The Weight of Santa

Christmas is over. This year happened to be a pretty good one. I've enjoyed some wonderful Christmases and suffered though others that were almost unbearably painful. This year I passed the first one that found me living alone. It was different, but that's not what I'm thinking about tonight. Yesterday one of my Facebook friends wrote about wanting his son to believe in Santa Claus for one more year. I can understand that desire we have for our children to keep their innocence, their belief in a Christmas spirit who shares his generosity with other kids all over the world, asking only cookies and milk in return. And it reminded me of one of my "selfish mom" moments, when I....well, here's the story.

That Christmas LtColEx was on a remote tour to Korea. He'd been gone almost a year and a half--six months in Washington DC, followed immediately by a year-long stint in Korea to which his family wasn't invited. Drake was ten, Elvira was four, and by the time LtColEx came home, Elvira couldn't remember when he used to live with us. We didn't have email and phone calls were rare. I won't bore you with the details of how difficult that winter was--flu, record snowfalls that stranded us at home, spending all day together homeschooling with no relief at 5:30 and too little adult contact. I'll just say it's really hard to keep somebody's space open in your life for that long, and that's the reason 75% of marriages end after just a one-year remote tour.

As Christmas neared, I did everything I could to make it special and, at the same time, normal for the kids. After they went to bed, I sewed a big, faux suede cape for Drake and painted wooden eggs to look like dragon eggs (one cracking open) for Elvira. They were going to go in her stocking and, knowing how much she would love them, I wished I could share the suspense with someone who would understand. It was lonely work being Santa that year, and, anyway it's a special feeling when you're chosen to share imminent surprises, right? I remember how mature I felt when I came out as a Santa disbeliever, and how much fun it was to be in on the secret and help play the Santa game with my four younger sibs.

Like I said, Drake was ten, so you would probably expect I could let him in on some of the Santa prep. And I would have, except he still believed in old St. Nick. If he had been most kids...hell, if he had been his sister....I would have suspected he was saying he believed just so he'd still get presents. A lot of kids think if they tell anybody they're on to us, they won't get any more Santa presents. But Drake wasn't like that. He's just never learned how to play those games. As far as I could tell, he'd never even questioned whether Santa existed or not.

And yet, how could he not have doubts? He had friends. Surely they talked. I thought he had to know. At his age, how could he not? Unless what they said about homeschoolers was really true, and we were hiding our kids from the real world, not letting them be "normal," whatever the hell that is. I was—fuck it, I'm just going to admit this--kind of embarrassed that he still believed some fat guy in a red suit slipped down our chimney and left filled stockings and Legos by the tree. And I really wanted to show him these cool eggs I was making and bring him in on the fun of playing Santa.

So one night a few days before Christmas as I was tucking him in I thought I was going to get my chance. He started the conversation. "Mom, Scott Murphy (a kid in his scout troop) said there isn't really a Santa. I told him he's wrong, but he said I should stop being a baby."

"Oh, yeah. What else did he say?" Finally somebody had let the kitty out.

"He said you and Dad are Santa and you're the ones who put the presents under the tree. I told him my dad can't put presents under our tree this year, and I know I'll still get some. And I told him Santa always eats the milk and cookies we put out for him. I don't know why he would say that. He's such a jerk sometimes." Not going well. Such indignation. "He's wrong, right, Mom? There really is a Santa Claus?"

This seemed like my chance. I was afraid he'd really get teased if other kids knew he still believed at his age. Still.....I loved his innocence, his belief in heroes and people who do good just because they can.

"Would you want to know if there wasn't a Santa? Would you want to know if I was the one putting the presents under the tree this year?"

A pretty broad hint, I thought, but I didn't expect his reaction. He started crying. "No!" He could barely get the words out he was crying so hard. "I wouldn't want to know if Santa wasn't real because that would mean all those kids all over the world aren't really getting presents for Christmas. And I know a lot of them don't even have enough food to eat the rest of the year, so they need to get presents for Christmas." He was sobbing, in his own little super-hero world, worrying not about whether he'd stop getting presents from Santa, but whether all the other kids in the world would have a Christmas. Not really what I expected from a ten-year-old boy.

I lay down beside him and put my arms around him. "Don't be silly," I said. "Of course there's a Santa. How could there not be a Santa?"

He finally calmed down and said, "That's what I thought. Scott Murphy is just wrong and I feel sorry for him."

"I do too," I said. And that Christmas I played Santa all by myself for my two excited, elf-believing children. Elvira thought the dragon eggs were real and patiently waited for them to hatch. Drake flew around the house in his cape fighting bad guys. There were children all over the world who didn't celebrate Christmas, who didn't have enough to eat, much less presents under a shiny evergreen tree, but for one more year I kept that secret to myself. These are burdens our kids will share soon enough, and I've always been ashamed that I forgot for even an instant how short that time of innocence is.

The next year, Drake no longer believed in Santa Claus, and I wished, just like my FB friend, that he'd had one more year of believing Santa really existed. I wish I had one more year too.

Gratitude (or how the karma fairy spanked me twice)

I thought I was doing pretty well expressing my gratitude in November. I posted daily status updates to Facebook detailing the things I appreciate most: warm blankets, the library (where fines are only ten cents), my dog Pippi on her twelfth birthday, friends old and new, and music. In fact, I appreciated various forms of music more than once, because it’s such a big part of my life. I even “liked” my friends’ gratitudinal offerings. I was just that thankful. And then about the middle of the month, the ever-vigilant Karma Fairy noticed the itchy hubris in my constant demonstrations of gratitude and zipped merrily over from where she plays among the cowslips and marigolds just to spank me with her sexy pink wand.

It was week ten, the last week of fall quarter. Many of my students had decided now was the time to pass college composition, so I had stacks of revisions begging for my comments. I made it through the entire quarter without getting sick only to suffer an allergy attack from something I inhaled at the dog groomer. And, no, that wasn’t enough. I found out sometime into the week that somebody needed to provide music during the offering Sunday morning at church. When the request comes that late, somebody is me.

Normally it’s not that difficult to find something suitable to play, but the service was on Sufism and Rumi, and Indian music is not one of my genres. I played through a dozen or more possibilities before I found something that wouldn‘t clash heinously with the rest of the service. If I played a sitar the choice would have been so much easier, but I didn’t have time to learn a new instrument and a new piece of music. Of the instruments I do play, the piano is my first love, but I don‘t play often these days. The guitar is so much more portable and social. And playing the piano for a quiet, captive congregation requires more practice than backing someone up on guitar. Strumming three or four chords in a repetitive pattern isn’t a precise art; add in a couple of voices, maybe a bass, and a few mistakes won’t even register on the average listener. Playing a Baldwin concert grand in a room that’s silent except for the rustle of bills and checks being placed in offering plates leaves no room for mistakes. Every note counts. I would have to practice a lot to be ready by Sunday morning.

And so I started to feel a little put out, a little taken advantage of. Enough so that I sent a whiny, snarky email to another musician friend that said “Why do people think I can pull music out of my ass? If I could fart Mozart don’t you think I’d be playing for bigger audiences?” I’m not proud that I wanted him to think I was clever and sarcastic and a fine musical savior, which he did. Validation is so vital to petty displays of self-importance, don’t you think?

Along with his sympathy, he also sent me a link to an article about Joseph Pujol, who actually could fart music. I’m not sure if he already knew about Pujol, whose stage name was Le Pétomane, or if he googled “fart Mozart” and found this wonder of all wonders in Wikipedia. I didn’t ask. Let’s just say it let some of the air out of my self-importance to find out somebody really could fart Mozart…and I can’t.

I chose music from one of my daughter’s late intermediate piano solo books, so it wasn’t Chopin or Mozart, but still it’s a lovely piece of music. I knew I could make it sound just fine by exaggerating the dynamics: dramatizing the ritards, speeding up the arpeggios at the crescendos, doing some bob and weave theatrics as I played. Nevertheless, it would take all of the four days I had to get it ready.

And so when I wasn’t at school teaching and conferencing with students, I was at home following my new week-ten routine: I’d read and comment on a couple of papers, blow my nose, play the piano, blow my nose, and then go back to reading and commenting on papers. Read, blow, play, blow, read, blow, play…. By late Saturday night, I was a day away from having the song memorized, which was better than good enough. In other words, I practiced more than I really need to. Sunday morning I went in half an hour early to warm up on the church piano, to get a feel for the action, which is significantly different from my piano.

Halfway through the service, the worship leader said, “We will now receive the offering in grateful appreciation…” (redundant I know, but you can’t overdo the gratitude, as I’m about to show), and I slid onto the piano bench, placing my hands lightly on the keys. I leaned forward slightly and flexed my wrists, preparing to lift and then bring my fingers down on the first arpeggio. I took a deep breath and as I looked up at my music, noticed Dan reaching for his guitar. I paused. He lifted his guitar onto his lap and introduced the song he was going to sing…during the offering.

The entire congregation was watching and listening to him, so I’m sure nobody noticed that quick twinkle as the Karma Fairy flew into the sanctuary and planted her sparkling little wand on the very part of my anatomy I had so elegantly threatened to pull music from. Ouch! I tried to swat her but she was too quick, so I slipped off the bench and returned to my seat to enjoy the rest of the service.

But I couldn’t help thinking how very ungrateful I’d been for the opportunity, during a particularly stressful week, to do something I love and rarely get a chance to do. After all the times I’ve bitched about not getting enough time to play the piano, there I was complaining that I had to play a lovely, soothing piece of music. All I could do at that point was offer Mistress Fairy the other cheek.

In my van on the way home, I thought about all the other times I’ve complained about having to do things that really deserved my gratitude. I’m not talking about being grateful for Pippi as I’m cleaning up a puke stain on the carpet. Or being thankful for dumpsters on wheels as I’m hauling the trash to the curb. This wasn’t an “embrace the suck” situation. Playing the piano doesn’t suck; it’s a privilege and I should face every opportunity to do it with joy. And yet I’m also not talking about being grateful because I’m so lucky to have a piano and the ability to play it, although the argument can be made. My mom suffered a stroke ten years ago at age 62, and she would be grateful to play half as well as she used to. It does her no good for me to practice some kind of vicarious gratitude for the pleasure she’s lost though.

No, I’m talking about those times when I complain (and please tell me you do this too) about having to do something I really like to do. Like exercise. I really do like to exercise. Years ago when I played basketball, I liked the practice every bit as much as the games. I like the feeling of muscles working; I even like the sweat and the soreness the next day. It makes me feel like I'm going somewhere...and leaving something behind. And yet, I not only complain about doing it, I actually avoid it—to my detriment.

And then there’s writing. I love to write, but I hate to write at the same time. I spent my entire stint in graduate school bitching about the papers I had to write. And yet, an assignment for a seven-page paper inevitably elicited from me a 28-page paper. My professors were the ones who should have been complaining (and probably did). I love writing so much, I can be compulsive about it. I sleep with a legal pad on the bed next to me in case I want to write something down after I’ve turned off the light. Often my muse—more about her later—visits me just as I’m about to fall asleep and I wake up long enough to write down some notes. And sometimes I just get up and give in to it. Yet, you wouldn’t believe how much I complain about having to face that blank page—so much so that I was an utter NaNoWriMo failure this year. As if my track record with this blog hadn't already blown my cover as a writer.

And sex! C'mon, who hasn't had an "oh, no, not again" moment about sex? And yet, why does a hot, juicy tumble on a soft bed, even at the end of a long, trying day...especially at the end of a long, trying day!...cause an Excedrin moment? Is it so much better to watch Desperate Housewives or to play Farmville on Facebook?

Anyway, I promised myself I would be more grateful for the chance and the ability to do those things I love to do, starting with playing music. Or if I didn’t remember to be thankful, at least I would stop complaining about those things. And last week I got a chance to put my commitment to the test. I said I would play the hymns for Sunday’s service so the choir director could have the morning off because she would be playing our big holiday program and carol sing-along that evening. Only three hymns, but one of them was a little tricky and again I had to practice. OK, I’m going to say it because the damage, as you will see, has already been done…I don’t like playing hymns. They’re all block chords played in a marchy tempo with weird passing notes. I find them challenging and not very rewarding to play.

But I tried. I did. I really tried to face those practice sessions with an attitude of gratitude and joy. Yes, I did catch myself sighing and eyeing the Christmas music with longing, wishing I didn’t have to spend my piano time on those hymns, but I always ended the wish with “but I’m not complaining.” I was sure I’d learned my lesson well enough. More hubris, I’m afraid.


Sunday morning I arrived early to warm up. The guest musician, a classical guitar player, was getting a sound check and running through his music. I opened the piano, set my music on the stand, hoped I wouldn’t screw the hymns up too badly (not that I was complaining), sat down on our nice, padded, adjustable piano bench and…you guessed it. The Karma Fairy darted in and stripped one of the screws in the adjustment mechanism so the entire right side collapsed. I caught myself just before I was dumped on my butt, and then I played those three hymns sitting on the phone book on a chair. I didn’t swat at the pixie this time.

Now I don’t really believe there’s a karma fairy circling my head waiting to whop me every time I need a lesson in humility. I’m sure karma, if it exists, has evolved into a more subtle form of punishment and reward. But I do think this is a valuable lesson I need to learn. Some things really do suck, and I’m going to bitch about them as much as I want to. For example, I love and appreciate my dog, but when she pukes on the carpet, I’m not going to clean it up with a joyful heart. I’m going to gag and whine and bathe in self-pity. However, those things I do love--playing music, writing, working out--I plan to greet with a better attitude, even if I don’t get as many points for being a long-suffering, music-farting savior.

Sacred Collections

Recently Meg Barnhouse, a UU minister and singer/songwriter, posted a status update on Facebook that said "I've never collected things. What do you collect and why?" Thirty-four people responded that they collected things like books, newspapers from important events, plates with lemons on them, shot glasses, rocks, shells, rubber duckies. I said I collect people's stories, which is true. I almost stopped there, but then I admitted "also small parts of animals and insects: tiny bones, wings, claws, [snake] rattles, half a blue eggshell..." I guess that's something I've never outgrown, looking for the cast-off parts of living creatures, the tiny parts that hide between sidewalk cracks and beneath layers of soil and under river rocks.

One afternoon late this summer, after a hike along the Little Miami river with my friend Cyd and her nine-year-old daughter Maddy, I came home with the bottom of my pocket full of tiny treasures (please don't tell the ranger!):
•four orange crawdad claws about half an inch long (Maddy took one with her)
•four inch-long "finger" bones from part of an unknown small animal’s skeleton that I pried out of the mud with a stick. Oh, how I wish I'd been able to find the skull.
•a fresh-water clam shell the size of Maddy's pinkie fingernail
•five, black-webbed cicada wings. Four I had to pull from a corpse. (Maddy took one of those too.)
•a rock that looks like it has a brain imbedded in it. (You might argue that a rock isn't a tiny part of a dead creature, but you would be wrong. Rocks are made of whatever stuff was in the soil at the time: shells, bones, coral, even worm shit.)

I did not bring home a small silver and iridescent minnow we found dying in a sticky, fetid patch of greenish mud left over from when the river was higher. Several other minnows had already died there, stranded as the sun dried up their private pool. Every once in a while, a bubble would pop on the surface, indicating a heartier species lurking beneath the surface, possibly with an amphibious nature. Cyd had to hold my hand so I could lean out to scoop the gasping fish from the rank, gooey mud. I ran to the river and let it slide off my hand into the water, but it had lost its will to swim. It just laid there on its side, lazily floating with the current that lapped against the shore. Finally it floated headfirst into a dried, curled leaf. I "rescued" it again, but we knew it wouldn't live, and it didn't. It nourished other river creatures. That's not the kind of thing I collect anyway. I don't want to deal with rotting flesh.

The other thing I don't collect is feathers. I did when I was a kid, especially the black-striped blue jay feathers. But my mom has a feather phobia so I wasn't allowed to bring "those filthy things" into the house. I feared for her sanity the few times I forgot and ran in to show her an especially bright blue one.

She says her phobia is a result of being forced to feed and collect eggs from vicious laying hens when she was a child. I probably would have been scratching around the barnyard with them, looking for cast-off beaks and toenails and even feathers. (Yes, chickens have toenails. I've never found one in the wild though.) So even though we saw several feathers, and Cyd may have put one in the collection jar we pulled from the river, I didn't put a feather in my pocket for fear my mom would reach across 600 miles and thump me the top of my head. And it turns out she was right. Feathers can carry mites, although she didn't know that no matter what she claims now.

I'm not sure what I'll do with my little collection of parts. They could join the blue robin's egg shell, the chicken wishbone, the minuscule vertebrae and the rattlesnake rattle that stay on the little ledge made by the top of the backsplash on my kitchen counter. The rattlesnake rattle came out of an old classical guitar Cyd's sister brought her from Colorado last winter. They said I could keep it. OK, I begged for it and they allowed me to keep it, but I didn't ask for the feather that was tied to the headstock. The chicken wishbone is one I used when Cyd and I taught poetry workshops with a class of seventh-graders in a school near downtown Dayton. We gave them bags and got them started on keeping a collection of “poetry bones”: photos, special words, glue sticks, and other things they could pull out to inspire their poetry writing. I have a feeling lining up too many of these things on my kitchen counter, even if it is the part where I don't cook or eat, will eventually make me into one of those crazy women who, in lieu of owning too many cats, collects too many body parts from dead animals.

Of course, I could throw them all out in the garden and let them decompose into their elements. I've done that many times before, and I keep meaning to do that with my last dog's ashes. He died only twelve years ago.

Or I could collect them in a pretty jar and try to fill it up. That might look cool. Or pile them in a hand-tossed pottery bowl and set them on the table by the couch for guests to sift through and examine.

The best idea is to arrange them on a piece of mat board and mount them in a shadow box. You can frame almost anything. My ex-husband and I owned a custom framing store for a while, and we framed everything from a signed electric guitar to Shaquille O'Neal's big-ass athletic shoe to an Olympic torch.

The strangest thing we framed though was for a woman who liked to collect organic castoffs too: her own toenails. She claimed her ex-husband used to complain that her toenails were too long; they scratched him in the night. After they divorced, she grew her toenails out, painted them blood red, cut them, and paid us to frame them in an expensive shadowbox. She wanted to remind herself why she should never get married again. That's her story and it's as good as the next one.

Here's what I'll do with my collection. I'll arrange them in a frame and leave room to add more later. Already I'm thinking of other things I could add to this small collection: a couple of my kids' teeth from the little box in my dresser drawer. (What? You can't just throw those away after you smear glitter on the sheet and slip a silver dollar under the pillow.) A small skull I had on the mantle for several years. Whatever else I find next time I walk along the river. Hey, maybe one of those minnows has decomposed into a perfect little skeleton preserved in the killing mud.


Someday maybe I'll try to analyze this penchant I have for picking up the tiny leftovers from what to us seem like very short lives. Whatever animated those bodies is long gone. Call it god or the great creator or the flying spaghetti monster. Somehow these little parts retain for me a memory of creation that goes back to those first organisms that grew teeth and toenails, fur and beaks, bones and feathers. Even if I keep them in a frame for the rest of my likewise brief life, they will eventually find their way back into the soil, maybe to become a rock that looks like it has a brain growing out of it. One of my descendants will throw my carefully arranged shadowbox into the trash, breaking the glass if it's not already broken, freeing the tiny parts at last to feed the earth, return the elements they borrowed. By then, my body too will be doing the same thing, although I doubt very much anybody will collect any of my parts and show them off in a shadowbox.
I don't know or much care why I feel a connection to these little bits of bodies any more than the person who collects plates with lemons painted on them does. She said they make her feel "[h]appy. Sunshiny and yellow." They make her happy. That's good enough for me too.

The Weight of Stars

Tonight was supposed to be one of the best nights for seeing the Perseid meteor shower, so about 2:10 I took off on a walk with my standard poodle Pippi, hoping to glimpse a few falling stars as we walked in the dark quiet. OK, I’ll admit, walking along staring up at the sky in the middle of the night isn’t the smartest thing to do. I could have fallen flat on my face (again), but I was lucky--all I got was a crick in my neck. Oh, and I saw one meteor. One bright tantalizing miracle in the sky. Even though I was looking right at it, it flashed by like childhood and then it was an invisible particle of dust. I might have inhaled it for all I know. So I came home and lay on a damp cushion on the deck, hoping to see more. But I didn’t. The sky didn’t even look like a night sky. A waning half-moon shone too bright. Everybody in my neighborhood (and yours) has at least three bright yard lights. And then there are all those Walmarts and Speedways and streetlights….it never gets dark here.

I miss black skies sprinkled with a number of stars impossible to imagine. My best friend Sherry Roberts and I used prop an old metal bed spring across two spools we got from the phone company and sleep out in her yard. I could never actually sleep because of the weight of those stars. I’d lie awake all night watching them move across the sky, swallowed in that unlimited mysterious vastness. Sometimes I’d try to count them or I’d make up stories about the shapes I picked out, creating my very own constellations. I knew nothing of giant clouds of gas or black holes, red dwarfs or nebulae. I could no more imagine light years then than I can now. I didn’t know many of those stars had died millions of years before their light reached my retinas. I could pick out the big and small dippers, and sometimes the Milky Way was spread out like a smear of glitter, but I didn’t know the rings of Saturn were made of dirty chunks of chemical ice the size of my van. And Pluto was still a planet then. There was as much I didn’t know then as there is now.

As I walked into my yard tonight, I felt a certain disgust for my trusty van, parked there in the driveway. I remembered watching other night skies from the hoods of various cars, propped against a windshield smoking, drinking a beer, probably making out with some boy. Every once in a while a shooting star would whip across the sky and blink out in an instant. That was when you could still sit on the hood of a car without it caving in. The last time I sat on the hood of a car was right after we bought a brand-new Maxima station wagon. I was pregnant with Brandon, and I hopped up there like I always had on our other cars. Only this time the metal made a sickening crunching sound, and when I slowly slid off, there was a permanent dent where my butt had been. I don’t think Dan ever forgave me. It’s probably why we’re divorced now.

Tonight I would have liked to have lain back against a windshield and watched a truly black sky, made bright by stars instead of ambient human light. Given the number I could see from my deck, I could believe they had died before their light reached me. It didn’t look like there were that many left. Yet I lay there and stared into the sky I was given, willing chunks of comet to hit the atmosphere and flame out before my eyes. I’ve seen the Perseids from my deck before. One night several years ago we lay out there on the deck rails for hours as icicles dripped off the trees, and watched hundreds of them streak across the sky. They’re like Las Vegas slot machines—you don’t want to go in until you’ve seen just one more….and then another...and maybe just one more.

I wanted to see more than one tonight. But eventually I started psyching myself out, imagining wisps of light in my peripheral vision, but not really seeing a single meteor. Finally the cold dampness on the cushion seeped through my clothes and I decided to come inside.

It’s 3:30 now though, and I wonder if maybe I’d see some if I went back out. Maybe I watched too early. You never know when you’ll see your last meteor streak across the sky, when you’ll get your last chance to wish on a falling star…..I think I’ll check just one more time.

Mirrorball by Mary Gaitskill

I'm sure Mary Gaitskill needs no introduction, so I'll just share a couple of paragraphs and a link to her featured short story, Mirrorball, at Pantheon Books. This is one of those stories that just has to be experienced. I don't think understanding is the point.

"He took her soul—though, being a secular-minded person, he didn’t think of it that way. He didn’t take the whole thing; that would not have been possible. But he got such a significant piece that it felt as if her entire soul were gone. As soon as he had it, he not only forgot that he’d taken it; he forgot he’d ever known about it. This was not the first time, either.

He was a musician, well regarded in his hometown and little known anywhere else. This fact sometimes gnawed at him and yet was sometimes a secret relief; he had seen musicians get sucked up by fame and it was like watching a frog get stuffed into a bottle, staring out with its face, its splayed legs, its private beating throat distorted and revealed against the glass. Fame, of course, was bigger and more fun than a bottle, but still, once you were behind the glass and blown up huge for all to see, there you were. It would suddenly be harder to sit and drink in the anonymous little haunts where songs were still alive and moving in the murky darkness, where a girl might still look at him and wonder who he was. And he might wonder about her."