The winter is near. I can smell it early in the morning when my cheeks freeze as soon as I open the door and my breath would freeze too if I had any but since I’m only a wooden puppet I was carved empty on the inside.

I assume that I am empty because I sound empty if you knock on my chest but sometimes I wonder. Do only the things we can either see or touch exist? Or there is much more to the world and life than we can even imagine?

I was writing about winter and the holidays…

One cannot think of winter without thinking of the Christmas and the New Years Eve.. Everyone except for me I think…

I’ve had only a couple of winters spent with Gepetto and none of them was about presents…I was a present enough for him, he used to say…

We never had a Christmas tree… At least not one that the others could see…

We were never able to cut down a tree and take it into our home for the sole purpose of our amusement so we used to go deep in the woods in the eve of every Christmas, pick a tree and call it ours for that year.

We went home later on and stayed by the fire, thinking of our beautiful tree and just closing our eyes to see it in all its natural beauty, covered in sparkling snow…

Now Gepetto is gone and as the holidays approach I feel lonelier than ever…

No Gepetto means no more stories in the long winter nights, no one to make you remember the sunny days and convince you that spring will come again…with its promises of brand new innocent life, with its flowery fingers…and the birds.

No one to make way through the snow towards the little church on top of the hill, early in the Christmas morning when everyone is thinking of presents and cookies and forget about the miracle in Jerusalem.

No one to wish Merry Christmas to and an empty cold house with frozen windows and an imaginary tree in the deserted living room.

I could draw my usual Christmas card but there’s no one to give it to and others would make fun of my “masterpiece”. Only Gepetto was patient enough to find the meaning of my scribbling, make a frame for it and hang it in his workshop next to all the others…

It hurts inside just remembering those times and I wonder what is that it hurts so hard where there is nothing but emptiness, inside me…

Why do I feel as if I have a captive bird in the cage of my wooden chest?

Christmas is near and it smells like apple pie.

A new year is approaching and I have nothing but my journal and the feeling there must be someone out there for me too.

Someone in love of imaginary Christmas trees.

Someone for whom love and companionship mean more than words or presents.

Someone capable of loving a wooden boy for nothing more than what he is….

A doll with living eyes and a soul hidden somewhere behind his rib cage.

Christmas will come with its tiny miracles.

Until then I learn to say good bye to the dying autumn and to make picture frames out of the dying leaves.

I will frame in it a picture of you and me someday….