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runswithscissors


Friday, December 24, 2004

Here's what I remember of my Christmases.

I remember waking up in the wee hours in our small house out in the Long Island 'burbs, unable to sleep from excitement. I'd creep downstairs as silently as I could, step out into the living room, turn on a light and stare at the tree (thickly layered with decorations and tinsel, the closest we ever came to what might be called glitz in our household). My eyes would then take in the mound of gifts beneath the tree, always an amazing show of abundance in a household that normally had little money to spare. I'd slip the plug for the lights into the wall, watch the room burst into quiet extravagance. Then I'd snoop around the gifts until I'd found as many addressed to me as could be located without disturbing the mound. (The pile -- put together with care by my parents sometime post-midnight on Christmas Eve -- could not be disturbed. Gifts could not be opened before the family opening ritual several hours. These rules were not to be fucked with as the consequences could be painful.) Then I sat in a chair and stared and thought and looked out the window, waiting for daylight, listening for the first sounds of others getting out of bed.

I remember my father putting up the outdoor lights in early to mid-December. Always a man inclined to making detailed plans, neatly drawing out diagrams and measurements, carrying out projects with methodical, painstaking care. (Not always a man given to patience with those who didn't do things with that methodical, painstaking care.) Some years the tree would be going up in the house at the same time, meaning the living room would be piled with boxes of decorations, the small cresh would appear by the small bookcase by the staircase, wrapped in ancient comics pages that I would read, year after year. Combined with the strong scent of pine tree, with all the visual cues and memories of other holiday seasons, the old comics (far, far too old -- Dick Tracy! Gasoline Alley!) felt deeply, satisfyingly evocative of something I don't think I could have put my finger on if I'd stopped to think about it.

Until the tree was securely vertical, the multiple strings of lights securely in place, I wasn't allowed near it, which left me drifting around in a strange state of boredom/contentment/excitement. I'd pull on a coat, wander outside to watch my father hang the giant wreath over the living room window or string big old-style lights along the eaves, around the front door.

Walking indoors from the cold, everything smelled fresh, everything looked new and loaded with potential in a way the house never did during the rest of the year.

I remember my grandmother -- my father's mother, the only grandparent who hung about until I was born -- making the trip out from Brooklyn for dinner. My parents had me late in their lives, so they were already on in years. My grandmother was REALLY, GENUINELY, SERIOUSLY on in years. Old, wearing bottle-lensed, black-framed eyeglasses, thick unsupple stockings, big slab-heeled black shoes. Sometimes she'd arrive from the train station in a taxi, other times someone would go pick her up. I only remember getting a first glimpse of her as she emerged carefully from whatever vehicle delivered her, wearing a dark, stodgily elegant winter coat, carrying a bakery box tied with string (always, as far as I know, containing a chocolate cake, densely delicious in an old-world way).

I didn't know her well, she never seemed terribly interested in me. My job was to entertain myself when she was in the house, to stay out of the way, an assignment I had no problem with (after all, there were new toys to abuse and weary of). When the hour for Christmas dinner arrived -- all of us squeezed into the house's small dining room around a table covered with food (my mother, generally not an inspired cook, made up for the rest of the year on Thanksgiving and Christmas, always producing a sensational spread, a genuine knockout) -- I'd tuck my butt into a chair, my attention split from that moment on between eating (and eating) and an ongoing study of the old person who, I was told, was a relative. I got to know her speech patterns, some of her smells, her laugh, her thick fingers, the excess meat on her arms, the abundant wrinkles on her face, her waved gray/white hair. Never really learned much more about her until stories were passed on in later years, well after her long, slow fade, by my mother and older brother. A stubborn, often impassively stoic, deeply Catholic child of Irish immigrants who I'm told was a spirited young woman.

Maisie -- my grandmother.

[to be continued during a future Christmas season]

***************

Last week in cold, damp christmastime London, near Covent Garden:



This afternoon at la Plaza de Espaņa in Madrid, temperature in the 50s, an unknown teenager copping some pre-Christmas-Eve z's:




Madrid, te quiero.

rws 1:19 PM [+]
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BLATHERINGS

August 2001
September 2001
October 2001
November 2001
December 2001
January 2002
February 2002
March 2002
April 2002
May 2002
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
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April 2003
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June 2003
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August 2003
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November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
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July 2004
August 2004
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December 2004
January 2005
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March 2008
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September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
June 2009
July 2009

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


MORE FOCUSED BLATHERINGS


Travels:
London '01
Pamplona
Italy '03
U.K. '03
Sevilla
Casablanca
Stoke-on-Trent
Barcelona
Québec/Ottawa
Boston/Lisbon/Madrid
Italy '04
Montréal
La Sierra

Events:
Madrid -- arrival
9/11
Emergency Room I
Holidays 2001
Holidays 2002
Holidays 2003
Holidays 2004
Holidays 2005
A neighbor's passing
Madrid -- March 11 bombings
  and aftermath
Emergency Room II
Israeli friend/Madrid Marathon
Madrid -- Royal Wedding
The DELE exam

GONE, a novel:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

THE BASTARD CHILDREN OF
JOE ROCCO, a novella:
-- Part 1
-- Part 2
-- Part 3

BURBANK SHRUGGED,
a screenplay:
-- Part 1
-- Part 2
-- Part 3
-- Part 4

Short stories:
Murphy's Wife
Another Autumn
La Queja de Una
  Hermanastra Muy Conocida

Autobiography
-- Personal History
-- Hormones On Parade
-- Accidents, Random Mishaps,
    Personal Problems

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


OTHER SOURCES OF WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT

People/Weblogs:
dooce
foxvox
fudge it
fear not
rebekka
bookslut
802online
idle words
madhaiku
wockerjabby
grow-a-brain
rebel market
letting me be
out and about
kung fu grippe
fanatical apathy
baghdad burning
wfuv's music blog
kexp's music blog
mimi smartypants
between the miles
just a hippie gypsy
the impossible cool
tomato can brushes
vermont homestead
sugar mountain farm

Good Clean Fun:
gizmodo
futurismic
postsecret
dave barry
human clock
mcsweeney's
spaceweather
book-a-minute
internet archive
self-portrait day
my cat hates you
out of context quotes
surrealist compliment
  generator
strindberg and helium

Makin' Musical Whoopee:
last fm
stereo8
pandora
soma fm

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


ABOUT RWS/CONTACT





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