How was your Christmas?

By this time of the year, this is the question my friends and I ask each other, and, thankfully, the answer is almost always positive. Great! Fun! Exciting! Slow! Slow?? Well, yes. At least in my house.

Many times I stare at Flipper, wonderingly, at this little person, an individual in her own right. And I think: Who are you? Christmas morning raised this question yet again, and I'll tell you why. Picture dawn creeping across the land, as thousands of children leap out of bed, rush pell-mell to the living room, and fall upon their presents like a horde of deranged puppies. Pretty typical, right? Exciting, fun, all that good old Christmas stuff...but not slow. Not even close.

Now come to my house: Sister and I have been up for some time, she drinking coffee, me making a coffee cake that required yeast, which makes me quite nervous. At 7 a.m., the grandparents arrive, and we wait. And wait. By 7:45, my father could bear it no longer, and wanted to start making noise to wake Flipper up, "get things going" in his words.

Since I never, unless I absolutely have to, wake up any sleeping child, I tried to urge patience. My pleas fell on deaf ears, and so at 8 a.m., I urged her to consciousness. Slowly, she got out of bed, and slowly, she came downstairs. She silently knelt by the fire, gazed at the empty plate that held fruitcake and carrots the evening before, and then slowly dipped into her stocking.

Stockings are a big deal in my family: many small treasures, carefully selected over the course of an entire year, presents both practical and frivolous must be carefully removed, exclaimed, and passed around. It took her an hour to go through hers. A new pair of tights required a change out of pajamas and to get dressed in a skirt that would show the new tights to perfection. Back downstairs.

By now, the rest of us had long finished with ours, and were watching her slowly examine a tooth fairy box, a cupcake-shaped container of lip gloss...it was edging past 9 a.m., and those of us that had been up since the crack of dawn, which is to say everyone but Flipper, were getting peckish.

Almost jokingly I said, "Why don't we take a break to eat and then come back to the presents?" Much to our surprise, she willingly agreed. Present-opening was suspended, and we ate a slow, leisurely meal, then returned, moving as if underwater, to the tree.

Sister and I exchanged glances. Who are you? This thought went through our minds again as she carefully, slowly, thoughtfully unwrapped each gift, examined it closely, played with it or arranged it somewhere. Doll clothes had to go on the doll that minute, not later. Books must be paged through at the moment, not at bedtime. And so it went. It took more than an hour.

But there was something so sweet, so innocent, and yet so strangely adult-like in her desire to savor every moment, that the build-up and the hype of Christmas morning wasn't, for Flipper, to be cast aside in a hastily unwrapped pile of paper and ribbon, and new toys dropped where they were unwrapped so the next could be grabbed and torn open as well.

And so our Christmas was slow, very slow. And even I, one of the most impatient people you'll ever meet, wouldn't change a thing. It was perfect.

Leigh appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Leigh at her blog Flipper and Me.