Sans Fig Leaf

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"All I want for Christmas"

23 December, 2001

It is often said, "You seldom get what you want for Christmas," and for many years I was prepared to agree. As a child there were many times that I had my heart set on something or other, and had gone to pains to tell my parents about it, only to get something else.

But there were always unexpected treasures during those same Christmases. One year one of my aunts gave me a set of books containing scores of stories, most of which I had never heard of. I would have never thought to ask for the books. Yet, as recently as last month, I have pulled one of them off the shelf to look up something. Another time I received a big robot the moved and made noises and had flashing lights. I hadn't seen it in any stores, catalogs or advertisements, so had never thought to ask for it. I had completely taken it apart within a year-- and had it back together and in working order again within a month. So it was really two presents in one: a robot, and a "learn animatronics" kit.

Even recently, the best gifts often turn out to be things I didn't know existed. A month ago, when my family started pestering me for a list of present suggestions, it would never have occured to me to put "paper dolls of Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton" on my list, but there it was when I tore open a package at the party. It gave me a good laugh, and that I'm going to use to get a lot more good laughs out of other folks. I wouldn't have thought to put the complete first series of Jeeves and Wooster on my list, but I've enjoyed it so much, I've already gone and bought myself more. I had always been afraid to use fountain pens (terrible accident playing with my mother's when I was a kid, you see), so didn't realize how much nicer they were to write with until I was given one for Christmas.

So for some years now I have not subscribed to the belief that one seldom gets what they want for Christmas. Instead, I have believed that one often gets what one didn't yet know one wanted.

While that isn't quite the same thing as getting everything you want, it isn't exactly something to turn up your nose at. And it has sufficed to make most of my Christmases quite merry.

A few years ago I learned a new angle to this whole thing. It was just thirteen months after Ray's death. While I had participated in Christmas the year before, I had still been in that weird stage of grieving where I was just a bit crazy, a little scatterbrained, and a very numb. So the next one was really the first Christmas without Ray where I was fully cognizant throughout. There were a lot of rough moments. I had cried or otherwise lost my composure so many times that I wanted nothing more than to survive the holiday. Getting cool things wasn't even on my radar.

Among the many gifts that Michael got me were a Magic 8-ball and a wooden paper towel holder. To 99.9% of the world, I am certain that they would seem not one bit extraordinary.

Except that throughout my childhood, one thing that I had wanted again and again as a birthday or Christmas present was one of those silly Magic 8-balls. And no one ever got one for me. Once I was an adult and paying my own bills, I did once or twice entertain the notion of buying one. But I would look at it in the toy store and say to myself, "Don't be silly! You'd play with it for a day or two, and that would be it." Then I would put it back down and move on to other things.

During part of my childhood a number of the families of my friends owned one of those wooden paper towel racks that stood up on the counter. For some reason I always thought they were much cooler than the plastic one mounted on the wall my parents had. Again as an adult, I let the practical side of me talk myself out of them. Every place I've lived as an adult had far less counter space in the kitchen than I wanted. It seemed wrong to use some of that precious space for a silly kitchen gadget I'd wanted as a child.

Among the presents from my mom that same Christmas was this ornate little footstool, with a "secret compartment." Mom apologized as I opened it, saying she didn't know why, but she just felt an urge to buy it for me, and hoped I wasn't too upset at her for getting me something I didn't need or want. Again, in my childhood there was a time when I desperately wanted our family to have a small footstool like that one. One of the older ladies in our church had one, and I don't know how many hours I spent at here house, playing in the living room while she and my mom (and often other ladies from church) were doing something or other in the kitchen or sewing room. That little footstool was sometimes a mountain, sometimes the secret headquarters of a criminal mastermind, and sometimes a tall building in my imagination.

There were a few other strange coincidences like those that Christmas. Someone gave me some homemade cookies just like one of my great-grandmothers used to make. Someone else gave me some homemade raspberry jelly, just as I always begged another great-grandmother to give me. And Mom had found, hidden way back in one of the closets at her house, two boxes that completed the deal.

One contained a bunch of the Christmas albums we had listened to every year starting when I was very small. Fortunately, Mom still owned a working vinyl turntable. She also found some of my old toys that I thought were long gone.

I called it the Christmas of Childhood Wishes Fulfilled.

Maybe it was just a lot of coincidences. Maybe I was just more nostalgic and noticed the coincidences better than I had before or since. But it was definitely a magickal feeling.

So, what do I want this Christmas? I can't think of anything, really. Oh, yes, there are books and movies and music that I wouldn't mind owning, but I've already been given so much that I feel overwhelmed. I'm alive and well. The sweetest man in the world keeps insisting he loves me despite all my flaws and the multitude of my eccentricities. My friends are the nicest, most talented, and lovably eccentric set of people you could ever want to have around you for dealing with an adventure or just having a nice sit-down chat with snacks. My godson is the smartest three-year-old who ever walked the planet.

I live in a world with interesting weather, plants that bloom every spring, bugs and birds and fish that are continually doing interesting things. I belong to a species that has produced Mozart, Mother Teresa, Einstein, Archimedes, Wodehouse, Dickens, Verne, Gertrude Stein, the Beatles, the Three Stooges, Jim Henson, Patrick Stewart, Gilbert & Sullivan, Madame Curie, and thousands of other creative and just plain interesting people.

What more could I possibly want?

I have thought of one thing. I want everyone who reads this to have a happy holiday season and a very, merry new year.