A few days before Christmas, when Rob was fifteen years old, he overheard his father say to his mother, “Mary, I hate to call Rob to milk the cows in the mornings. He’s growing so fast and he needs his sleep. … I wish I could manage alone.”
These simple words made Rob fully realize something for the first time: his father loved him!
The family was poor. Rob had bought his father an inexpensive tie, but as he lay thinking on the night before Christmas, it didn’t seem enough. With growing excitement he decided on a better gift. He would get up early and milk the cows before his father got up. He laughed to himself in anticipation of his father’s surprise.
The task went more easily than he had ever known it to go before. Milking for once was not a chore. It was something else—a gift to his father, who loved him.
His task finished, Rob returned to his bed just moments before his father called him. He knew his father would go to the barn ahead of him to get started and in only a few minutes would discover the two big cans standing in the milk-house, filled. Breathlessly, Rob waited for his return.
After what seemed an eternity, Rob heard his bedroom door open, heard his father laughing, a “sobbing sort of laugh,” and heard his father say, “Thought you’d fool me, did you?”
“It’s for Christmas, Dad!” In the morning darkness, he found his father and clutched him in a great hug. Rob’s heart was “bursting with love.”
“Son, I thank you,” his father said. “Nobody ever did a nicer thing. … The best Christmas gift I ever had, and I’ll remember it, son, every year on Christmas morning, so long as I live.” (Adapted from Pearl S. Buck, “Christmas Day in the Morning,” in Colliers, 23 Dec. 1955, pp. 10–11.)
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