December 25, 2021

 Oy, vey!

Another tree. Another wreath on the door. More red ribbons around the coach lights. Boombox carols in the air. Ham and sweets for dinner. Again. Tradition. Latkes were last month. Biscuits and gravy the morning of the 23rd. Fried chicken that night. Challah last night. And now?

Oy, vey!

Mulled wine not Manischewitz?

How?

Fall in love and find out. I married an Irish Catholic. She married a Russian Jew. 44 years in 2022. Believe it or not (I’m joking), it took some compromise to get us here. I never had a tree inside of anywhere I had a roof, not one tree, and certainly not a Christmas tree. She had never sat through a Yom Kippur service let alone no food or drink for 24 hours. She thought no food or drink was only on Fridays. So, here we are.

I’m in my office. Out the door three steps to my right is our living room. Even though this year’s firewood hasn’t been fully cured, a fire roars in the fireplace. It helps to  have this napalm like concoction to squeeze on the logs. My son has Chet Atkins playing Xmas music on his computer. My daughter helps her nephew navigate his myriad of toys. Sweet smells from the kitchen: ham and corn pudding on their way. My family is happy, and, I’m thinking, maybe I am, too. It’s taken me a lifetime but I think I’m beginning to get it, just as I think, at this age, that I have finally learned how to write and what to write about, and why I need to write about it. No coincidence. The place where I wrote from then is not the place I write from now.

(In some other life I once went out with a woman who said, “coinkidink”. One “coinkidink”. That was it.)

Everyone waited until Dorian, aged three, woke up because we wanted to see his face when he saw a brightly lit tree surrounded and stacked with all shapes of things wrapped with ribbons and a kaleidoscope of party paper. He spent a few seconds being stunned by the lights and a crystal that caught them. Unlike the Hanukkah menorah, he could not blow these out. Then, practical little creature that he is, he turned to a colorful mock-up of a kitchen complete with appliances and ware. My daughter and my son’s good friend had spent hours the night before putting it and everything else all together. It made me think of trying to put all that gear together when my kids were small: instructions translated by someone with English as a fifth language, screw holes a hair off, a threaded screw, one too few bolts in the bag. Drove me nuts but gives me pleasure watching my kids do it. It also made me think of it as a sign of the times. When my daughter was Dorian’s age we gave her a toy kitchen set that magnetized her from the time her eyes registered what it was. My son was given a train set. I’m sure you get my point. 

So, I’m sitting there this morning in my father’s chair - the same one I’ve been toting around since his death 60+ years ago - watching this little three ring circus, noting that my grandson was given a kitchen set but nowhere was there one of those small plastic basketball hoop set-ups. To be sure there were building blocks, construction stuff, race car tracks, and a plastic razor kit - Shave With Grandpa. I’m not suggesting these couldn’t or wouldn’t be used by a little girl, simply noting that there was no visible jock paraphernalia, and that mock-up kitchen really got him. Plastic taco, anyone? You would be surprised. I wouldn’t kid ya.

The thing is, they are happy in there. The living room is happy. This house is happy. If it could dance it would, not the kazatzka or a mazurka, not the Lindy or a do-si-do, but a waltz in some soft tempo. If it could sing, well, it seems to be doing just that right now, all the ages and voices and an occasional bark from one of the dogs, silence outside, all one. Joe Cocker sang, “You are so beautiful to me, yes, you are, you are so beautiful to me…” Elvis sang, “Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go, you have made my days complete, and I love you so.”

Bury me with this shit eating grin on my face.

As much as I have admired Joan Didion, I don’t think she would have admired me. Too sentimental. Perhaps too much chicken shmaltz on Shabbos as a kid or too many junkets to Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House on the Lower East Side. But, I have very smart, very big hearted Jewish friends who have an edge I don’t. An observation not a criticism. For a long time I wished I had that edge, and tried to, only I wasn’t an adept. It had to come as naturally as which hand you use, yet it didn’t, not to me. I’m not usually naive, only at critical moments when it really matters. Of course, this “flaw”  became another good reason to beat myself up. I wouldn’t say I’m a bleeding heart, but I do admit to needing the occasional tourniquet. Fine. Because I don’t care anymore. This “flaw”  has been known to fight for its right of return. A quick, full frontal counterattack drives it back. Dickens was sentimental. I should be so lucky, although I admit not being able to get through more than half of “Oliver Twist”.

I was raised in a violent household where we were taught “happiness is for idiots” aka “only idiots are happy.” My mother damned Portnoy’s Complaint as a batch of lies, especially that scene where his mother threatens him with a knife because he wouldn't

eat his liver. So, I reminded her, “Wait a minute, Mom, you forget, you once hit me with a knife because I wouldn’t eat my eggs.”

“I didn’t forget,” she shrugged, “I had to get you to eat your eggs somehow.”

Happiness is for idiots.

I swear.

Anyway, the point is, this happiness stuff: I could get used to it - that brush of butterflies fluttering happily in my belly, happily, I said, nothing fearful about them, just the trilleto of gossamer wings drawing light.

Just one of those things. 

Gossamer wings. Drawing light.

Just one of those crazy things.