‘Twas Two Days Before Christmas . . .

I have a friend named Jeffrey who is 3 years old and the smartest boy in the world.

The reason I know that is he was helping me wrap presents the other day by holding his finger at the juncture of two ribbons when he suddenly said, “Did you know there is bread inside of toast?”

It was a startling revelation to me so I said, “No, I didn’t know that!”

“It’s true,” he said, suddenly releasing the ribbon. I watched it unravel on the table, a twisting combination of reds and greens, as he walked to the kitchen to retrieve a half-eaten piece of toast.

“Look,” he said, forcing open the piece of bread to show me the soft insides. “There’s toast on the top and bread inside.”

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“But no butter,” he said. “I don’t like butter. Do you like butter?”

“I can take it or leave it,” I said.

“Why?”

Jeffrey loves whys. He picks passing whys out of the air and from the rain-dampened flowers that grow in our garden. He grabs whys from the stars and from the sleepy things he sees at night just before dropping off.

“I don’t know,” I said, “Sometimes I like butter, sometimes I don’t.”

“I don’t like vegables,” he said, frowning at the memory of carrots and broccoli. “Do you like vegables?”

“I love vegables,” I said.

“Why?”

*

I am not a big present wrapper, requiring as it does a skill beyond any I possess. My mother wrapped presents with a facility that was awesome. She wrapped presents and folded towels. Those were her only talents.

When I wrap, the paper is either too large and I have to cut it or too small and I have to tape two pieces together. Also I can’t get the corners to lie smoothly. They bunch up. My mother’s corners never bunched.

This year I had help. Everyone else had gone shopping and Jeffrey and I were home alone, being friends. My job was to wrap a few presents. His job was to play and see that I stayed out of trouble.

Midway through play he began taking an interest in my effort to hold one end of a ribbon in my teeth while attempting to loop the other into a knot.

“I’ll help,” Jeffrey said, perceiving my difficulty.

He climbed onto my lap, which blocked my view of the job. I was about to say he couldn’t sit there, but stopped myself.

Nature sometimes gives us second chances at being good parents and this was one of them. What I was always too busy to do with my son, I can now do with his son, realizing at last that warm glory of being close.

“Would you like to help me tie a knot?” I asked.

“Why?” he said, letting me guide his finger to the juncture of where the ribbons crossed on the package.

I don’t think he had intended to ask why that time because he didn’t appear to expect an answer. He must have seen a why fluttering in the sunlight that streamed through a window and grabbed it before it could get away.

“I just like you helping me,” I said.

He told me about the toast with the bread inside and then said, “You know what? I have a trick.” He grabbed a ball that was on the table, waved it around in a theatrical manner and tucked it under his shirt. Then he flung his arms out in a grand gesture. “Ta-da! Magic!”

*

The magic is in the child, the wonder of a little person growing and learning, filling pockets and purses with as many whys as they can hold, pondering the mysteries of barking dogs and falling rain.

“If I never see another magic trick I’ll remember that one,” I said.

He nodded solemnly as I gathered up the ribbon again that had unraveled on the table. The ball made a small round place under his T-shirt.

We finished wrapping the present and I was about to make out a name card when it struck me. “You know what?” I said. “I forget what’s inside the package and who the present’s for.”

A why darted past him and around back by the fireplace, but Jeffrey let it go. “Maybe it’s peanut butter,” he said.

I nodded. “Or maybe a hot dog for the cat.”

“You don’t wrap hot dogs,” he said firmly.

“Why?” I said, finding an old whimsical why in my pocket.

Jeffrey thought about that for a moment and then shrugged. “You want to go for a walk?”

We left the presents and ambled hand in hand up a trail behind the house on a day as sweet as a baby’s kiss, watching for a hundred whys in a wind that touched our faces and blew winter’s leaves in swirls around this grand and wondrous boy.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.