CRABBY AT CHRISTMAS

This is a story about my nurse-sister, Ann, who told it to me over breakfast, recently. (If I've mixed up a few names or names of places, forgive me, Ann; the story is still true...) We were discussing how, after 35 years away, it still strikes me as something wonderful: big, lazy snowflakes swirling around, the week before Christmas. Gorgeous blue lights adorning each tree in the park, at the end of Maple Street; Mom putting up the Christmas Manger Creche, with the same Baby Jesus (left out till Christmas Eve) we grew up with and all the remembered ornaments, familiar-again scents and sounds of a New England holiday season.

Ann was unimpressed, having just gotten off another rugged night shift in the ER. Too many psychotics demanding turkey sandwiches and chips-- while they waited for admittance into the psych ward.

"I get it. You are totally stressed. Still, it's amazing, being back here, after spending the past few years in mid-town, L.A., with homeless peeing in the trash cans outside my building; or gangs practicing holiday "shots", up and down La Brea..." I tell her.

"Yeah, well...I'll be glad when the season's over," Ann rolls her big blue eyes, thinking I'm a sap.

"Try to focus on stuff you do love about Christmas...seriously," I say, sounding like the ex-teacher-social worker I am.

"I do remember one Christmas, in the Peace Corps...my friend and I had gotten some time off for the  holidays; we'd saved up all year' to go into the only major town in Lesotho. We hitchhiked under the summer sun, me in my knee- length skirt and backpack, he in his best townie clothes, all the way into the city. We had scored reservations for a couple days--just get hot showers, room service and  time in decent beds. But, suddenly, in the midst of unpacking, HE began to get nostalgic for his family, back in the village. I couldn't believe it! We'd been planning this trip for months! Finally, on Christmas morning when we woke up,he couldn't stand it. I couldn't afford another day by myself,either, so I had to pack, too. I was so pissed!
On top of that, there was no traffic coming into or going out of the city on Christmas. We were stuck...on the road, fighting heat exhaustion,literally for hours. Mid-day, a carload of tourists from South Africa showed up and offered us a ride. They were in a party mood and offered to take us all the way into the mountains, to the village of my friend. They wanted to see "authentic Lesotho"! The problem was, MY village was about two miles off the main road, and not in his direction. So, they took me to where I had to peel on to a footpath and trek the two miles back up to my village. Merry Christams...what a pain!

"I had my backpack still full of "treats for the weekend"--mostly canned stuff and whatever junk food we had been able to procure. Also, all my toiletries and clothes for the city weekend getaway...what a joke! So, there I was, this sixty pound pack on my aching shoulders, exhausted, dehydrated, feeling abandoned, upset, in my best skirt and sandals, slogging in the sweltering sun, alone on Christmas Day, in Africa.

"Suddenly, I hear all this pot-banging, and really high voices coming down the road. About fifteen little kids--with spoons and pot lids-- yelling "Happy! Happy! Happy!" dancing down the path, directly toward me.

"You have to know how little this village had--the poorest of the poor--their culture had been squashed out of them by invading people for years--the kids had the big bellies and bigger eyes you usually see on t.v. Dressed in scraps of rags, barefooted, dusty, they came up to me, surrounding me and grinning.

"Happy Happy Happy!" they sang, all the while banging pots--their version of a Christmas morning celebration.

"I growled, something, like, "Get away! I just want to get back to my hut!" or something equally crabby.

The kids knew me from classes that I taught at their church.I wasn't just some random stranger.
They all got quiet. The smallest boy reached into his torn pants pocket.I thought he was going to pull it inside out, asking me for a coin. Instead, he took out a fuzz-covered hard candy. He took a step toward me--the big blonde American with the stuffed backpack, sweating and swearing on the village path.
He held out his grubby little hand and offered the candy to me.

"Happy, happy!" he smiled.

All the kids burst into cheers and started banging their pots. I looked down at that raggedy kid and his lint-covered candy. I burst into tears."

(At this juncture, I burst into my own tears. Then I laughed.I could "see" Ann, the tough blonde American in her best skirt and sandals, her ass-length hair streaked with African sweat, her backpack off-kilter and weighing her down, her boyfriend jouncing in a jeep with a bunch of tourists,their weekend ruined; her swearing as she slogged home...I could see it, feel it, smell it...)

"Those little kids started to hold up the bottom of my pack, and push my butt up the path...just singing and banging the pots. When I got to my hut, I opened my pack and took out all the weekend supplies, plus my wallet, and anything else I had in there that I knew they could use. The rest of the afternoon, in my yard, we celebrated one of the best Christmases I've ever had...me and fifteen of the grubbiest, poorest kids on Earth."

Ann put her teabag into her boiling cup of water and proceeded upstairs--to continue wrapping gifts.

(Merry Christmas, my sister. I'm glad you are home from Africa.)

Merry Christmas to us all--Happy, Happy. 

ITS COMIN' ON CHRISTMAS

Like Joni Mitchell penned in "River", I feel I need "someplace to skate away on..."

My parents' house is beginning to be filled with decorations,baking activities, packages and people, on an hourly basis. Because I haven't mastered which doorbell is back and which is front (still)--and that is further complicated by the dog giving me an amused look, then running to BOTH doors, in random order--while voices from upstairs, downstairs and the celler laundry room  instruct me on which door to answer--usually with an added chime from the house phones (their are MANY extensions and mobile phones in this house)...I am more than a bit rattled. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm usually upstairs, online, writing, answering e-mails (or contacting publishers, presses) and seeking full-time employment. My mind is in the ethers and my hearing attuned to the laptop. (Not the doorbells.) Between the delivery persons and the visitors, this place is rollicking! 

UPS, USPS, the local florist, and various political organizations all seem to be converging on the vortex of Maple Street. I am attempting to be of some small service. (I admit: some of the boxes are mine...)I help Dad haul in packages that are bigger than both of us. (Mostly ordered by Ann-the-Generous, for the extended family.) Sometimes, though, Dad gets macho on me and insists that HE can haul in the boxes himself. Since I now outweigh him by several kilos (smile) and am almost his height, this isn't often true. But for sure, only one of us, plus the giant packages, can fit through the screen door and the hallway door and the living room door--at least simultaneously.

My strategy is the "drop-the-box-and-go-into-a-crouch-and-push" position. (I'm sure there's a corresponding yoga pose...)While Dad looks on in great disgust, it still beats his "tottering-in-pain-bending-the-aching-back-haul-up-into-the-house" curls. Of course, when Ann is home, she merely orders us all out of the way, mustering her nurse-as-WonderWoman muscles, and flips the packages onto her shoulders;proceeding directly upstairs to her bedroom. It's pretty amazing. (Makes me feel like the dim-witted interloper I probably am...smile.) Somehow, we've retrieved it all from the front porch before any masked bandits. HOARDERS isn't scheduled to film here, anytime soon, either.

The "secret wrapping sessions", with half-closed doors, rustling paper and the occasional jingle-jangle of decorative sleigh bells, fills the hallways. Last weekend, Ann bribed (paid) my youngest niece to help her finish the third round of wrapping. (Luckily, Mer was in need of fast cash.) 

Of course, I am of no use whatsoever. It has been (since childhood) the family joke, that "K.K. wraps like someone from an adult workshop"-- they haven't meant elves' at the North Pole. It's not politically correct nor even very nice, but I've come to accept the title. I mean, I over use tape of any kind --resorting to duct tape in a pinch. My talents are two dimensional. Oh, I write a helluva card, even a gift card might contain a poem or anectdote; but when it comes to actual wrapping...well...it's lucky Mer is still around to help.How many Christmases past have I been told, "We can't figure out how a visual artist like you can be such a lousy gift wrapper???" I haven't figured it out, either. All I can say is: thank God for the invention of gift-bags! 

As fast as the presents come in, they are delivered; strict warnings attached not to open till Christmas. But, they ARE delivered. The energy coming off this enterprise is palatable. It's a kind of factory-sense to the operations. I'm sure the North Pole Business Model is at play, somewhere. For reals.

My family is generous, as well as fierce. Gift-giving is a way of loving. It just gets overwhelming (to me), sometimes. Even as I am a definite recipient of that genrousity and amazed at how, for decades, it continues to be passed along.

 Now, we are beginning THE SEARCH for the perfect Christmas Tree...