A CHRISTMAS MEMORY RECONSTRUCTED

For many years the little, fuzzy, homemade sheep, along with the brown muslin donkey and red-checked gingham cow were the animals that were placed in our small, also homemade, creche. Mama and Grandma had cut the patterns, sewn them together by hand, stuffed them with cotton. They were somewhat blocky and fat-legged. But we loved them all. Especially did we love the sheep because of the texture of its "wool" which was soft eiderdown.

Through much handling and playing-with over the years, the sheep's tail had become looser and looser until it finally dropped off and was hastily tacked back on, stitches showing. One black velvet ear, for it had black ears and nose, patterned after the sheep of our neighbor's Hampshire flock, was drooping too. One eye, small black bead on a pin, was missing and a three-cornered tear was in the eiderdown covering of the body. This tear, too, had been tacked together, stitches showing, and sometimes a bit of the cotton sticking out.

"It isn't like a sheep a shepherd would have presented to the Baby Jesus, is it, Grandma?" I asked, being well steeped in the events of the Nativity.

"No, dear. The shepherds would have picked the finest in appearance. But who's to say that meant the finest sheep?"

"Why don't we throw this one away and make a new one, Grandma? Even though it is just one of the animals in the stable?"

There was a stretch of silence, then: "Well, shepherds don't just throw their imperfect sheep away. There would be too many. Sheep, like humans, can't help it if they get snagged, scratched or scarred during their living. Sometimes, especially in Jesus' time, they accidently fell from rocky cliffs, maybe got an eye put out or a broken leg running from enemies. They might have been lost for a long time 'til they nearly starved to death. The world is hard on sheep, especially if they don't have a good shepherd."

"I'm glad the world isn't hard on us like that."

"Oh but, Honey, it is. Just look at your Dad with an arm off, your sister who limps from polio, your Grandpa with that scar where his ear was cut in two and stitched back together. We wouldn't want to throw them away would me?"

We laughed at the very idea of such a thing. Then Grandma continued. "But there are other kinds of scars and scratches that don't show. They are inside snags and scars that can be made right again if the person gets acquainted with the Good Shepherd."

You mean Jesus, don't you?" My sisters and I had also learned the lessons of the Good Shepherd.

"Do you remember," Grandma asked, "the old railroad hobo who stole a ham from our smokehouse year before last and then last summer came by to confess that he had done it and offered to work for us for the price of the ham?"

I nodded my head affirmatively. We all remembered that because it had been such an unexpected thing.

"We wouldn't want to throw him away, would we, even though he had a patched up scar like this eiderdown skin, only it was inside."

Grandma went on to tell about others who had such "inside" scars by being "led into temptation" but had been "hooked back" to the right ways by the "Shepherd staff." Somehow she made such people sound as good, or maybe even better, than those who had never done anything wrong. "Bring me some black embroidery thread and my needle," she commanded.

I watched as she sewed the three-cornered tear back together with dainty feather stitches. She sewed the tail on securely with little lacy daisy stitches as well as the ears, both the droopy one as well as the good one. She took out the remaining eye and made two good, strong French knot eyes.

When it was done I thought it a more handsome sheep than it was in the beginning. Next time I was arranging the stable animals, instead of relegating the old ragged sheep to the back, I put it right up close to the cradle where the Baby Jesus, should he be miraculously thinking like an adult, could see the, perhaps sorry for, but beautifully patched scar.

REJOICE!