Her dad shook her shoulder lightly. She slowly opened her eyes; the transition to the bright overhead light he’d flipped on was jarring. Then, she remembered with a quick rise of her pulse, it was Christmas. Had she slept in? Where were Clara and Ethan?
“What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her eyes and moving to get out of bed. “It’s 3:30,” he said, his voice a little thick, like he had also just woken up. “Get dressed warm, it’s cold. The cows are out. I will be out saddling Sparky. Mom is already in the truck.” “What? It’s Christmas,” she said, slumping back onto her pillows. “I am sorry, sis. I don’t think the cows care too much about Santa.” “Hurry” was his final word, and he closed her bedroom door.
“I hate those cows,” she thought. Why, on Christmas morning, did they choose to get out? She yawned. Why didn’t Clara have to get up, too? Mom and Dad spoil her and Ethan just because they are younger. She does everything. She pulled jeans over her pajama pants and found her warmest socks, the fancy ski socks Grandma gave her last year. Dressed, she took her phone out of her bathroom, where it was charging, and pushed it into her back pocket. If she didn’t hurry, she knew Dad would call. As she padded downstairs, she saw the Christmas tree glow from the stairwell.
She turned the corner, and from a glance, she knew that Santa had come. Too heavy for the hook on the mantle, her stocking lay on the couch, plump with goodies. Spying the pile of wrapped presents under the tree, her fingers twitched with the need to pick them up and just peek. She didn’t believe in Santa anymore, though sometimes she wished she did. Thinking about mom spending all that money on presents made her tummy flip over. That thought humbled her for a moment, reminding her of her task.
Fully awake, she realized the quicker the cows could get back in, the sooner she could open her presents. She pulled her coat, gloves, boots and hat from the closet. Quickly assembled, she tied a jaunty wild rag around her neck. A little extra, just the way she liked it.
For the next hour, in the dark, with the lights of the pickup truck behind her, she coaxed and then pushed the cows from the neighbor’s pasture, the canal bank and the country road. She was glad they hadn’t reached the highway before the sheriff called Dad. The snow crunched under Sparky’s hooves, and her saddle squeaked. The cows bellowed, casually upset, as cows are prone to be at their midnight transition. The noise seemed to echo in the stillness. Dad rode beside her, unusually silent. The stars were bright and pretty. Sometimes, in the summer, she saw the stars this bright when she slept on the trampoline with her cousins, but never in the winter. They looked different with the cold air around them and all the snow on the ground. Her toes and fingertips were frozen when the final cow walked through the gate. Mom managed gate duty and offered to unsaddle and brush Sparky for her.
She returned to the house, excited again for Santa’s goodies. Mom's parting words were, “Wait for your siblings, Cora, and don’t wake them up.” She assumed it wouldn’t be long before Clara’s 5 a.m. alarm, which she had specially set the night before, went off.
Thirty minutes later, Clara and Ethan walked downstairs wide-eyed in their Christmas jammies, wondering where everyone else was. Mom sat on the floor in front of the blazing fireplace, Cora’s sleeping head nestled in her lap. Dad was supervising the sizzling sausage on the stove. It was Christmas morning.
