Keeping Baby Warm

by Lynda Laughlin

It was an inexpensive dime-store set, and he was only three years old. His back was toward me, but I could see that his chubby little hands were busily working on something at the old table.

“What are you doing?” I asked him impatiently, annoyed at him for touching the decorations after he had been told not to.

As I started toward the scene of his latest mischief, he turned toward me with wide blue eyes filling and a single tear sliding down his cherubic cheek. Then I saw it. A carefully folded tissue had been tenderly placed over the small ceramic infant.

“Baby Jesus was cold, Mommy,” he whispered.

Ten years have passed, and the tiny Nativity has been replaced by a much larger one. But this year, as every year, I found a carefully folded tissue covering the baby Jesus. I think I know who did it, and I hope he never stops.