Into the Wilderness: Story 60
Christmas Past
My father sits in an avocado-green velvet chair, a large Waterford glass with bourbon on the rocks in his hand. In the kitchen, my mother rushes from the oven to the fridge and to the marble confectioner’s table she uses as a kitchen island. She is finishing Christmas Eve dinner. Although this is our casual night, my mom wears velvet pants, a bright red silk shirt knotted at the neck and lipstick to match. We three children wear finery as well, my lace dress, my sister’s velvet pants to match mom’s, my brother in a turtleneck and tartan vest and slacks. My mother begins to bring big, elegantly arranged trays to the dining room table: A platter of charcuterie, a cauliflower salad I love and have never found the recipe for, an artichoke casserole eaten with thinly sliced and toasted French bread, tightly wound triangles of tiropita, spanakopita and creatopita made by hand. Dolmas, flawlessly rolled like cigars, balance pyramid-like on a crystal plate with feta and kalamata olives drizzled with rich green olive oil and sprinkled with oregano. Finally, the 3-tiered tray of sweets: butter cookies called Kaloudia, walnut filled oval cakes soaked in syrup, baklava oozing cinnamon, orange and lemon. This is the night we enjoy my mother’s heritage—her Greek roots. My sister, brother and I load our plates and sit on the floor at the burled walnut sofa table nibbling the homemade goodies. In a nod to America, my mom has made a Jello mold with pineapple, pecans, and marshmallows. Earlier, I had eagerly watched the unveiling of the Christmas tree-shaped mold, a glorious green mound plopping whole from the tin before my mom layered it with pineapple custard and whipped cream.
The ice in my father’s glass tinkles as he fills it again, and again. He doesn’t help my mother, doesn’t open presents, doesn’t speak to his children now ripping open the beautifully wrapped packages. As we squeal over new outfits, jewelry, and toys, my father snorts and downs his glass, His hatred for Christmas is proportionate in strength to my mother’s love of the holiday. She tries to hide his hatred of the day- and we pretend not to notice- but it is there, a green screen background to our perfectly imagined day. We want our father to lift us to his knee, help tear open the wrapping paper and pile our plates with cookies. Instead, he lives his own hidden war. The four boys he had abandoned years before are invisible and wholly present, loved for their absence while we with him yearn for a glance, a hug, a word. Instead, we watch sip after sip of the golden liquid pass through his lips and turn his bright blue eyes dull and grey.
Christmas Present
I have spent every Christmas since childhood trying to forget my father’s blank eyes. Like my mom, I do too much, usually making spanakopita, moussaka and baklava. But not this year. My home is a single upstairs room in my sister’s house with an adjoining half-finished attic my cats have claimed as their lair. My sister’s home is relaxed and comfortable. The wood stove in her living room corner emits warmth through the house, even up the stairs to our attic bedroom. It’s so warm after an evening of burning wood that we leave the attic door open for cold air to push out the heat. Untethered from a home, I have released customary labors. Since moving to northern New Jersey, we had chopped down our Christmas tree every year, roping the 17-foot monstrosity to the top of our SUV. When we get it into the living room and cut the plastic strips holding it together, the boughs whip out like the Griswold’s tree in Christmas vacation. We don’t have the tree this year, nor the hundreds of Greek cookies I spend days baking, nor the platters of buttery, overly rich food. This Christmas present is a reset, as if I have counted all the numbers known to the very end. The next number? Mathematicians haven’t discovered yet. I enjoy the absence of self-appointed demands. Instead, I load up goodies from Costco—I can’t wait to try the lobster mac n’ cheese decorated with a meaty claw. Last night for winter solstice, my sister and I wrote wishes and releases on a bay leaf, then watched the sun descend the mountains until the already grey sky turned completely black. Venus twinkled in the far distance. We came inside and threw our leaves into her wood stove. They crackled as they blazed. This newness is foreign and delicious, sweetness without calories. I gobble its freedom, its naughty-seeming break from the past.
Christmas Future
When I was a child in Oklahoma, I imagined Christmases in New Jersey. I wanted to be near New York City and pictured New Jersey as a wealthy suburb with Georgian era mansions set far back from overly wide streets. It was a Victorian English New Jersey. The snow piled high on the sides of the streets and storefronts. Bells tinkled on shop doors opening into warm, cinnamon and clove smelling interiors. The dream shops sold huge slabs of meat—prime rib, Christmas goose—as well as mincemeat pies and fruit cakes. I grew up to actually live in New Jersey and spend every Christmas here for the past 25 years. It’s not the Victorian village of my childhood imagination. I don’t live in a Georgian mansion and have never entered a shop to be greeted with “al-lo, welcome to me wee shop.” Even so, I love the real New Jersey: The Italian, “how ya doings” of my husband’s family, the overcrowded highways before exiting to the Ramapo mountains we live in. I love that fast food places in my area are hard to find, and pizza is a cherished, handmade food. The city with its magnificent lights, festooned windows and fetid steam rising from the subways is barely an hour away. The world feels bigger in New Jersey than it did in Oklahoma.
I haven’t begun to imagine my future Christmases, except for snow. When I do imagine my future Christmas, I know it will manifest just as the one of my childhood dreams did. It will be a version of my dreams, but more delightfully unique like the one I have now. I can’t wait to see what becomes.
Thank you to my writing teacher for inspiring this montage.
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