By Brian McDaid
I HAVE to say I was a bit disappointed, when, after a bit of searching, I finally got his number and called it. As it dialled out, I felt a shiver go through me as I waited for the call to be answered.
“Hello … hello”, came the deep voice on the other side. I introduced myself nervously and the voice paused and then replied, “I don’t know you.” On reflection, I forgot that nearly 60 years had passed since I was last speaking to him.
It was in Rainey’s Furniture Store on the Port Road. It was 1968 and I was nearly four. Not that I remember much about him, but I do remember it was just me and my mother. I got a red tin car and there was a power cut on the Port Road that winter’s evening. The shop windows had candles burning in them, not for show but for purpose with shopkeepers running about with torches serving customers.
As all these wonderful memories are flying through my mind, I have to remind myself that I’m at work here and I’m trying to organise a photo for the last newspaper before Christmas.
“What did you say your name was again?”, said the voice on the other end of the line.
“It’s Brian McDaid from the Donegal News, I was trying to,”… “ah Brian McDaid, sure I know you now, I thought you said your name was Brian McCabe.”
Maybe in my nervous voice that’s what it sounded like, and I also thought ‘great recovery Santa’.
He starts telling me about members of my family now long passed on and we’re both in the moment.
“Where did you get my number anyway?”, he inquired.
Responding, I said: “I got it from two people that worked with you many years ago, both of whom weren’t sure if the number was right, but a cross-check on one man’s phone and another’s group chat confirmed that the number must be yours.”
Brian pictured with his beloved late mum, Mary Ellen and his siblings.
As we try to organise a photo of the man himself I save his number on my phone.
Over the next few days we missed each other’s calls and the screen in my van flashed up a few missed calls in red from the man himself ‘Santa’, before we finally met in the reception of the Silver Tassie Hotel, where he had just made an appearance to meet a group of special needs children.
Santa was sitting there enjoying a latte as we got a wee chat about what it is like for him in the run up to Christmas. I am not sure that my camera work does him justice as I fight with the Christmas lights in the background.
He tells me that Marty in Gerry McKeever’s Barbers trimmed his beautiful beard for Christmas. He’s flat to the mat this year, all over Donegal, with the single biggest question young ones asking him: “how does he manage in these new houses with no chimneys?”
Santa shows me a wee gold key that can open any door on his journeys around Donegal.
He has arrived in so many forms of transport to see children this Christmas from combine harvesters, to hummers to helicopters.
He even arrived into a school in Doneyloop escorted by the Irish Army and a piper.
He has had many conversations with many excited children with suggestions on where to leave quads that might not fit in the front door.
I watch as the last of his latte ends up on the bottom of his moustache. He then donned his white gloves for me to get a photo of him over beside the Christmas tree.
As I looked through the lens I was that nearly four year old boy again, down in Rainey’s on the Port Road with my mother spending some quality time on that last Christmas she would be with us.
Only out of hospital before Christmas, she was going to make the best of things for us, a perfect Christmas on the outside as she brought me in to see Santa and walk home with a tight grip on my hand in the power cut. It was a Christmas and a Santa I will never forget.
Happy Christmas, Santa.
