Bronx Vanilla Christmas
Snow carves the highway to strings of glistening popcorn and cranberries cruising at 40 MPH. The green SUV in front propellers across the whole road, stopping broadside right in front of me. I start fishtailing, and my engine dies. I slalom through packed snow and ice on the shoulder, missing the SUV by inches, and restart the engine by the force of will it takes to cross half a continent and half a decade to see my family.
I arrive. The stars are frozen in the midnight calm. Dad wakes, and we talk until 3. From youth, I imagined him to be a football hero in his small town, but he reveals the truth. No, he was a world-class sprinter. The farmers washed out by the Dust Bowl bet on him, and he won every race.
Sleeping in is a joy. Frost crazes the windowpane. It's the solstice, the day the sun returns, undefeated by the powers of darkness. After Dad and I build a snowman, Sis and I collect her son at college. Colt pumps irony in the gym while we carry his laundry. Sis's wrinkled nose tells me something stinks. The things you do for family.
Dad had scrawled directions on a yellowed scrap, to a store in town where we're to get meat for the feast. After searching 45 minutes and asking directions three times, we find the place isn't in a town, nor is it a store. It's a crumbling warehouse, built in a forest during WW II rationing, and in 50 years they never did erect a sign. I wonder if the solemn Grinches behind the counter curse or celebrate the holiday because of increased traffic. Nephew Loot's birthday is scheduled at a trendy restaurant called Doughy Mass, Lumpy Goo, or Noodle Vein. The tables are wallpapered, and the waitresses hairstyles from the Golden Age of Jazz. The family is alive. A teenybopper -- who when last we ate together needed a high chair -- dreams of a new civilization, where people don't stab each other in the back, but live in fellowship.
 |
With my first bite come light-headedness and chills. I keep quiet. As we leave, I avoid cold air until it is assumed that I, as the male riding shotgun, should open the garage. I steel myself against the shivering so no one suspects, then rush in and crash, reasoning that I will feel better with sleep. Nope. I become a natural healer, go out and hunt up a bush full of rose hips. Before she lectures me about her schedule, I send Sis after Vitamin C, garlic, cayenne, and goldenseal. Hubby, a Security Chief, is amused. "Pot-heads use goldenseal to try to mask marijuana use," he laughs. "It never works!" Sis returns; at the store they interrogated her. Wild. These are natural antibiotics. |
That evening I help Brother Sparky erect scale models. He flicks a switch, illuminating an elfin pageant of our homes and vehicles, including, perhaps hallucination, my old Chevy, red with twin windsplints, and all four headlights blazing; leading a parade down Main Street, past the ice skaters and towards a gigantic tree dominating town square. Its multi-colored lights spiral in clockwise and counter-clockwise vortexes.
Sis's holiday schedule bears the phrase: "Scheduled Free Time." That's either an oxymoron like "Military Intelligence," or a Zen koan. All my life, I wondered how to become free. Keep it simple, stupid: write it down. "I am free." Actually I felt less free, because this sword now hangs over my head, "Are you using your time well?"
Sis receives odd phone calls: "When is Midnight Mass?" "On Christmas Eve, can we plant a palm tree in Orlando, then go skiing in Colorado? We'd gain two hours because of time zones." Rock of the family, Sis also fields: "I know it's Christmas Eve, but whose name did I draw?" "Should we buy the kids pipe cleaners, a $3800 telescope, or a pony? Wait. Did I see XBox, Nintendo, or Play Station on the refrigerator-borne most-wanted list?"
Drawing names for Christmas simplifies the holiday. It's a thoughtful gift, this leisure - no hunting crowded stores - appreciated by the discerning adult. This close to the Day, however, such principles have broken down and my cash flows like water. I would repair a damaged reputation with nieces and nephews. My purpose is not to buy their acceptance, rather, to engage their imaginations.
Each home creates its own celebration, in rotation. Next on the schedule is Sparky's. After a fabulous repast of prime rib and pistachio salad, followed by coconut snowballs, we play cards and talk. Maybe it's my "Italian perfume," or more hallucination, but the children point and whisper about me.
I don't know why I crank myself out of bed at 6 AM, fighting a 10-degree blizzard, to meet my brother's flight. Red travels the world and due to his mad races to airports, shaving, packing and steering with one knee, we've learned to pray.
Our family encourages handcrafted gifts. Unfazed by overcrowded planes, mid-flight Red opened a condor-sized book of Audubon's North American Birds and began several watercolors as presents. I wonder if other travelers shared his joy.
Basketball and Christmas carols are playing. We push aside our heirloom tablecloth of red velvet to work. Dad silver-solders a belt buckle. Red watercolors. I finish a foosball table. The Cat admires the bird feeder's pecking order: woodpeckers, cardinals, orioles, chickadees and wrens. A golden eagle overflies the pond. Cleaning up, something has stained our tablecloth. Gloom builds. It doesn't wash out as watercolor would, nor will my knife scrape it: The silver solder has vaporized and re-formed on the velvet. It yields to household vinegar; thank you Sherlock Holmes and Ask Heloise.
The rigid timetable commands us to Christmas Eve dinner at Flaming Crustacean, and then to Sis's for snacks and games. Her Great Dane Stony eats anything and is especially fond of children. His head comes up to my chest. We seize a rope, and it's on. His tail sweeps the dining room and kitchen, but when the crèche on the mantle is threatened, Sis sends us to the basement. Cleaning the tablecloth becomes a negotiation tool, and I'm sprung.
After Holy Scriptures, Red's favorite book is "1001 Party Pranks". The Patriarchs would not be amused at his White Elephant gift exchange, not by a dollar store metallic tire "iron."
I wake early, flashing back to when I'd loaded my sled and was about to take off on a continent-spanning journey, when he appeared, dimples merry, twinkling eyes, red cap at puckish angle. He deputized me in a musical voice from the North Pole.
Verily, in my truck is a refrigerator-sized box, now emptied of presents, which I've failed at wrapping. Sis sighs and rewraps important ones. I nest the foosball table in the reefer box and wrap the whole in Sunday comics.
We open gifts by turns. I'm given Khaki pants and joy! John Coltrane, Chick Corea and Miles Davis cascading jazz on CD. Colt commandeers the foosball table, not looking up for six months, and I find gel pens and squirt guns cause the children to again point and whisper. Red showers primitive artifacts from his African safari. Have I been pushed aside because of the scent of Bronx vanilla? Later I discover truth.
Red relates a story. Long ago, when God took the form of a baby in a manger, an angel told humble shepherds, "I bring you tidings of great joy. A Savior is born, Christ the Lord." The heavenly host sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." The Hope of the World brings home a message.
The TV faces a well-fed family slumping like overstuffed chairs. Working since 6 AM, it would be virtue and temptation to laze. Motion means my salvation, playing catch with the kids, churning downfield across furrows of gold. Amazing words during Niece Modesty's hug reveal my new status: Favorite Uncle, the best gift of all.
by Kelly Peck