Christmas was a month away.  I asked my husband for shopping money. I had $100.00 on a charge card.  I cried myself to sleep that night.  I loved Christmas.  I tried shopping for gifts for our parents.  It was futile.  I went to a fabric store and there were sewing patterns there for Christmas.  I bought the one that was for a complete manger scene.

I bought the fabric pieces from a remnant bin.  I also bought fluffy stuffing and navy beans and lots of thread.

I sat on my butt on the living room floor.  We had no furniture yet.  We had a cat that raised hell with me as I fit the fabric pieces to the tissue patterns.  I had to put the cat in our bedroom to do this project.  We had a bed in there and she slept on it and was far more comfortable than I was on the floor.

I sewed and stuffed two stables and mangers and palm trees.  The beans were to weight these pieces so that they could stand up.  I made two pairs of Mary and Joseph, two angels, two babies as Jesus, and two sets of three kings.  I also made two sets of shepherds.  Then I made two camels, two donkeys, and two unsuccessful sheep.  It took me a long time and my butt was numb every single day.  In the end it was a passable contrived manger scene that I packed carefully in boxes and wrapped them in Christmas paper.

My husband’s parents liked their manger scene.  My mom and dad set up the one I had made for them under their skimpy fake tree.  The next Christmas I visited my in-laws and saw the manger scene I had made on the dining room table, as a centerpiece.  It made me feel good.

We went to my parents’ house for Christmas.  I looked around and did not see any manger scene.  I felt the loss. My mother saw my face and glibly explained that they had put the manger scene in the garage rafters.  Mice had found the beans inside each piece and had torn it all apart by eating the beans and using all the material and stuffing for nesting.

I went to bed early on Christmas Eve.  I cried a little bit.

In the morning they opened our gift for them.  I had taken a brick and had wrapped it in cheap quilted cloth.  I sewed a tube for a tail and sewed it onto the brick body.  I attached a very crude cat head with drawn on whiskers, mouth, nose, and eyes.  It was a doorstop.  I made it in one day.  They loved it and kept it around until the cat we gave them tore off its head.