by Amy Boesky
First Christmas
TECHNICALLY, CHRISTMAS ISN’T OUR HOLIDAY. On my side of the family, we’re assimilated Jews, both sides from Eastern Europe, but we celebrate Christmas anyway. We got the tradition from my mother, who got it from Sylvia.
Sylvia and Pody got Christmas at school. They got school from Meyer, their father, who wanted them to belong to this glorious new world he’d gotten by happenstance. Meyer had run away from the tsar’s army at fourteen, sailed alone to America, and eventually made his way to Chicago, following an older boy from the boat who knew someone with a leather factory on the near North Side. It was the usual story: Meyer worked his way up, learning just enough English to get by. Eventually he was running the company. He was an earnest man who loved simple and ordinary things—the wetness of city streets in the morning before the first motorcars appeared, the click of the shutter on his camera. The smell of rubber. The crackle of newspaper in his hand. From the papers, English words spelled out disasters he and his family had been spared. Spanish flu. The Great War. He sounded out the unfamiliar words, piecing together the stories, and with each catastrophe avoided, felt a deeper sense of gratitude. The world whirled over their heads like a tornado, while he and his family stayed safe at its windless eye. At the factory Meyer was tough-minded, fearless, but at home, he padded about in his old slippers, mousy and bemused. What to do? So noisy! Words whizzing past like bullets! And the girls, much as he adored them, with their strange tempers, their slamming doors, their moods that hung in the hallways like storm clouds.
Meyer’s wife, Bea, was the one with clout. She’d been born in Chicago, and he deferred to her on all matters of consequence. She knew about America. She knew where the sofa should stand and what cut of brisket to serve at dinner. She knew everything about the girls, their mercurial moods, their intricate after-school lessons. She wanted them out of the public schools—who knew what went on there, so many rough boys?—so once Meyer started making money, Sylvia and Pody were sent down the hill to St. Theresa’s Catholic Academy for Girls. It was clear that nobody bothered to translate Catholic for Meyer, who still went to synagogue every Saturday morning. But Meyer liked the school’s ornate front gates and its emphasis on calisthenics. And the girls were happy there. Sylvia, two grades ahead of Pody and a natural mimic, soaked it all in: what kind of coat to wear to keep out the biting cold, how to sweep your hair back, how to roll your trolley money in your socks. Before long Sylvia was listening to ragtime, rouging her cheeks, and dashing off after school to shop with her classmates. December rolled around, and the school prepared for Christmas with a kind of frenzy. Sylvia and Pody learned hymns about Baby Jesus and the manger and “We Three Kings,” and they took part in the December pageant, each begging to play the part of Mary. Mary had been Jewish, hadn’t she? Then Christmas itself arrived. Watching her friends gather around decorated trees, opening lavish parcels on December 25, Sylvia stamped her perfect foot and told Meyer that she and Pody were being gypped. And Meyer, who ruled the factory with nerves of steel, dissolved in the face of Sylvia’s rage. So Christmas was imported into their near-North-Side home along with American slang and flapper costumes. Year by year the Yiddish faded and the ornament collection grew, and Meyer, watching his honey-haired daughters dash out the door in matching raccoon coats and pearls, barely glancing back at him, wondered proudly—and a little sadly—what dream it was he’d garnered.
Sylvia’s Christmases: Beautiful boxes festooned with curling ribbon. A white wire tree. Ornaments made of glass with smaller ornaments inside them. Silver tinsel that shivered when the front door opened or closed.
When my father and mother got married, my mother brought Christmas with her, adding her own idiosyncratic touches. Christmas gave her license for excess. At other times, shopping was complicated for my mother. It could go one way or another. She liked novelty, collecting and arranging—but she also liked things to be neat, spare, the scantest possible version of themselves. Her unpredictable asceticism threatened our trips to the mall. Enough was enough, too much was too much, but the distinction all depended on her mood. There we’d be, the three of us, trying things on in Saks, excited, upbeat, in and out of one another’s dressing rooms, cheering one another on, admiring, and she’d be outside, exuberant, part of it all, when suddenly her mood would change: the skirt that on the rack seemed “classic” was suddenly pronounced “too expensive,” the sweaters too low or too tight, the whole enterprise questioned. We’d leave with bags full, or with nothing. Who could read her? She was an enigma.
But not at Christmas. Christmas was for plenty.
At Christmas, we were spared discernment. We had boxes of presents, ingeniously wrapped, and bulging stockings. A tree weighed down with ornaments. Huge meals. Morning Cookies (the recipe gleaned from Seventeen magazine) made with bacon and raisins for a pre-breakfast snack. Broccoli with red sauce at dinner. Our Christmases stood for every kind of plentitude, and long before Sacha was born, I dreamed of re-creating this sense that at least on this one day, every wish could be granted.
Here was another way Jacques and I were different. Jacques grew up in South Africa, the youngest of four children born to a Jewish mother and Christian father in a time and place when any kind of intermarriage was deeply suspect. Christmas—religious holidays in general—was downplayed. His family lived simply, and in any case, it was a midsummer’s holiday in the southern hemisphere, and with four children, institutionalizing plenty was hardly wise. That’s how Jacques remembers it. In fact, having compared photographs of our parallel Christmases circa 1965 or 1966, it’s striking how similar the two scenes look, at least to me: What I remembered as never-ending bounty appears, to the unschooled eye, all but identical to the scene Jacques recalled as conscientious parsimony.
That didn’t matter. The point was that in the here and now, I wanted to fill things up—the fridge, the house, the space under the tree—and Jacques wanted to keep things spare. I wanted things to be perfect, and for me, perfection meant bounty. Things—lots of things. Over the past few months, I’d carefully selected presents for Sacha, even before I knew who she was—eleven gifts, each adorably wrapped. An infant stim-mobile to rotate over her changing table. A teething ring. A clown puzzle with brightly colored plastic rings. Miniature blue jeans from Baby Gap. A stuffed ark with a dozen tiny stuffed animals inside. A pat mat. A splat mat. A squeezie toy for her car seat. A soft blanket that looked lovingly hand-knitted, though admittedly, given the price, it was probably made by machine in central Europe. In the evenings I grouped the presents in clusters under the tree and tried to keep Bacchus from chewing them. Bacchus had his own pile (don’t neglect the dog!). I considered the scene with pleasure, but Jacques looked anxious every time he surveyed the bounty. Is this really what we want to teach her? Unable to identify, let alone fight for the aura I was trying to create, I defended the eleven presents on their own terms. So useful! On sale! Would’ve bought it anyway! “Who,” Jacques asked, looking at me, “is going to open all these things?”
I looked at Bacchus’s pile. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Then my parents came and brought their own version of plenty. A yellow freezer bag filled with food, precooked and frozen: bagels from the good deli; the red-and-green broccoli; two casseroles; a batch of Morning Cookies. Three suitcases, two filled with clothes, the third with presents. Two shipping cartons full of baby clothes reimported from Sara. Jazz CDs from my father. Whiskey! A carton of wine! And not just things, but energy: their exuberance, their voices, my father’s music wafting down from the bathroom, my mother’s cries of excitement. They were witnesses; our lives were transformed by them into something meaningful, something that mattered.
I couldn’t get over watching my mother with Sacha—she knew exactly what she was doing, she was so casual, matter-of-fact, warm, offhand, just the way I wanted to be, how did she know how to do all of this? I wanted a transfusion, I wanted to pour her knowledge into me, I wanted to know how to fold a c
loth diaper and use it to make a clean place for Sacha to lay her face, how to swaddle with three taut folds, how to hold Sacha’s ankles in one deft hand and wipe her with the other, how to tuck the phone under my chin while I rocked her, how to slide Sacha into some magical crook in my arms or on my hip while I did a million other things, all casual, easy, and this was astonishing to me, because much as I may have admired certain things about my mother before—her discipline, her tenacity, her organization—I’d never wanted to do what she did, none of it had ever held any interest for me, but now—I was besotted, she was my hero! We ignored Jacques’s grumbling about too many presents (Scrooge!) and my mother gave me the recipe for the red-and-green broccoli (so easy—so 1950s—who knew something with bouillon and cheddar cheese and canned mushroom soup could even be edible?). We talked in a way we’d never talked before, like members of a secret club of two, I was interested in everything she had to say, I was listening, she was listening, it was magic.
Until, of course, it wasn’t. Day One, we were all fresh, happy to see each other, tactful, supportive, overlooking foibles, generous, filled with good intentions. Day Two was still good. But Day Three (Christmas) we all woke up out of sorts. My parents were staying in the guest room next to Sacha, recently occupied by Clara, and when asked, they mentioned they hadn’t slept well. Totally offhand, just a little comment, nothing to do with our bed or the traffic on Cathedral Avenue or the four times we’d been up with Sacha, whose wails no doubt pierced the walls like air raid signals.
They hadn’t slept well? I tried not to glower at them. Who had?
What was this, Canyon Ranch? Weren’t they here to help?
Oh, and by the way. My father just thought he should let us know the outlet in the upstairs bathroom was on the fritz. And the towel bar was coming a little loose—not an emergency, but if we had a screwdriver handy—
Jacques got out the cordless screwdriver. I flashed back to Valerie in my department hallway. A woman, I thought, with foresight.
Over breakfast, my mother started dropping hints. Sara, she began—apropos of nothing—had started cooking waffles from scratch this winter, using organic wheat flour from her local co-op. If she froze them ahead, she could just pop them in the toaster for Jenny and Rachel on busy school mornings.
Busy school mornings. That sounded so Norman Rockwell to me, even without the waffles. I shifted Sacha from one breast to the other, irritable, as my mother’s eye panned to the box of cornflakes on our kitchen counter. Expired.
As usual, she thought it was her job to catch us up on one another.
Sara had started substitute teaching at Jenny’s elementary school so she could teach where Jenny learned. “She’s so involved,” my mother added.
“That’s good,” I said, tight-lipped.
I missed Sara. She lived so far away—six hours of flying, plus a two-hour drive. We hadn’t seen each other since last Thanksgiving. Now that I was a new mother myself, I would’ve loved to reconnect with her. I was sure she had a million stories about taking care of newborns. But as always, my mother’s attempts to make us feel connected backfired. She’d tell each of us more and more great things about the others until we felt like we’d been pent up for years together on a desert island.
“Sara is a wonderful mother,” my mother concluded brightly, by which point I didn’t want to talk to anyone in my family for the rest of the day.
Julie and Jon were coming over later for dinner. My mother tried to stay off the topic of Maine, and Emily, and the move, but she kept veering back, like a compass needle tugged north.
“Have you seen the pictures yet?” she asked me. Meaning the pictures Julie and Jon had taken on their last trip to Maine, house hunting. Sweet Victorian cottages a stone’s throw from the bay. Yes, I’d seen them. Wrap-around porches, weather vanes. You could practically smell the sea.
“It’s a great place, isn’t it,” she mused, helping herself to more coffee. “A perfect place to start a family—when they’re ready, of course,” she added quickly. “When the time is right.”
“Mmmmm,” I said, looking longingly at her cup. Nursing, I was still stuck with herbal tea.
“The fresh air,” my mother added, deep in thought. “And the sense of community. I think a smaller town—”
I shifted around, trying to signal (body language) that I didn’t really want to talk about the advantages of Maine. Sacha started to whimper.
“Oh, by the way,” my mother added. “Did you notice there were some shifty-looking men hanging out in your alley the other day? Have you and Jacques thought about putting an alarm system in, now, with Sacha—?”
Yes, we’d thought about it. Or actually I’d thought about it, but Jacques wanted to mull it over. Comparison shop. How did my mother know how to zero in on the one thing we’d been arguing about?
Sacha started crying now in earnest, and I tried nursing her again, this time on the other side. Nothing worked. Her cries got more frantic.
My mother (who’d bottle-fed all three of us) wondered if I held Sacha the other way, with my arm bent a little, whether it might be easier. Had we thought about giving her a bottle during the day? The earlier mood of plentitude was fading. I heaved myself up, Sacha dangling and squirming in my arms, and tried to find her pacifier on the counter. My mother’s stacks of thawing dishes were in the way. Our house was jam-packed, no surfaces anywhere, why was there so much stuff everywhere? Why was Jacques always right?
My mother meant well—she just thought out loud. Sara’s dentist had told her pacifiers hurt the baby’s upper palate—what did our pediatrician say? Didn’t I want to sterilize that pacifier after it fell on the floor?
After breakfast I caught her looking warily around our living room. She loved the way we’d set it up—for now, she told me.
I blinked at her.
“It won’t be long,” my mother predicted, “before she’s crawling, and then—”
Sacha was barely three weeks old, and my mother already saw her as an almost-toddler, aimed for disaster. At the moment, I just wanted Sacha to stop crying. I wasn’t in the mood for fast-forward. Why couldn’t we just relax and deal with where we were right now, without jumping ahead a year?
My response was to withdraw, a kind of emotional pleading the fifth, and all the while I was thinking that what my mother and I were, the ways we nudged and irritated each other, managed to be insensitive to each other’s sensitive spots and blurt out tactless things without caring—none of this had anything to do with Sacha and me, with the ways in which Sacha and I were connected, the way her cheek felt against mine. Sacha and I were different, would always be different, we were a separate species, there was no way my mother could ever have held me like this, I could never have been this small, she could never have bathed me or fed me or worried about me like this. I wanted to let my mother know this somehow—you and I are different, this baby-and-me thing is different, it’s earth-shattering—
Of course, I couldn’t say any of this, for all the obvious reasons, so instead we kept bumping into each other in small spaces all day (Sacha’s closet, the third-floor bathroom), arguing about which part of Sacha’s ear should be cleaned and how, and how many months we could possibly get out of the three-to-six-month-size outfit Lori and Dave had given us, and why I should actually exchange it for a bigger size, and why it would be really hard to go back to work next fall, before Sacha was even a year old, and what Sara had done, and what Julie was planning to do, and finally the only thing I felt filled with was rage.
THEN IT WAS CHRISTMAS DINNER and Julie and Jon came and we were almost our old selves again, with a few changes (Sacha swooping in her swing), and everyone but me drank lots of red wine and my father got sentimental and proposed a toast about family and then, clearing his throat, reminded us an important milestone was coming up.
I didn’t know what he meant. I looked over at Julie, and she looked puzzled, too.
“Dale,” my mother said, in that voice she used w
hen she was annoyed with him, and then I remembered.
Of course. February would make five years since my mother had found the lump in her breast. Five years was the big milestone. It meant she was safe—like reaching home free in tag.
I felt bad, having forgotten this was coming up. But she’d done so well we all just let it go, little by little. Life had filled in around the original fear, like water rushing around a boulder.
Besides, so much had happened over the past five years, it felt more like decades. I tried to remember back to where all of us had been.
Five years earlier, I hadn’t even known Jacques. Julie had still been finishing law school, interviewing for jobs. Sara was pregnant with Rachel, her second daughter.
It was 1986, a year after Gail died. I was in graduate school, in that grueling period leading up to oral exams, and I remember I was in my tiny apartment in Eliot House when my parents called. Both of them together on the line, which should’ve been my first clue something was wrong. What they told me didn’t make sense at first. A lump in her breast? It all seemed so baffling, like somebody else’s bad news.
Nobody in our family had ever had breast cancer, except for one great-aunt who’d recovered and died decades later from Alzheimer’s. We didn’t have breast cancer in our family. We had ovarian cancer. Was it serious? Invasive? “No,” my parents said in unison, “not serious, not invasive.” Sara called me and I called Julie and Julie called my parents, and we went around in circles, confused, worried, trying to figure it all out.
Thankfully, the tumor turned out to be contained. And tiny—stage 1. They’d found it early, there was no lymph involvement. Her chance of complete cure was 95 percent. She reported all of this from Dr. Kempf, the gynecologist she’d been seeing for twenty years. Her favorite doctor. He was very reassuring. “If you’re going to get cancer,” he told her, “this is the kind to get.”