Four grandparents, a great-aunt, a great-great aunt and all seven sets of regular aunts and uncles were dispatched on a search that spanned five states. For days the phone rang with reports. An ornamental French horn had been located in a florist-supply shop: It didn’t make noise, but it was golden, and it would fit a child’s hands. A miniature rake had turned up in a gardening catalog, and maybe a rake was close enough to a pitchfork? Would a real pennywhistle work in lieu of a trumpet?

In the end, a toy trumpet made of white plastic arrived via two-day mail, along with a decorative French horn — golden but silent — for good measure. On Christmas morning, a handsome child-size rake stood in for the pitchfork beneath the tree. The delighted child in the red footie pajamas didn’t seem to notice the substitution.

All this sounds hopelessly indulgent, I know, a rookie mistake by parents — and an entire extended family — who hadn’t yet figured out that they aren’t doing their children any favors when they protect them from every possible disappointment.

But that year our house was permeated by sadness, and I didn’t see how I could bear any more of it. The boy who shouted, “I wish for a brudder!” every time he threw a penny into a shopping-mall fountain couldn’t have known that his mother had just suffered a miscarriage. He had no idea what it meant that tears sprang to her eyes with every wish he made at that fountain. He didn’t understand his father’s feeling of helplessness or his mother’s sadness. We might not be able to give him a brother, but by God we would find him a trumpet. And the entire extended family, on both sides, was determined to help. Together, we would find that child something that passed for a pitchfork, even if it meant paying too much for mail-order garden equipment.

That was 25 years ago, and the not-quite-3-year-old is now a man. All but one of his grandparents are gone, and both great-aunts, too. Even the shopping mall is gone. But not everything is gone.

I didn’t know it in 1994, but my firstborn would eventually get his wish for not one brother but two. The aunts and uncles who loved him then still love him now, and next summer they will gather for his wedding. They will stand behind him as he begins a new life and a new family, a reminder that the new little family is not alone in the world. In good times and in bad, their loved ones will be there to see them through whatever comes their way.

Every year I find myself thinking of that Christmas, when a surly Santa gave our entire clan a chance to surround our family with love; the chance, collectively, to keep the magic alive for one little boy with a sad mother and a bewildered father who didn’t know how to help the sadness. It was not the happiest Christmas of my life, and it was not the grandest, but it is the one I won’t ever forget.

Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the book “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”

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