Father Knows Less

by Lee Kalcheim

  On Thanksgiving day, we took the boys uptown to watch the Macy’s Parade. Would floating Snoopy and waving Santa break the pall? It seemed to help. We bundled up in a chilly, misty rain, warmed by a thermos of hot chocolate and cheered our favorite balloons and bands.

  It was going to be okay, we thought, and we prepared for Christmas as if it were any other year.

  But would it be the same? The boys were eleven years old now. They’d been writing letters to Santa as long as they could write. Would the tragedy in September and their advancing age have a sobering effect? Would they tell us, “We’re not writing this year? We know. We know he doesn’t exist. It’s all make believe. We felt our world was safe. It’s all make believe.”

  “Mommy, Dadoo, do you think it’s too late to write to Santa?” Samuel chimed in a week before Christmas.

  We were surprised and enormously pleased.

  “Of course not!”

  “We don’t want anything,” Gabe added. “But we’ve written every year, and he might be disappointed if he didn’t hear from us.”

  “Or worry!”

  “Or worry!”

  It was odd how delighted we were. We knew that someday—some Christmas—they were going to say to us that we didn’t have to bother with the Santa Claus thing. But we were glad it was not yet. Not this Christmas. The letter to Santa was always written at the last minute, sometimes as late as Christmas eve, and then rushed to the local post office to be forwarded to Santa. There was never any panic that Santa wouldn’t have time to give what they requested for Christmas, because the boys never asked for anything. They used the letter, basically to schmooze with Santa, because—here’s the beautiful part—Santa always replied in kind.

  He responded in detail to their letter. Who was this “Santa” who wrote back? A few questions in town and we discovered that it was our local West Stockbridge Massachusetts postman, Mike Perkins. He would intercept all the letters to Santa, read them, and answer every single one on the Santa stationary he had had made up. It did not matter how late you wrote, or how much you wrote, he always replied. It was one of the singularly magical things about small-town life. The first time we wrote to Santa, we just sent the letter off to “Santa, North Pole,” and thought, well, that was it. When Jim’s first letters came back, with an expansive reply to each of the boys, we were stunned. The next year, the boys were so excited to have gotten a personal letter, replete with references to their love of the Yankees and their violin lessons and their sledding adventures that the new letters were filled with even more life details. Little by little, year after year, the letters became a substitute for a year-end diary. They were multi-paged tomes. The boys would spend a whole day writing their Santa letters. And even when, as we knew they must, they reached the age when they couldn’t still believe in Santa, they dedicated themselves to writing.

  “He’ll be bummed out about the Yankees blowing the World Series.”

  “On a bad throw by Mariano.”

  “He’s a big Yankee fan.”

  Because public schools never let out until sometimes the day before Christmas, the tree was often bought on Christmas eve. “Fresher” we rationalized. We drove up from New York and went to the local Berkshires tree farm, where, on alternate years, odd for Sam, even for Gabe, the boys got to pick out the tree. 2001 was Sam’s year.

  “Choose a tree already Sam!”

  “Gabe, it’s my year. You took forever last year. I’m going to find the perfect tree!”

  “It’s getting dark. And it’s cold.”

  “I don’t care.”

  We hadn’t worn proper boots. The field was shin-deep in snow. It was cold. It was getting dark. The only one enjoying the drawn-out process beside Sam was our new dog, Teddie. She was a “rescue dog”—an abandoned dog we’d found on line. A chow-golden mutt. She was having a ball chasing the tree farmer’s dog through the snow.

  “Sam I’m fareeeezing!”

  “Do you like this one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “YES!”

  After the tree trimming, after they were finally upstairs and tucked in bed, Julia and I snuggled in bed with them and I read them “A Visit from Saint Nicholas.” To spice up the story each year, I read each stanza in a different accent— even though most of my accents devolved by the end of the stanza into Yiddish. “Now, desh avay, desh avay, desh avay all!”

  After I finished the reading, after we turned the boys’ light out and heard them talking excitedly to each other in bed, Julia went down to finish wrapping, but I wanted to be alone for a moment. I just went into our bedroom and sat down on the bed. I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind: what a wonderful myth the Santa Claus story is. All religions had been built on myths of some kind. Who knows what really happened to Moses in the desert, or for that matter Christ on Calvary? There is no doubt in my mind (and most scholars’) that the biblical renderings of the lives of everyone from Abraham to Paul were enriched and embellished to not only entice followers to the fold, but to make a better story out of a good story. Whether the Red Sea actually parted or not as rendered by CB DeMille is not important. The Jews were saved from the Pharaoh. You want to save them by having Pharaoh die of a stroke or do you want the Red Sea to part and swallow up his army as he looks on in awe? Spin is not new. The origins of all the major religions were spun. For good reason. Even if everything that happened in the bible is true, it still can be made more exciting. Religions were never sold on their intellectual integrity. Most people could not read. Stories were told and passed on by those who could. And written by those who had a stake in the success of the religion. Good story-telling was captivating. Before we knew about quantum physics and the big bang, the idea that Eve talked to a snake in the Garden of Eden, ate a forbidden piece of fruit (a quince, updated to apples for the Western audience), and was banished from paradise is heartbreaking. Give her a chance! She was hungry! She had no idea that snakes are supposed to talk! What was so bad about being naked? It was warm there. Embarrassment had not been invented. There was no one around to invent it. And anyhow, sooner or later she and Adam had to have sex (sin!) if there were gonna be any more people to follow the word of God. It doesn’t all add up. But it doesn’t have to. It’s good story-telling. Read Grimm’s fairy tales. People are constantly disobeying orders (See: Red Riding Hood) and getting into trouble. It’s nail biting! And then they are punished. “Oy!” we say, or some of us say, “Weren’t you told not to go into the woods, kid? The secret of good story-telling is putting your main character in trouble. Having him or her do the wrong thing, so you can say, “Don’t do that!” and then watching him/them try to squirm out of trouble, or not, or pay for his/their misdeed the rest of their life/lives. Jack disobeys his Mom. Sells the cow for some stupid seeds. The beanstalk grows. Don’t climb it. He climbs it. Run from the Giant. He slays the giant (of course). He does everything wrong and comes out right. Religion is built on stupid mortals doing everything wrong and coming out right. Because … because God is with them. It’s great. He’s great.

  The Christmas myth is based on kids being absolute terrors all year long and having a chance to redeem themselves by promising Santa that they will be good next year. OR, if they’ve been good all year, being rewarded for that. It’s a no-lose situation. My favorite kind. I wrote down all of these thoughts.

  I realized that what we learned from our kids was the shibboleth I’d been taught as a playwright: the willing suspension of disbelief. It’s essential to the theater, but as a writer, you don’t consciously think about it while you’re writing. In many ways, you think the opposite. You think, Will the audience buy this? Do I have to be more consistent? Are my characters and their actions consistent. Consistent. Consistent. Consistent. But life is not consistent. It’s a cauldron of contradictions. Sounds like a title: Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Contradictions. I wish I had a dollar for every critique of every play I’d written chiding me for the inconsistency of my cha
racters. “But,” I would plead, “an insecure woman can be tough. She acts tough to cover her insecurity. Or, a moralist can be a hypocrite. See any number from, Henry Kissinger to Newt Gingrich. But the point … the point is … after being taught that I can, exploit the audience’s desire to believe anything they see on stage, I get conservative. Cautious. Naaa, they won’t believe this. Consistency is all.

  Well, my kids were anything but consistent with other kids their age. As they grew up, nine, ten, eleven, they continued to believe in Santa Claus. Every year they wrote him letters. We never told them that the postman was writing back. It was always Santa! Even though we happened to go to the post office every year after Christmas so the boys could fete Mike with a violin duet. It wasn’t quid pro quo for Santa’s letter. It was just … what we did. And every year we hung the stockings and put out the presents after they’d gone to bed. And let them put out a glass of cider and cookies for Santa. And I would spread ashes from the fireplace on the floor, even leave a footprint to indicate his having come. And every year most of the presents were “from Santa.” And every year I read, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas.”

  Okay. So your child reaches eleven, twelve, and you think, “Come on, they can’t still believe.” But you are waiting for them to say, “Mom, Dad, you can cut out the Santa stuff. We know.” They don’t say that. They write to him. They put out the cider and cookies. The whole routine. Say nothing. So … we say nothing. We say, “Maybe they love the idea of Santa so much that they are believing beyond their years.” Or, we wonder, “Have they stopped believing, but are afraid to tell us, because we’d be disappointed?” Hey, who’s the parent here? Or are they now masters at the willing suspension of disbelief? Do they know the truth (well, a truth) and have so willed themselves not to succumb to it that they believe the myth? Why not? Again, every major religion is built on that foundation. I may call it the willing suspension of disbelief. Most folks call it faith.

  I always wondered why the smartest professor I had in college was a Catholic convert. A convert? He knew better and converted to this? How does an intellectual do that? I never asked him, but witnessing my kids’ extended belief in Santa Claus into their thirteenth and fourteenth years, I figured very simply: it makes them happy. It made my prof happy. It was comforting. It was neat! Santa’s neat. Why give him up? And so they didn’t.

  And three years later, based on my notes from that 2001 Christmas eve, I sat down to write a play about an astronomer, whose son decides not to believe in Santa Claus, so upsetting him that he begins believing. The astronomer’s steadily dedicated belief in Santa, a reaction he says to 9/11 and his rage against organized religion, but more likely a reaction to his son’s growing up too fast and his attempt to prevent it, was anything but consistent with his past behavior. He was an inordinately sane man. His wife, unsure of that, sends him to a shrink, who senses that the astronomer’s, Howard’s, new belief may be an escape from the anger in his real life.

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  What are you angry at?

  HOWARD

  I’m angry at my wife for insisting I come here.

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  Uh, huh. Anything else?

  HOWARD

  I’m angry at God for not existing.

  DR. WEISWASSER

  Uh, huh.

  HOWARD

  I’m angry at myself for disappointing my son.

  DR. WEISWASSER

  Uh, huh. Could you expand on that?

  HOWARD

  I’m angry at F.D.R. for not bombing the trains that took the Jews to the concentration camps.

  DR. WEISWASSER

  On your self anger. Could you …

  HOWARD

  I’m angry at the Dodgers for leaving Brooklyn. I’m angry at the French for being angry.

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  Could you …

  HOWARD

  I’m angry at a helluva lot of things. We’ll be here all day.

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  Could we concentrate on your self-anger.

  HOWARD

  Why?

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  It’s … It may be at the root of your malaise.

  HOWARD

  My anger is at the root of my malaise? That’s backward! My malaise is at the root of my anger!

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  Fine. Why?

  HOWARD

  Why what?

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  Why do you have a malaise and why does it make you angry?

  HOWARD

  If you had a malaise wouldn’t it piss you off?

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  Not … no it would … cause me to examine myself and wonder why I was unhappy.

  HOWARD

  I’m not unhappy. It’s a malaise. I’m depressed.

  DR. WEISSWASSER

  But you’re not unhappy.

  HOWARD

  No, I’m angry, because I’m a happy person who is depressed. If I was an unhappy person who was depressed, it would all make sense and I wouldn’t be angry.

  (the doctor just looks at him)

  Is this too arcane for you?

  The shrink is unwilling to believe that a sane adult could believe in a child’s myth. But, I had been so seduced by my own son’s willing belief in something unbelievable for whatever reason (to please us, to comfort them) that I became a believer too, if not wholeheartedly in Santa’s existence, then at least in his principles. And in the idea that I, as a writer, could make an audience believe in a man who believed in a child’s god.

  The boys, to this day have never fessed up to not believing in Santa. The words, “OK, enough with the stockings and the cookies … we know,” never came.

  Whether it’s the love of the ritual that keeps alive their childhood or whether maintaining the belief is as fun for them as it is for us, we don’t know. We just do it.

  And every year, so far, the boys write to “Santa.” They are seventeen at this writing. Will they continue writing next year and the next, when they are in college? Has Santa ever gotten a letter from a college student? All I know is, if they write to Santa, Mike at the Post Office will write back. And, I will make copies of their letters to him and his replies and save them—the detailed memories of the year they have lived. They are memoirs disguised as letters to Santa. Cogent and revealing and magical.

  What I learned from my children was that, when life is good, we need to exult in it with someone besides friends and family, someone who is as mysterious as life itself. And when things are dark, we have to find a way to make ourselves happy. Santa was their way. They needed to believe. And so they did.

  SCENE: THE NEW YORK APARTMENT.

  (Sam is practicing violin. Julia is accompanying him on the piano. Sam makes a mistake. Stops. His arms drop. He screams in frustration. Takes a deep breath. Turns to Julia.

  SAM

  Mommy, knock, knock.

  JULIA

  Who’s there?

  SAM

  Phillip Glass.

  JULIA

  Phillip Glass who?

  SAM

  Phillip glass.

  JULIA

  Phillip Glass who?

  SAM

  Phillip Glass.

  (Sam starts to giggle)

  JULIA

  Phillip glass who?

  SAM

  Phillip glass, Phillip glass, Phillip Glass …

  (Sam falls down on the floor laughing. Julia turns on the piano bench. Then leaps on top of him and kisses him and tickles him as he howls.)

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SOOTHING THE SAVAGE BREAST

  It is spring. A muggy New York day for May. We are sitting in the little recital hall at School for Strings, waiting for Samuel and Gabriel, just having turned thirteen, to perform the Bach Double Violin Concerto.

  The boys have been taking violin lessons for eight years. We have heard them go through their repertory since they first began playing back in L.A., in 1995. We have
heard “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and “Windsong.” We were lucky in that their first teacher was not a strict Suzuki teacher who restricted them to playing on the E string for an entire year. After a few weeks of that I fear I would’ve put my head in the oven (just to deaden the sound). But they learned to play a host of sweet tunes. Over and over and over. They learned enough basic fingering to play half a dozen songs, and though they played them roughly, they played them. They were actually playing violin. And they were excited. Motivated to play more songs. And more songs better. They were hooked. And now, eight years later, they were about to play Bach.

  The recital begins with the youngest players playing first. Boys and girls the same age that Sam and Gabe were when they started. Some have barely started, indeed just stand before the audience in their Sunday best, hold the violin and, to the accompaniment of the ever popular “Twinkle,” saw back and forth on the E string. The idea is to get them used to performing before an audience. To relax them so that, when they’re older, they won’t be susceptible to stage fright—they will be pros and be above it. As the kids play, I glance over at Sam and Gabe. They don’t look relaxed. Julia takes a deep breath and looks down at the program. The boys are next to last. A long wait.

  You have to have enormous patience to allow two five-year-olds to learn the violin at the same time. The practices do not fill your home with what can be called a pleasant sound. Sam especially screeched unmercifully. Gabe had a deft touch … and even then, his tone, with the limited repertoire was clear and soft, but there comes a point when you just want to shout, “OK, enough Twinkle already!” But you can’t. Your children are being groomed to someday play at the Hollywood Bowl. Carnegie Hall. Lincoln Center. Well, OK, this does not really enter your mind. Especially hearing the Jack Benny-like tones coming out of their tiny instruments. You justify it by saying, “So, maybe they won’t be violinists, but this is good for them. It’s a challenge. Challenges are good.” Yes, but it was a challenge for us too. You try to fantasize. To project forward ten, fifteen years to when they might play Mozart, or Kreisler … but … you can’t. You just hear “Twinkle.” And you grit your teeth and wonder why they couldn’t have played something easier like … the flute … or something less grating like … the French horn. Violins are really hard to play. Pick one up. Try it. The violin is held so that it’s difficult to see what you’re playing. It’s under your chin, and it’s up in the air to one side. You have to press your fingers on different strings in different unmarked places to get different notes. And, and … at the same time you have to drag the bow across these strings, different strings for different notes, to somehow actually play a tune. It’s the old, “can you walk and chew gum at the same time?” routine. This is more like, can you walk, chew gum, juggle three balls, sing and drink a soda at the same time? Neophyte violin players are helped by the fact that the stem of the violin is marked by strips of tape to help them find the notes, but it still ain’t easy. Yet they were undaunted. I was daunted. They were un. And as they played more music, they listened to more music. Especially violin music. They understood what they were striving for. They listened to Perlman, and Haifitz, and Shaham—had a glimmer that if they worked hard enough, someday that same sound would come out of their violins. Learning the instrument, they fell in love with the music.