In our neighborhood and homes, Christmas was different from that of wealthy families, the middle class, or what Hollywood portrayed. Our celebration did not have expensive gifts, decorated trees, or large tables filled with dishes of food. Despite all this, our Christmas was filled with happiness. My older sister, Miandabu, brought the Christmas spirit and magic, with a handful of flea market decorations, clothes, and gifts. Every December, when Christmas Day rolled around, she would have a new outfit for me. Not just any outfit, but a piece specially chosen for me. She didn’t need to be told to do it.
She wasn’t my oldest sister, but she treated me as if she were. Instead of spending on herself, on clothes, shoes, or makeup, she used the money she made throughout the year to buy me Christmas gifts.
One Christmas, when I was around eleven or twelve years old, I woke up early on my own. Except for the steady sound of an African broom, made of tall wild dry grasses, moving across the compound, the house was quiet. Miandabu was sweeping. She had woken up long before the of us.
What I remember is Miandabu walking into the room with a smile on her face, holding a blue plastic bag with a picture of Rambo on it. The bag had no festive patterns, no glitter, just a simple bow tied with care. She held the bag tightly, changing the way she held it every so often, staring down at it and then back up at me. The way she handled it made it clear it was important.
“Merry Christmas,” she said with her smile and handed me the box inside the bag.
Without opening it, I ran my fingers across the length of it. I did everything slowly. I was not in a hurry. Then I opened it. There was something about it that held me still. I looked at the shirt a little while, running my fingers over it as if to convince myself it was mine.
It was a bright, sky-blue shirt and a pair of black shorts, crisply pressed with creases that would make me stand straighter in my shoes. I didn’t typically care about clothes, but there was something about the T-shirt that moved me. I looked down at my new garments. I must have stared at them for minutes; I didn’t smile right away. My fingers brushed the fabric. It was new. Nobody had worn it before.
“They’re yours,” she said.
I nodded.
I got up and looked in the mirror, holding the shirt against me to see how it would fit. She watched and didn’t say anything. She just smiled. Later I showed my new clothes to the neighbors. Anyone who would listen heard, “My sister got these for me!”
I wore them proudly that day, even though we were going to church and back. My mother noticed too. Every Christmas, she would shake her and say, “You spoil him too much, Miandabu.” But she let us be, and in the warmth of her gaze, Miandabu was just doing what love made her do, and it brought us so much happiness.
One time, she got me a brown corduroy jacket that made me strut around looking and feeling like a confident middle-aged man. I remember coming up with excuses to wear it even when the weather wouldn’t allow for a jacket, but I felt such an unexplained confidence in it. Looking back, I think it was because someone had picked it out specifically for me, and for a brief moment, I felt important.
My favorite Christmas was when I was about fourteen, an awkward age. You start to feel you are too old to be considered a little boy, and begin presenting yourself more maturely. I had always hoped to have a pair of shoes like the older boys at school, polished and black, with shiny, pointed toes. During school assemblies and on my walk home I would catch a glimpse of them. The older boys wore them with pride and I often found myself imagining what it would be like to have a pair of my own. No one had ever heard me say it.
But that Christmas, Miandabu gave me a pair of those very shoes; they shone as if they had been made only for me. I remember lifting them out of the box and turning them slowly in my hands, the way the leather reflected sunlight and the feeling of not quite comprehending they were mine. I walked in them carefully, afraid of ruining them. And even outside I was attentive to each footstep. I managed to find way to navigate around each puddle and dusty patch I could see. It seemed to me that she had some kind of magical power, how else could she know what I was thinking without me uttering a word?
I never took her efforts for granted, but I wasn’t old enough at the time to comprehend the sacrifice. She deserved more than I knew how to give her. I was too young to comprehend what the gifts cost her. I knew that she made very little. She worked piecework in town at a boutique and still managed to save for me. Sometimes, the clothes she gave me came from the flea market. Other times she bought me new clothes with the price tags intact, whether from a major chain store or a small boutique.
Weeks before Christmas, other families in our neighborhood concentrated on food preparations, buying bags of rice, Irish potatoes, and chickens for slaughter. Miandabu concentrated on gifts. She worked extra hours whenever she could. I did not know any of this back then, but I now realize the hours she put in and the things she denied herself – new shoes, a decent handbag, a warm sweater – just so that I could sparkle on Christmas morning.
She took great care in preparing each gift. On Christmas Eve, she properly washed them to remove that flea market clothing scent, and ironed the outfit that I would wear. On Christmas morning, she made sure I was dressed properly; then she stepped back and admired the result. I could see it in her face. That was her reward.
Sometimes the neighbors would also notice too. “You are always dressed in new clothes and look so nice at Christmas,” they would say. “Your sister really cares for you.”
Miandabu did not brag. She only smiled, nodded, and was happy in her silence. I had no money to buy her anything. I could only give her a huge smile, a loud “Thank you!” Somehow, that was enough.
As I grew older, I found my own ways to give back to her. Work was shared equally in our house; the oldest sister cleaned the house and cooked lunch, another fetched water, while Miandabu washed dishes. I would wash her dishes when I knew she would come home late from work.
It was love that asked for nothing in return. As an adult, I see how Miandabu’s love shaped the way that I give to people that I am not related to. Every Christmas, I always find ways to buy gifts for orphans and less privileged people in my community, showing them love and that they are not alone.
When I think of it now, I realize the clothes were only part of what she gave me. The real gift was sacrifice, and a steady, quiet love.
No matter where I am, I recall the Christmas presents from Miandabu. I remember feeling like the luckiest boy in the world as I stood in front of the mirror, walking around and admiring the new outfit she had bought me.
All I wanted was one more Christmas in the neighborhood where I grew up. One more chance where I could see Miandabu laughing, and say, “Go on, try them on.”
In the end, life separated us. I moved away for school. Miandabu got married, and moved to another country, now with two beautiful kids. Now we don’t see each other on Christmas Day, but I always remind her about those Christmases when talking on the phone, and how much I appreciate her sacrifices. She usually dismisses it with a chuckle, “Oh, you still remember that?”
The clothes were not just clothes. They showed me that I was important and that I was never invisible.
