2002-12-23 - 9:48 a.m.
If I could be anywhere at the moment, it'd be the Bronx, 1978. That would the perfect Christmas location. My family would have Mafia connections and we'd have a tree made of silver, and eat manicotti for dinner. Many of our gifts would have football themes. I would be 22 and wear Jordache jeans and have long feathered hair -- the Bertinelli. My parents would be named Josephine and Tony and they would own an appliance business. Uncle Sal would be in Rikers Island and we would feel warm inside about sending him holiday cards. And Gramma Rosa -- oh, dear -- would be going nutty and wear dozens of rosaries around her neck. The rosaries would never match the long and loudly yellow duster she'd wear -- "the angels gotta see me when they come to take me to heaven." I would have an African-American boyfriend named Chuck and we'd be proud to be bucking the system. We'd go dancing in some chintzy bar after Christmas dinner and the obligatory sniffers of brandy that Tony passed out like candy to all of us, including Chuck, whom he not-so-secretly despised (it was a race thing). Eventually Chuck would drive me downtown and we'd watch limos drive past the sequin places.
You thought that was going somewhere, didn't you? Oh well.
More Christmas crap
This I wrote last night, while drinking Spanish wine. My boss gave me the wine for Christmas -- intentionally Spanish, I suppose, due to my pending trip -- and I couldn't open it with the Swiss Army Knife so I just dug out the cork with a potato peeler, but that didn't work either. I pushed in the cork with a plastic spoon and it popped and exploded, sending drops of red wine all over my shirt and into my eyes. For a moment I feared red wine caused blindness; apparently it doesn't (for future reference). Then I forgot about the mess and drank the wine and searched for information on Ibiza, the Spanish island where all my favorite hipster DJs (Mark Farina quickly comes to mind) record their sets on occasion. Found little worthwhile, but the Cynics are going to be touring Spain while I'm there. The Cynics are a Pittsburgh band that made it in Europe and I got to know them whilst a reporter in Pittsburgh (at In Pittsburgh Weekly, which is now defunct). Once I spent the night at the lead singer's house in Polish Hill. Don't worry, nothing funny happened -- he doesn't like my "kind."Whoops! Got a little carried away there with the rock and roll memories. All right, here's last night's rambling, which is half-finished (like everything else I write). Sorry that everything I write begins with "I"; Self-absorbed.
I remember when touching the Christmas lights wasn't allowed; Mom would say, "hey kid, don't put your hand on that -- you could get electrocuted." So I'd cower in the corner and wait for Her the Adult to put the light plug in the socket, then watch the glow begin.
A whole month of flashing followed the big dead bird day in November. Mom would erect the Christmas tree and turn the living room into a stage where expensive glass dogs didn't eat the red wreathes and elves but hung from the same branches, riding out the tension, while our pet dog lunged for all of the above. Little Baby Jesus lay in the mangy manger under the tree, reminding us why we were using up so much electricity and eating so many cookies. Some of the cookies Mom brought to my school, where we held a recital and sang about reindeer for our parents and our friends' parents, and pray even more than usual.
Once a December Dad would drive us to the Big Iron City, where high-rise stores and Italian cheese smells and glass towers and winter ice rinks wreaked dreams on my brain, destroying contentment and making me want more than I had. I wanted to skate, feel the cold, buy the rhinestones, sit on the fire escapes, not be protected. But it couldn't happen that way, and we drove home, dad's eyes fixed on the wihite lines of the highway, mine looking in the other direction from the backseat of the hatchback, longing to return to the tall lights now turned on to fight off the black of night, withering in the distance. We'd get home two hours later, to relieve the dog, the token pet, and turn on the tree and let our eyes cross as we stared into the branches' plastic energy.When Christmas came the stacks of boxes followed. Gifts, excess, dolls, debt. When New Year's came I cried; a day to think about time passing, of parents aging, and all of it capped off with B-grade TV. The tree would come down shortly thereafter, and the lights and glass dogs would disappear into the attic, a place forbidden to non-adults. No more two-week vacation to anticipate; just the fear of what life would be like once I outgrew the Christmas clothes and the dog died and we all fell lonelier than before.
Now I have my own lights, bought on sale at the drug store. Nothing Christmas-y bout them -- they sit on the floor in a clump, waiting for a purpose. They are there to be there, in case I want or need them. They have no history, no stories. They will not impress any children, for no children are here except the side of me that shows up when it's time to forget about the world for a while. The lights will likely burn out at an undisclosed date and that will be that, period dot
�
�
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse. � Lily Tomlin |
