Dear Santa

Over the weekend, my son and I spent some time reading his favorite book: the toy catalog that recently came in the mail. ’Tis the season of want.

The first day it arrived he went through and circled in blue all the items that interest him. He drew a big red X through anything he thought looked boring or was meant for younger kids. He has since gone back and circled some of those items in red and informed me that I should buy those too so that he can share them with his younger cousins. A small measure of generosity among the excess.

“Will you get me these things?” he asks and when I tell him to make a list, he holds up the catalog and looks at me like I’m being intentionally dense. This is his list, plus everything he’s mentioned over the past year which ranges from “a real-life boomerang,” “one of those, like, remote control truck things that shoot actual lasers” (is this a thing? how did he come up with this?), to “little animals made out of glass.”

This is mostly my fault. In the dilemma of raising a half-Jewish child who still gets to celebrate Christmas, we decided early on that Christmas morning would always take place at either my parents’ or my sibling’s house instead of celebrating it directly at home, and that we wouldn’t bother with the whole notion of Santa. Not wanting to make our son responsible for ruining Christmas magic for any other kids, though, we explained that his dad and I (and other family members) handle all the gift giving so Santa has more time to make it to all the other houses he needs to visit on Christmas Eve. Because we get the benefit of two holidays, I explained, we are trying lessen the jolly man’s load at this busy time of year. Aren’t we so thoughtful?

But now, instead of being able to pass off any gifting disappointments onto some mythical bearded man from the North Pole, we have to shoulder the full blame if we fail to recognize that “a real-life boomerang” was an actual request and not simply a fleeting desire after reading a book about Australia.

The main thing my son wants right now, though, is as much of my attention as I can give. I am due to have our second baby in the spring, and my son is old enough and wise enough to know that this new family member will steal a lot of my time. My son is in school all day for the first time in his life and laments that he has fewer opportunities for play than he used to. So when he asks me sit down and read the toy catalog with him, to slowly go through and name each item and read its description, I do, even though what I want most right now is as much time to myself as possible. Like him, I too am acutely aware of how much attention a new baby will require of me. My husband and I spend most of our time talking about how we can best manage it all—newborn exhaustion, quality time with our oldest, maintaining regular, dedicated opportunities for me to slip away and write.

I know how to write in the smallest pockets of free time. Everything I have created and published since I started writing in a more determined, dedicated way in 2019, has been accomplished while raising a young child. And while I have the benefit of working part-time, I do have a separate job that has nothing to do with writing that takes up time and energy. In the past three years, I have published nearly 100 pieces of writing in print and online journals, created and published multiple short collections, and edited and designed four issues of a literary magazine. This is no small feat and I’m really fucking proud of myself. As a lifelong depressive, I have a tendency to compare myself unfavorably to everyone else, to not give myself credit when credit is due. But I’m trying to be better about that, and credit is due here. I decided I wanted to write and damnit, I made it happen. Good for me!

When I start to worry that I will lose all ability to write when the new baby comes, I try to remind myself that there is more time available than is often immediately obvious, and that writing rarely happens in one big go, but instead is built up in bits and pieces, a story growing over days, weeks, months, years. A line of poetry written one moment and then set aside will still be there when I’m ready to come back to it.

As a sort of advent calendar for the season, on my social media sites I am sharing a few lines each day from pieces that are in my notes app or drafts folder. Putting this together has made me realize I did way more writing this year than I thought, and that I have a lot of pieces, at various stages of development, to draw from next year when time is tighter and my energy is diminshed. Right now I’m looking at the year ahead like it is one giant catalog of time and desperately circling every moment in blue. I want this one and this one and this one and this one. Can’t I have them all? But I know that I will be happy with even a small smattering of writing time and that I will make the most of it.

In his effort to soak up as much of my attention as possible, my son has started asking me to linger at bedtime on the nights when it is my turn to tuck him in. “Chat with me,” he says, and I sit on the floor beside his bed and rub his back while we talk about the day, or what the week ahead will bring, and I try to answer whatever odd questions or concerns pop into his mind. Last night he asked me “will you die soon?” and I reassured him that I still have a long time to live.

I hope it is true. I hope I have more time ahead of me than I could possibly know what to do with. A long life full of stories to share.

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To accompany this post, here is a flash essay that was originally published in the holiday edition of Near Window in December, 2020.

Wishlist

He wants a blue anti-slip mat like the one in his grandma’s bathtub. He wants a drill truck with a drill that really spins. Or a forklift truck where the fork actually lifts. Or a jackhammer truck that goes zzt zzt zzt zzt zzt zzt. He makes the sound for another fifteen minutes. He wants everything in the little Save The Animals catalog the World Wildlife Fund sent in the mail. A pangolin. A harpy eagle. A blue-footed booby. A green sea turtle. Something that looks like a buffalo, but isn’t. A set of three monarch butterflies. A pair of scarlet macaws. A three-toed sloth. He wants to know why all the animals are dying. He wants a drum set. No, a trumpet. No, he wants one of those things you can shout into and everyone will hear you. A bullhorn? Yeah, he wants a bullhorn. He wants to scream at the top of his lungs and he wants to say shut up and he wants to know why I won’t let him feel his feelings. You’re right, I tell him, go nuts, and I pour another cup of coffee. He wants a new set of markers and a big pad of paper. He wants those paints that are like crayons. You know the ones he used to have, but he used them all up? He wants more of those because he wants to paint me a picture. Would you like that, he asks me. I would like that very much. He wants to know what else I want. 

I want to live in a hotel for a week and pick my pores in the harsh light of the bathroom. I want to scoop all the fat from my belly, dump it in a trash bag and set it out on the curb for Tuesday pickup. I want to get so drunk I fall down and crack a tooth. I want to hold my breath beneath the surface of the bathwater and just when I think I can’t possibly hold it any longer, I want to hold it for one minute more. I want to scream at the top of my lungs, and say shut up, and feel my own feelings. I want to set this house on fire. Stand out bare-legged on a freezing cold night, cackling as I watch it all burn. 

Maybe I too would like a drill truck, he suggests, and I kiss the top of his head. That sounds great, I tell him, but I have everything I need.

Muddling Through

This is a love letter to people who leave their blinds open at night.

I like to take walks through my neighborhood and peek inside your homes. Especially this time of year, as Christmas trees begin to pop up in windows and stair banisters are strung with twinkle lights. I am not trying to spy on you—mostly I am interested in what color your walls are painted, what kind of kitchen cabinets you have, I am always on the lookout for a better living room lamp, do you have a nice one that might serve as inspiration?—but every now and then I catch a glimpse. You on the couch, watching television. You at the counter, chopping onions. Your family sitting down to dinner, so much later than mine does. Was it a busy day at work? I tell myself stories about your lives, imagine you as characters in a piece of writing I’ve been slowly crafting in my mind. The woman seated in the round back chair by the window, book in one hand, a glass of wine on the end table beside her: she is a mother, small children finally in bed. Her shoulders ache, her neck is stiff, but this is bliss, seated here alone in the dim light of a reading lamp. I’ve got a glass of wine and a book and nobody needs me! she will text a friend and they will go back and forth for forty minutes, sharing stories of their days as she scrolls through Twitter and Instagram until she starts to grow tired and decides, wine finished, book unread, to head up to bed.

It is a strange time of year, this space between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Equal parts festive and melancholy. The daylight diminished but everything aglow in holiday lights. I like the pinpricks of color reflected in windowpanes and wet sidewalks. I like a cold night where I need a scarf and a hat. Where I pass other people on the sidewalk and we smile, tight-lipped and rosy-cheeked, and I can feel the weight of the past year in the hunch of their shoulders.

My family finally caught Covid, after all this time, and I can still feel it in the way my breath catches if I inhale too deeply, which is something I do often this time of year. Step outside in the morning and take in a full breath of the frosted air. Walk in the evening and let the smell of woodsmoke and wet leaves fill my nose. I am still fatigued, more easily worn down by small tasks. I cannot walk as far as I would like to, and thus have fewer windows to peer into. I am hopeful that this will improve in the coming weeks—as more decorations appear, so will my stamina.

I used to live in a neighborhood that was next to a neighborhood full of beautiful old homes. What is nice about Baltimore and its abundance of rowhouses is that with a single quick glance you can see the majority of someone’s home; the downstairs floor is usually one continuous long space. But there was one rowhouse in the fancy rowhouse neighborhood that had a grand staircase in the front room and it blocked the view of the rest of the house. The owners would drape white lights and garland along the banisters and red bows hung in even increments down the full length of the stairs. In this high-ceilinged foyer, they would place a towering Christmas tree. I would pass by this house every night when out walking the dog, stand for a long moment and look through the window at this gorgeous setup and imagine the lives of the people inside. People I never saw.

I think about that house often—the scene inside like something from an old movie, classic and beautiful, the kind of Christmas Bing Crosby would sing about. I prefer our current neighborhood, though, with its kitschy displays—inflatable Santas and reindeer, oversized plastic nativity scenes that cover an entire porch, so many colorful lights strung from a single home that it’s almost an assault on your eyes. Best of all, I like the handmade children’s decorations that get taped to windows and doors. Wonky, asymmetrical snowflakes and construction paper Christmas trees.

My son has a set of markers that are made for drawing on windows. At Halloween he drew a spooky scene of ghosts and monsters. For Thanksgiving, he did a series of turkeys of increasing size—Tiny Baby Turkey all the way up to Jumbo Magnus. Yesterday he erased the turkeys to make room for his holiday display, though he is still waiting to decide what exactly he wants to draw. Soon we will hang up the advent calendar my sister and her husband made for us—a tradition that is big in Germany where my brother-in-law is from. Soon we will pull out the menorah. We will get a Christmas tree and my parents will come to town to help my son decorate it. We will celebrate many little bits of the holiday season. We will try to lean into cheer and warmth and the cozy joy of traditions, while also trying not to overdo it as we teach our son about gratitude and restraint.

The weeks will march on and the year will come to an end and my husband and I will try and fail to make it to midnight. It was a pretty good year, we will say. Good enough. Better than the last. Maybe next year will be even better. Easier. It is the lie we all tell ourselves to keep going, to push through the long, gray winter. To hold out for spring. Though I admit, I have grown to like winter. To anticipate it and welcome it with something akin to pleasure. It asks so little of us really: Slow down. Seek warmth. Simply survive.

I walk and I take in whatever the evening has to offer, whatever the season has to give. I like coming back inside with my nose and cheeks stinging, the smell of cold clinging to my hair. My home is warm and dimly lit. Upstairs my son is sleeping. I sit on the couch with a book and a drink. Nobody needs me, which feels wonderful, but lonely—a perfect encapsulation of this time of year—so I pick up my phone and text a friend.

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As an accompaniment to this post, I offer up this seasonally-appropriate poem, previously published in Second Chance Lit.

My Father and I Take the Same Antidepressant

Christmas is canceled.

He’s finally making good on that threat—

lifting the tree by the trunk with one hand and

splashing water out of the stand 

onto the floor. Later my mother will mop it up 

with towels and a knowing shake of her head. 

The limbs are still strung with rainbow lights and covered in 

ornaments: reflective red orbs, popsicle stick reindeer, handmade

paper cutouts framing our smiling school portraits, a bizarre wooden clown that

years from now we’ll finally throw out 

having collectively decided it looks vaguely racist. 

He flings open the door and heaves the tree into the backyard. 

Ornaments smash and scatter across the grass. 

Christmas is canceled, he tells us,

quietly closing the door. 

Years from then I tell him

“Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is unequivocally

the best Christmas song ever. 

Oh definitely, he agrees. But only 

the old version. The one about muddling through somehow. 

Yes, obviously. Of course

the muddling through. 

Yes, obviously

we’ve always had that in common.