Coming home from school the last day before Winter break pops loud like a bottle cork getting pried off. Christmas season: shrouded mystery, open book. Consistently warm, regardless actual weather. Better than wet-weather baking, better than snow days, better than any day in November, in February, than even July. There was nothing that wasn’t possible. Smiles said “I’m right here, right now. And I expect joy”. How often is joy expected? Joy in bursting: bursting off that last bus; bursting through the door; bursting up and down aisles in stores. Bursting so much so the night before, that only eyes grew tired waiting for that moment of bursting from bed. (*Now getting out of bed involves verbs like “pry” or “brace”, and unfortunately not “burst” or “joy”.)
Piping chimney, piping hot fire, hot stove. Cold toe, hot breath. Sweating through wool. Lonely outdoor aromas inhaled deeply, ravenously, with animal lungs. Deep inhales that said “Hold on. Don’t rush. Let’s let this last for more than just one slice of forever”. Huffing visible breath in the air, thinking “Wow, look at us, we are air making machines and we can see life”.
The promise of Christmas wonder was guaranteed: no school meant sleep late, meet with friends. Take treks in the woods, wear yourself out. It meant people held doors for one another and on those doors were wreaths which smelled of laundry. Elves’ laundry, done in the woods. All around, people were harried in a good way--they hustled, like in the last lap of a race or better yet last quarter of a tied game because that means “fight for the team” and that is also part of the Spirit: Unity.
Unpacking boxes of Christmas ornaments and adorning the tree was a rite of passage. My seven siblings and I had filled boxes with glue-ronments, assorted kindling of felt and ice-pop sticks, glitter and pinecones, and starring Elmer’s glue by sight and smell…inhaled through the years. Bought breakables, the up-high ones sleeping in paper wombs, opening each like a secretly passed note or possibly prized Wonka bar. After fifty weeks of slumber in an attic tomb, they rose to life like marching soldiers upon seeing light, a yearly birth.
Things were thick. The weight of Winter was heavy yet not burdensome. Held up on frozen ground, nests of carolers huddled, offering their hearts. No constriction was felt in full rooms of family. Chock full of stuff. Dense with love. Loaded with the smell of bacon, of roast turkey and other delicious decaying flesh. Heavy linens with deep hues and heavy plates--the weight of finer things.
This time reflected one thing I liked about church: the ceremony. Here: extra care, extra tableware. There: extra people, extra Jesuses, extra Marys. Marking her calendar month: Mary, the original Mz. December. Extra altar adornments and Poinsettias abounded. People spoke in low tones, counted steps.
Within rites of passage, roles reverse: kids bow to their parents’ sugarplum visions. Think Santa. A neighbor (who I knew was smarmy even at seven) came over, Santa for hire, offering his lap, the usual line of questioning, and accoutrements like beard, Hohohoho--and I, knowing it was him yet playing along, prayed “This face must look more smile, less wince, no?” We all force stories of necessity eventually.
I wonder when the official fact of Santa’s non-existence stood up, Dean of Childhood’s Death?
It’s kind of like figuring the last time you did something, especially if it was A Thing. Every day after-dinner walks with Dad; Sunday: chicken day; Wednesday, Parcheesi tournament: Boys v. Girls; Thursdays with Aunt Edna (’91-’94). You never remember the last because you usually don’t know it’s The Last. And who among us recalls calling cut?
As years went by, the excitement of the Holiday waned: like an engagement ring offered after ten years of courtship-the smile of the bride not quite beaming, an “I do, not DO!!”. A submission. What happened to the wonder of Winter? For me: I got cold. Knew new kinds of heaviness: why person x and person y didn’t talk and why. That everyone had either x, y, or z in their family tree and that sometimes sorry wasn’t enough to call truce.
Now my wonder is in how it was all pulled off? What kind of veneer was used, what potion allowed adults to carry out the backstage handiwork which to me was just a play? Those theatrics. How did they get Peter to fly like that? It seemed it must include a lot of forgetting. Intentional forgetting. I can picture a priest reciting “Let us rise. In Peace. And let us all forget.” Amen.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
How my Cat will Die....A Children's Fairytale
Nearly the point of exhaustion. Obsessed with death. Lately I’ve been unable to look at even my cat without conjuring up, and then existing within, some historic timeline–starting with the cat’s arrival in my life and then gelling into a sort of montage, including highlights of what she used to be and do.
She used to play Fetch! In her youth, a master at finding balls, and
holding them in her mouth as she dainitily trotted back. She would only go for those aluminum balls, though. I’ve always thought (but never confessed) that clearly this had something to do with the fact that her natal Sun is in Aquarius. They love all things silver.
My Aquarian kitty. She could hear the aluminum crinkling some 20 yards to the fore, and come running. But alas, no longer a kitty.
There are various other scenes I replay, often for some unavoidable reason involving the different litter boxes and their respective surroundings that she has shat into over the years. Sigh.
It bothers me how her eyes have been dulled by time--less vibrant, less acute. And ultimately the timeline will end with her death. The imagining of all forms of that scenario: like for example, will I find her one day, just a little lump that I assume is sleeping?
She used to play Fetch! In her youth, a master at finding balls, and
holding them in her mouth as she dainitily trotted back. She would only go for those aluminum balls, though. I’ve always thought (but never confessed) that clearly this had something to do with the fact that her natal Sun is in Aquarius. They love all things silver.
My Aquarian kitty. She could hear the aluminum crinkling some 20 yards to the fore, and come running. But alas, no longer a kitty.
There are various other scenes I replay, often for some unavoidable reason involving the different litter boxes and their respective surroundings that she has shat into over the years. Sigh.
It bothers me how her eyes have been dulled by time--less vibrant, less acute. And ultimately the timeline will end with her death. The imagining of all forms of that scenario: like for example, will I find her one day, just a little lump that I assume is sleeping?
Picket: Lines, Fences
Picket: Lines, Fences
With outside noise boxed
In its own wilderness
I wait inside, first in line
For some serendipitous
Round and round
Theme park ride
I'm the white lap cat
That came out of nowhere
Stunning -- Hungry
Tossed from a seeming abyss
In a vast motel
I'm the Canadian quarter
That filled your icebox slot
An undetected foreigner
With a future just as uncertain as the blessed rest
With outside noise boxed
In its own wilderness
I wait inside, first in line
For some serendipitous
Round and round
Theme park ride
I'm the white lap cat
That came out of nowhere
Stunning -- Hungry
Tossed from a seeming abyss
In a vast motel
I'm the Canadian quarter
That filled your icebox slot
An undetected foreigner
With a future just as uncertain as the blessed rest
what happens when your home is sold
They will file in, buzzing
peck their ways to the view
laser eye the walls on either side down
and the horrible border of my childhood room
will be virtually redone
my biggest memory is the whole sky
at night smooth move up and down a porpus
and you warned me about the world
I was ten
you said materialistic, it was bad
and I knew you meant it
and it meant a lot
peck their ways to the view
laser eye the walls on either side down
and the horrible border of my childhood room
will be virtually redone
my biggest memory is the whole sky
at night smooth move up and down a porpus
and you warned me about the world
I was ten
you said materialistic, it was bad
and I knew you meant it
and it meant a lot
We’d all heard enough about your world travels when...
We were being driven by a man
who was driven from his homeland
Poor and probably better educated
than us combined
He came for his family
for the prosperity of food
But the ride was not enough, you needed
an offer of congratulations: you had been
there or near there somewhere near his home
And you had to tell him,
this some-odd person of the night
of your mock wonder, your exploring eye
You wanted white teeth, a sharp smile
a gesture of congratulations
For your Americanass
having done your world touring
stuffed sitting on a bus, camera in hand
and then you needed a thank you
a why isn’t that nice?
We were being driven by a man
who was driven from his homeland
Poor and probably better educated
than us combined
He came for his family
for the prosperity of food
But the ride was not enough, you needed
an offer of congratulations: you had been
there or near there somewhere near his home
And you had to tell him,
this some-odd person of the night
of your mock wonder, your exploring eye
You wanted white teeth, a sharp smile
a gesture of congratulations
For your Americanass
having done your world touring
stuffed sitting on a bus, camera in hand
and then you needed a thank you
a why isn’t that nice?
Simple
The simple facts: Had I known, would I have participated? Like when I got my cat. If someone said "Your Dad will be dead before your cat", would I not have gotten her? Does one thing have to do with the other?
If you would have told me before I took that first puff of weed that, less than a decade later I’d be hung up in rehab. Looking for answers from places with names like “Promises” and “Hope for Life”. Would that knowledge, a real knowledge, not an uncertain, wavering, I can contest that, pissant, fourteen-years-olds excuse for knowledge but real knowledge, have precluded me from taking that first hit? From successively seeking it out at seemingly every turn in the few years thereafter?
I know that feeling my father must have used to have. I keep feeding my cat treats, woefully afraid that it is at least the primary, if not the only, reason she loves me and that if I stop she will cease loving me. That’s why he incesssanlty bought me ice cream. He was buying love, paying it forward. And I’m afraid any love I showed him he figured was because of the oreo.
If you would have told me before I took that first puff of weed that, less than a decade later I’d be hung up in rehab. Looking for answers from places with names like “Promises” and “Hope for Life”. Would that knowledge, a real knowledge, not an uncertain, wavering, I can contest that, pissant, fourteen-years-olds excuse for knowledge but real knowledge, have precluded me from taking that first hit? From successively seeking it out at seemingly every turn in the few years thereafter?
I know that feeling my father must have used to have. I keep feeding my cat treats, woefully afraid that it is at least the primary, if not the only, reason she loves me and that if I stop she will cease loving me. That’s why he incesssanlty bought me ice cream. He was buying love, paying it forward. And I’m afraid any love I showed him he figured was because of the oreo.
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