarina.
She was an overseas paediatric
nurse who worked as a temp in the ward. She visited me at night after her duty
ended when the rest of the kids, mainly toddlers, were asleep.
She noticed a battery toy car
that a relative had given me on my locker. I told her I wanted badly to play it
but was waiting for the time when I could get out of bed as the car needed to
be put on the ground in order to operate it.
The nurse said, “Hey, let’s do
it now.” She took it out of the box and placed it on the floor. It had fancy
lights and a special inbuilt device that would make it turn around and go the
other way when it bumped into obstacles.
The little car went all around
the ward, knocking into other hospital beds and spinning around, with the nurse
in tow describing every detail as I tried to visualise what was going on from
my bed.
I was so touched that she would
do that for me.
We became friends after that.
Every night she would come by for an hour as I talked to her about my new life
of disability and my frustrations.
Although she left back to her
country when her term had ended a few weeks later, my pal the nurse helped me
understand that my new life in a wheelchair was only the beginning to many
wonderful things to come.
During my young adult life, I
met another Santa – this time a pastor of a nearby church. Also a foreigner, he
used to come by in his van and take me to church every Sunday mornings before
going back home and bringing his family along.
On one Sunday morning, as we
were heading to church he told me about a Swedish warship that was visiting
Port Klang.
When he heard that I had never
seen a warship, and noting that the ship would be leaving the next day, the
Pastor suddenly swerved his van around, shouted “Hang one, we still have time!”
The next thing I knew, we were
heading straight to Port Klang from Petaling Jaya.
We got there in an amazing 20
minutes as this Santa certainly didn’t drive like a clergyman.
“Would you like to see the
inside?” he asked, as if he was suddenly oblivious to the fact that I was in a
wheelchair.
The pastor got down and
whispered something to the ship’s captain ear who then picked up his
walkie-talkie.
Suddenly a big and strong navy
officer emerged from the ship.
He came to me and lifted me like
a baby and took me for a quick tour all around the ship. I simply couldn’t
believe what was happening.
The pastor and I made it back to
church in time. The choir was just about to sing “Joy To The World”. His family
were already seated as he had phoned one of his church members to take them
whilst I was inside the battleship.
Merrry Xmas everybody!
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