¡Feliz Día de Reyes!

Today is Three Kings Day, or the Day of the Epiphany, for Catholics (even for lapsed Catholics, like me). This day is a very special one in Puerto Rico, and my husband and I keep up the tradition by not taking down our Christmas decorations until tomorrow and by exchanging small gifts every January 6.

This day is also special in my memory because, as a child, we would visit my grandparents on La Víspera de Reyes, or Three Kings Eve, and I loved how my abuelo would point to the sky, to Orion's belt, and tell me how those were the Three Kings, on their way to Earth. Back then, we would gather yerba from my grandparents' yard and place our filled shoe boxes on the living room floor, in expectation that the Three Kings would leave us presents the next day.

On Three Kings Day, I vividly remember carefully inspecting the floor of my grandparents' porch, looking for any evidence of horses' hooves, and trying to figure out in my mind how the three horses would've marched into the porch and not wrecked my grandmother's perfectly appointed sitting area. When I remember it now, I don't know why I never figured that the three kings could, of course, leave their horses outside and then walk without the horses through the porch and into the house!

Those days are long, long gone. And my husband and I don't have any children to make wide-eyed with the stories of beautiful horses, with sparkling stirrups and bridles, those magical stallions that could travel through the sky and enter my grandparents' humble porch without destroying it.

But even without children to appreciate it, my husband and I still like to celebrate the holiday so tonight we will have some friends over for French butter cake and cherry pie (not very Puerto Rican, I know). And this morning we opened our nicely wrapped presents, which we placed under the tropical mata that I decorated for Christmas: my husband's large and mysterious box and mine looking obviously like a book.

My husband said he'd made my present and I had absolutely no idea what it could be. When I ripped the wrapping paper off and opened the huge box I was both moved and delighted to find a small wooden stool, cut in the shape of Puerto Rico, mi patria querida. The stool is perfect, more so because my husband made it (proving himself quite the artesano), and because he made it thinking of something that would be both useful (it will help me reach books that are high on my office bookshelves) and beautiful.

As a child, after we'd visited my grandparents' house and collected our Three Kings' loot from there, we would return home to our own presents, which mostly consisted of books and new clothes for the new school year. I always preferred Three Kings Day to Christmas Day because, although on Christmas Day I would get the Barbie shoes and dresses that I loved to play with, it was on Three Kings Day that I got the books that opened the world to me and made me appreciate reading literature, thereby etching the beginnings of my professional future.

Here, in the middle of nowhere in Ohio, Orion's belt is very clear and shines crisply on the dark, cold sky, taking me back to my childhood years, better than any time machine could. Tonight, if the wintry weather allows us to walk Geni, and if the sky is cloudless, I will point to the sky, to where Orion's belt is, and I will say to my husband: "See, there go the Three Kings, on their way back to where they came from." And for a second, during the time it takes to take a few breaths, I will believe again and I will be charmed.