My favorite Christmas story is my daughter's first -- she was barely a month old. I was holding her and rocking her to sleep, successfully, while watching something on TV -- she kept waking up if I sat down, so I just stood there for a long time, kind of barely dancing. The TV was on and the lights on the Christmas tree were on but that was all. I looked down to check on her, expecting that she was still asleep, and she was gazing up at me with a grin that suffused her entire face with joy. It was her first real smile, and it was incredibly moving. She just smiled and smiled and smiled at me, and of course I smiled back -- that was one of the first times that I felt I connected with her as her own little person, and there was just so much love.
