“She’s all mine, Zia!” Biz said.
“Eric!” his mother said, and Biz, whose parents ignored his nickname entirely, hung his head.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll have more!”
“Have some more,” aunt number two, the gardener, said five minutes later, which was about four minutes too soon.
“Sure, okay. A little more!”
“Just two noodles more,” said aunt number three. “Due spaghettini!”
Please, God, no. Biz kicked me under the table. “Yes, please!”
“Aha!” said aunt number four—whom Biz’s dad called “the almost Jewish one” for her skills with guilt—as I pushed a slab of pasta the size of my head around my plate. “You eat her lasagna twice, and you don’t touch mine?”
It was exactly the way I’d always imagined my first true Christmas would be. Then at ten o’clock, while the rest of the family and I were discussing which of the aunts’ cakes we should try first, Biz said, “I think I’m gonna go upstairs a second.”
As my true beloved headed upstairs, I took a break from being Lace-Clad Girlfriend of Christmas, so I could worry about what was going to happen at church. I wasn’t really scared that anyone was going to do anything too New Testament, like crucify or beatify anybody. But I had never been to a church service before. And I was sure it was going to change me in some profound and fundamental way. The only question was, How?
It was a question with long-term implications. I hated binomials, but I loved geometric proofs. In my mind, it went like this:
IF Biz and I are madly in love (which we are)
AND planning on getting married (although that’s our secret for now),
AND IF Biz is Catholic,
AND we’re going to church together,
THEREFORE, isn’t going to church a next step on the road to getting married? And by inviting me here—and letting me go—don’t both sets of our parents agree?
To put it more simply: Biz+Me+Midnight Mass = the 2 of Us 4 Ever.
The only question that remained was, What was I going to do while everybody else knelt? Kneeling, I knew from ten years of Hebrew School, was number one on the list of Jewish no-no’s, even for those of us raised on grilled cheese with bacon.
Fortunately, I wasn’t religious. Then suddenly—maybe it was the wine, or the secondhand exposure to all seven Christmas fishes in one night—I was not only worried about whether God existed; I was terrified that His plan for that evening was to watch me walk into church at 11:59. If I knelt, I’d be smoted. (Smited? Smitten? Smelt?) If I didn’t kneel, how rude would that be to my future family-in-law?
I was dreaming up a demikneel, something that God, if He turned out to be Jewish, might forgive as a curtsy if I asked hard enough next Yom Kippur, when we heard Biz throwing up his guts in the guest bathroom. I got up to help, only to find myself eighth or ninth in line behind every female in his family.
“Sit down!” Biz’s dad said. I sat down—fast. “Everything’s all right, everybody. Eric, are you all right?”
Ten-fifteen: Biz was still upstairs. Aunts were running up and down the stairs with cold towels. Those of us left at the table passed the time folding and unfolding our napkins. The official verdict was: Flu.
At 10:45, I drove home. No one was going to Mass that night. At home, my parents were worried about Biz, but relieved to see no stigmata on my hands.
The score was now official. Christmas: 2. Me: 0.
Mr. Canada, potential father of my potential future children, smiles. He always smiles. Maybe it’s a Canadian pro-hockey habit. A way to reassure me he still has all his teeth.
“More chocolate?” I say.
“Not now. Thank you, no.”
Up ahead of us, the postal line is moving at a less-than-glacial pace, which makes me very happy indeed.
My new holiday motto, the one I’ve lovingly handcrafted to go with the game of Flirt I’m playing with Mr. Handsome Canadian, is: Less pace in line, more time with you know who.
“The score is Christmas two and you have zero,” he says.
“And it stayed that way for the next ten years.”
“That is not fair!”
“Tell me about it! Then I ended up in another blue car, but not my father’s blue car.”
“In Philadelphia!” Mr. Canada tries to score a point, and… misses!
“Actually, it was in Rome.” A look of surprise crosses his sensitive but manly features.
“Are you there… alone?” he asks, clearing the way for me to reach my goal of seeing if he looks jealous when I say:
“Urn, Well. Actually, there was a guy in the car.” Can he handle the blow? Will he let down his defenses and let his true feelings for me show?
“Tell me more!” my pro athlete says bravely.
Our little game has produced a shutout. For now.
So I was driving another blue car—a stick shift this time, so I was driving pretty slowly—on a mountain road outside of Rome. No X-ing in the road, but it was, yes, Christmas Eve—la vigilia. The Wait.
After years of American disappointments, I had been invited to celebrate Christmas in the most romantic city in the world by the most transcendently handsome man I had ever met. A six-foot-one, blond, blue-eyed Roman god named Tommaso—Tomi, for short.
We’d met on a train five years before, when I took a summer off to travel through Europe. I spoke less than ten words of Italian then. Tomi had only started studying English in school that spring. But as the Italian Alps passed by our train window, we shared a look that said so much more than words ever could.
For the next five years, Tomi wooed me with postcards filled with Italian poetry—like this: “Tu sei la prima per me; l’ultima… ” “You are my first, my last… ”
It was all so romantico!
It took us half a decade to hook up for a second date. Tomi was busy with school; I had my job. But then, thanks to the strength of the dollar, our passion, and the appeal of being three thousand miles away from America during Christmas, I accepted Tomi’s annual invitation to join him in Rome for Christmas—Natale in Italian. The Birth.
As day turned into my first Italian Christmas Eve, all I could think was, Why didn’t I think of this before? The scenery was stunning, and so was my date. There was an overwhelming sense of expectation in the air, and it went so much deeper than anything I’d ever felt at home. It was a two-thousand-year-old party, and everyone was invited, including me.
Tomi picked me up at my pensione, resplendent in his blue cashmere jacket, gray turtleneck, gray wool trousers, and elegant black leather shoes. He told me I was bellissima—(“so very beautiful”)—and who was I to disagree? I was on the road to paradise: My first real Christmas and my first real Christmas nooky, all in one night.
After a delicious dinner in a small cafe, Tomi led me to a fourteenth-century white stone church on the top of a hill. We walked under the stars through these perfect rows of cypress trees and then into the church, where his rugged cheekbones cast rugged shadows against the ancient candlelit walls.
At five minutes to midnight, the choir began to sing—in Latin! My first real Christmas was just ahead of me. Beside me was a Roman-nosed Adonis worthy of being in an art history book or on the cover of a men’s fashion magazine. This was what I’d been waiting for. This was the fulfillment of all my Christmas dreams.
Which was when Tomi leaned over to me and passionately whispered, “Stayin’ alive! Stayin’ alive! I am feeling groovy!”
It’s the Euroversion of my mother and her medley of Christmas carol titles.
The choir continued to sing in Latin, but all I could hear was Tomi as he recited American pop tunes of the last twenty years—the subject of his college thesis—in my ear. He wanted to know if I could correct his pronunciation: Was it the Be-GEES or the BEE-gees? He was going to teach a course in U.S. pop classics at a local high school the following year, after he got his degree. His all-time favorite band was the Blues Brothers.
/> As I leaned against one of Tomi’s broad cashmere shoulders and gazed up at his contented face, the site of so much expected comfort and joy, the truth about my Christmas wishes up until then shone as clearly as the stars above: My problem with Christmas had nothing to do with other people. It really just had to do with me.
What a shame!” Mr. Canada says, grinning—make that openly laughing—perhaps at his potential rival’s defeat.
“Hey,” I say. “The good stuff’s always worth waiting for.” Wink, wink.
Pause. Nothing.
“And now you’re here,” my hockey pro says, pointing to the red-and-green-plaid down jacket I’ve got tied around my waist, “dressing like a Christmas tree. Or elf. Did you receive a call from Monsieur Santa Claus himself?”
Like a macho game-show spokesmodel, he raises and drops his hand and arm in the air to draw attention to the rest of my ensemble—and his biceps, bulging beneath the fabric of his official team jacket. I haven’t thought much about what I’ve been wearing for the last few days. But as it turns out, I’m decked out in a pair of dark green pants and a red sweater that has little pieces of gold and silver wrapping foil stuck to it in dozens of places. When I pull out my makeup mirror, I also see that I’ve been standing here for the last several hours with foil stuck to my face and in my hair.
I look like I’ve been working overtime on Santa’s assembly line, which, in a way, I have.
“Actually,” I say, “it was a letter.” We both looked down at the pile of boxes I’m mailing. They have pieces of cutout candy-cane designs on them and heart shapes and snowpeople on the front.
I can feel myself smiling.
“Okay,” I say. “Actually, three letters.”
The year after my Roman holiday, I spent the entire month of December in silent meditation at a mountain-top ashram, where I obsessed about you know what for all 1,440 minutes of all thirty-one days, and couldn’t tell anybody how miserable I was.
A few years after that, I joined the Unitarian church around the corner from my apartment in Brooklyn. We celebrated every festive winter date on the international calendar with equal amounts of intensity, good feeling, and decaf coffee served from the Urn of Community. Which was great, really great—if you’re the kind of person who likes to play the holiday field, emotionally (and sing “Kumbaya” seriously). But all I wanted was a one-on-one commitment.
Finally, I made peace with the fact that while I’d never be, you know, merry from November through January, the worst years of my Christmas-craving life were definitely over.
Then this year, a couple of weeks after that harbinger of hell known as Black Friday—the day after Thanksgiving, first day of the holiday shopping season—I was taking an innocent, fat-busting walk in my neighborhood to work off some holiday-related high-carb meal. I strolled past the shoe store, the card store, and the Yuppie deli. Then I came to one of those Chinese restaurants with a folding blackboard sign out front. On the sign, it said WE HAVE WARM SPINACH.
And there was something about those words—WARM SPINACH—that made me start to mist. I’m a New York woman. I don’t cry. I mist! Right there in the Brooklyn autumn twilight. Because looking through the window of that restaurant, all I could imagine was this enormous group of people who’d be sitting around this huge table later that night, gathering around the warm spinach. And I knew Christmas was coming.
And it was headed my way: undeniably, unavoidably, stronger than it had ever been before. Because by now, everyone I’d known since we were kids had made their childhood dreams come true and moved on to bigger things. The guy who’d been concertmaster of our high school orchestra now played with the Berlin Symphony. My friend Becky from elementary school, who wanted to be an American Indian instead of a Reform Jew when she grew up, now lived on a reservation, where she had four kids and a GED. How am I ever going to grow up if I can’t get past Christmas? I thought.
I decided to take control of Noel for a change, instead of waiting for it to deliver itself to me. But how?
That’s when my trendy friend Tina, an NYC A-lister if there ever was one, called to tell me how she’d heard about this thing called Operation Santa Claus, where you could go down to the main post office and pick up a letter from a kid who might not have a Christmas any other way.
“It’s not cool, exactly,” she said. “But it made me think of you. Ta-ta! Kisses! Bye!”
As I put down the phone, an idea hit me (along with a vague urge to pop Tina one for being so—Ta-ta!—condescending while being so infuriatingly, A-listily right). This Operation Santa Claus thing is not just the way for me finally to have my first real Christmas, I thought. I can get a little tzedaka in there, as well!
Tzedaka was this concept I had learned about in Hebrew school but had forgotten about until just then. It means charity—and anonymous giving of that charity, ideally. That way, the person getting the gift doesn’t feel obligated to the person who gave it to them. And the person who gives the gift can be sure their motives are pure—that they’re not looking for the world’s biggest thank-you.
A pure Christmas? I liked the sound of this Operation Santa thing already.
The next afternoon, I took the subway to the main post office, on my way home from a meeting. Like the true, overscheduled professional that I am (or at least imitate from nine to nine), I had this entire Christmas tzedaka project mapped out clearly in my head. I was going to walk up to the Operation Santa Claus window, say, “Hello. I’m here for my letter!” go home, make dinner, and get on with the rest of my life.
The only problem was, I was scared to walk in. I was standing across the street, by the back wall of Madison Square Garden, watching the sign change from WALK to DON’T WALK and back again.
Some people are afraid of serious heights. Other people are afraid of serious romantic commitments, or exotic diseases. I’m afraid of serious architecture. I get queasy every time I have to walk into a really important-looking building. I’m convinced a security guard’s going to walk over and demand a ticket or a permission slip I haven’t got. “There’s serious adult business to be done here, miss,” he’ll say, with the emphasis on adult. Which just so isn’t me. Adult? Please. I’m shocked when the kid behind the counter doesn’t sell me an “under twelve” ticket at the movies.
From where I was standing, the post office was most definitely an “adult business only” building—the kind of place that would look right at home in ancient Greece or Rome. As big as a museum, as stern as a library, and as out of my league as a private bank. Two city blocks long, and an entire avenue deep. Twenty columns—I counted them twice to avoid crossing the street—connect the stairs to the roof with big stone leaves (as if the architect believed a dash of flora would convince us that entrusting our most sacred mailable items to strangers is a natural thing).
Above the southernmost columns are the words Louis XIV in MCCCCXIV created the Poste Royale Jan Turvis Imperial Guardian, followed by the PO mantra, literally engraved in stone in a very serious font: Neither snownor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Gloom? Did somebody mention gloom?
Get a grip! I told myself. It’s just a post office. You’ve traveled the world—well, at least you took a train around Europe. I took a deep, meditative breath, trying to convince myself that maybe the main PO was just a bigger version of my high school, another stone building with seriously adult words etched above the door. Enter to Learn. Go Forth to Serve.
The light turned green.
Maybe, just like high school, the main PO was an important-looking building, with nothing much going on inside.
I crossed the street.
I quickly discovered that, just like at my high school, the steps of the main post office are where people go to smoke and scream. Two blond women in black leather coats examined the white tips of their French-manicured nails for unsightly nicks as they puffed blue smoke into the gray air; a man with
a matching red face and tie told someone named Trevor Damn It to Hell by cell phone that he’d better “find those back taxes, fast!” They were middle-age versions of the cheerleaders and jocks from high school. Overgrown seventeen-year-olds.
I can do this, I told myself.
As I walked up the wide granite stairs, I was a pilgrim on the path to postal enlightenment. The gleaming revolving brass doors at the top whispered to me that the true peace of Christmas awaited me on their other side.
Then, once I was safely inside, they screamed, SUCK-ER!
On the postal side of the brass were hundreds of rage-propelled people who needed something important done now]
Not only that. There was no Operation Santa Claus window. Instead, there was an entire Operation Santa Claus room, packed with people who normally wouldn’t be caught dead hanging out with one another. The tables on the left side of the room were filled with slick-haired business guys dressed in striped suits and thin raincoats that couldn’t possibly keep them warm. The tables on the right belonged to a bunch of tough old ladies, the kind who love dogs and babies but can’t stand people.
The business guys jiggled their arms and legs up and down in nervous patterns, as if they had personal stock market ticker tapes twitching under their skin. The old ladies wore brutally patient smiles that said that whatever happened next couldn’t surprise them. They had seen it—whatever it was—a million times worse before.
The space between these two opposing camps was occupied by a gaggle of giggling high school girls wearing color-coordinated jackets and carrying knapsacks weighed down with candy-colored key chains, hairbrushes, and lip glosses in small clear tubes dangling from their zipper tabs. They’d colonized an empty patch of post office wall, piling it high with shopping bags from the mall around the corner, where smoking was now forbidden. Not that any of them smoked, judging from their healthy complexions and energy bars.
Smokers or not, it was reassuring to see that teenage girls still came in the same basic varieties they did when I hung out in malls. There was the shy girl in the light blue jacket, hiding her face behind a letter; the popular girl in the center, not doing much of anything, just glowing in that way that said she was admired. There were the best friends, who ended every sentence with “If that’s okay with you!” The short girl with a rainbow of hoop earrings in one ear that matched the ends of her hair; the gawky girl, who I hoped would grow up to be anything but a model. There was the skinny girl with the open, sweet grin, and the heavy girl with the totally groovy green sweater.
Love Santa Page 3