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gifts I had meant to deliver, and without the satisfaction of actually giving them. My sleep during the few hours left before dawn, though, was curiously refreshing. The bearded man I had been dreaming about—how familiar his features seemed; where had I seen him before?—appeared to me again, and this time he winked and said, “You’ll learn, and it will get better.”
    Well, my dream-friend was right about that. I had learned how important it was to scout out during the day those places where I planned to leave my gifts at night. It was, for instance, important to know where watchdogs might prowl. So on my second day in Myra I spent the morning locating another nomad camp just outside the city, making certain no one in that group had a dog, and carefully studying the best route between the camp and the inn, so I would know my way even in the pitch dark.
    My reconnaissance yielded other useful information. I counted five children in the group. All were barefoot, a painful state in a time when roads were strewn with rocks. I returned to the market to claim the bread, dried fruit, and blankets I hadn’t been able to carry the day before—they still comprised quite an armful—but I also added five child-sized pairs of sandals to the load.
    That night, I went out again, and this time things went smoothly. I found the camp, quietly made my way to the tents, and left bread and fruit by the sleeping mats of the snoring adults. Two of the older ones shivered in the cool night air, because they had nothing to cover themselves with. I left a blanket for each. Finally, I left a pair of sandals by the side of each sleeping child. I took a moment to study their faces, which were streaked with dirt. How hard their lives must be, I thought, constantly moving from place to place, often required to do the same hard fieldwork as grown-ups, always worried about whether, at night, there would be any supper at all. Well, they would have one very special morning, at least.
    I made my empty-handed way back to the inn and lay down, but I simply couldn’t sleep. I was too excited. As soon as it was dawn, I hurried back toward the nomad camp, and there by the light of the still-rising sun I saw five little figures dancing with glee, twirling in the dust on their new, treasured sandals even as their parents called for them to come to the fire and enjoy a tasty, nourishing breakfast of bread and fruit.
    It was a wonderful moment for me, too, and in the next years I was blessed to have many, many more of them. We learn in the Bible that it is better to give than to receive, and I was reminded of the truth in this every time I did my gift-giving. The satisfaction I felt, and the joy that washed over me, when I left food or clothing or blankets for those in need more than made up for the frustrations that continued to plague me.
    The main problem was that each wonderful moment of gift-giving required whole days and weeks of preparation. I had known from the start that I would have to keep moving about, traveling as far as I could between the places where I left the gifts. To stay in one place too long would be to invite discovery of who I was and what I was doing. My intention had been to divide my time between big cities and small villages, enjoying diversity in my happy task. There were plenty of poor folk everywhere. But I discovered it was difficult to make my way to country villages and impossible to properly carry out my mission once I was in them. In small towns, strange single women were objects of scorn, pity, or a combination of both. There was no way for me to quietly blend into the population, watching to learn where the poorest people lived, what food or clothing they needed most, and then purchasing these things before quietly leaving them beside the right sleeping mats during the night. Just the act of a lone woman buying many loaves of bread or pairs of sandals would set all the residents of small towns to