My Secret Santa | First Person

Every Christmas I think of him. A man whose name I never knew who tapped me on the shoulder as I stepped away from the customs checkpoint at Miami International Airport, duffel bag slung over my shoulder, a small black three-ring notebook clutched in my hand. This was a week before Christmas 1969. I was 23, newly married, and my wife had breezed through the gate where our flight north awaited. I was returning from my time as a Peace Corps volunteer on the Colombian coast, whose relentless heat made me dream of winter in Maine, where I was heading—the start of a new life. 

“Come with me,” the man said. He was African-American, maybe 30 years old, in a crisp customs uniform. His voice was quiet, insistent. “This way.” 

You want to think you’ll be cool under fire, unfazed, that when the unexpected happens you’ll meet it with grace and calm. But I could not breathe. I clutched the notebook. Inside was a card illustrated with an ornament-filled tree. “To Mom and Dad” I had written on the sealed envelope, which was not meant for them. Inside was a plastic sandwich bag, into which I had placed a few grams of Colombia’s infamous plant export for Americanos.

I held up the notebook and blurted, “Do I bring this too?” He nodded and put my duffel on the floor. He led me to a windowless room lit by overhead fluorescents. I remember the hard chair, a long table. I remember hoping my voice did not tremble. I knew bringing this plant on a plane was a federal crime. I knew the life I was going to in Maine was no longer in my hands.

His voice was soft yet firm. Where was I coming from? What was I doing there? Where was I going? I wanted to tell him the truth. That I had lived with two other volunteers. That every few weeks someone knocked on the door. A paper bag came in, a few dollars went out. That we put on some Dylan and sat on the open balcony by the sea, and that the moonlight on the waves was too beautiful to express. That when I left I pinched a few leaves into the sandwich bag as a keepsake, like bringing home shells from the beach. That I was unimaginably stupid to do this at a time when Miami was at the center of a national drug crackdown.

I wanted to say that I had many plans for Christmas, and none of them involved being in this room.

He reached for my notebook. He flipped it open and turned pages slowly. He removed the envelope. I knew he would feel a slight bulge in the center. The world as I knew it was about to end.

Except.

He looked at me, then tucked the envelope back into the notebook. He smiled slightly. I have never forgotten his words: “You’re good to go, my man.” He added, “Be careful out there.”

I wonder how many other shoulders he had tapped. I wonder if he simply knew that of all the fish he might reel in, I would be the smallest. I like to think it was Christmas, and he calculated the future of a life he held in his hand. I wonder if he went home later and told his own story of a young man with a stricken face and a card with a tiny lump. And how by not opening an envelope, he gave the gift of a future not derailed by the most foolish, most naïve thing I could possibly do. Which is why I have never forgotten him.

After I landed, I flushed the bag’s contents down a toilet. But I kept the notebook. It lives in a box deep in a storage unit. And inside is a card with a picture of a green tree and ornaments that no one ever saw again.