The Voice of Treason

It’s the last day of a challenging year, a new year will begin, my mother knows who I am, and the diabetic dog is still alive. Despite the perennial theme of “Have Yourself a Wretched Little Christmas,” it came and went and was relatively quiet.

It’s a relief to say goodbye to 2005. Ordinarily we stay home on New Year’s Eve, but this year we have some invitations to be with friends and that sounds…normal. We will spend the evening with a married couple and a large group of people - some we know and some we don’t - at a house that is, technically, staggering distance from ours. That way weren’t not too far from the dogs. Happily, this couple has moved to our side of town and is now only a few blocks away. A relationship can be rekindled.

This was a couple that I’d told, after their first date, that they were going to get married because they were perfect for each other. Friends and coworkers laughed at me. Time passed and these two had a lovely wedding and reception; now they have a wonderful house nearby, an active toddler, and three spectacular dogs.

He is an engineer and, perhaps, the nicest guy in the world. One of those rare types that never says anything negative about anyone or anything unless he is forced to, and even then it never sounds that negative. She teaches American history to eighth graders. Their daughter is cute; the three dogs - including the new puppy - are perfect angels. This couple has had the same friends forever.

They are the perfect picture of normal. Now people get defensive when you say that word as if it’s something undesirable. Why is that? Do they think normal is boring? Unimaginative? Stagnant? Incarceration? Not glamorous or interesting enough?

I’m not sure. But I don’t think normal is a bad thing. Normal should be embraced. There has been a movement to be unique and original and avoid conforming and being like everyone else. But when everyone is trying to be unique, they quickly become just like everyone else who’s trying to be different. I’m not saying if you have an iguana tattooed on your forehead that you aren’t normal. I’m not saying if you have both male and female genitalia that you’re not normal.

Normal to me is comfortable, stable, peaceful, productive, healthy. You have a schedule, a plan, something to look forward to, something you enjoy, and an eagerness to face the day. You change your oil regularly. Your tires aren’t bald. The appliances work. And when they stop working you get them fix or replaced. Perhaps it’s a certain middle classness.

I think it’s what they used to call suburbia before suburbia became a bad word. Before that it might have been small town America. Gotta be careful. If you say small town and normal in the same sentence, millions of people who live in major metropolitan areas will come forward and say that they moved to big cities because small town life was anything but normal.

It’s not where you live, it’s how you live. You can be poor and be normal. You can be rich. You can be just about anything and be normal. Well, maybe you can’t be a serial murderer or child molester but, again, normal is how you live.

I suspect one reason I never wanted children is that I felt I needed to be able to guarantee normal for them. I want to be able to do that for my dogs. I’m sitting here with a shaved head. Is that normal? Like pornography, you know it when you see it; like torture, you know it when you feel it.

My wish for the new year is a wish for normal. A return to routine. Not monotony, not tedium. But usual, habitual, customary. A framework of normal. Structure, scaffolding, a support system of normal. Has nothing to do with haircuts or hobbies, but I suspect it does have something to do with habits. Conventions, patterns, inclinations…well, routines.

Just, simply, back to normal. I’ll know it when I get there.

…Two sisters, both in Chicago, came to California to investigate. Even my brother, who never showed an interest in any of us, was convinced that my mother was involved with a loser and he came out, too. Suddenly, we were all together again.

My mother didn’t want to get married, but we forced her into the smartest decision of her life. My stepfather had never been married, so my mother was determined to create a family life for him after years of singlehood. He suddenly had us kids. Sure, my siblings were all adults by then, but we were a made-to-order family. My mother filled the house with pets. He never had pets growing up with his mother and now he had dogs, cats, birds, and rabbits everywhere. She cooked. She baked. She gardened.

It was a time of fabulous Christmas memories. We were all together, we had decorations and trees again, and there was a fireplace. Growing up in a Chicago apartment I always wondered how Santa would deliver gifts when we had no chimney. I was older, knew the truth, but was still thrilled that we were in a house with a real fireplace.

We had an obscene amount of gifts each Christmas. My sister and I spent more on gift wrap than some people spend on gifts, but we loved the paper and decorations and each wrapped box was a gift in itself. (I live to wrap.) I shopped for wonderful items in my little college town and filled my car with them and headed home each Christmas. The winter weather in the news today reminds me of the endless rains in Northern California, the mudslides, the closed roads, the year the earthquake closed Hwy. 101, and the excuse it gave me to drive all my friends home for the holidays who lived in other parts of the state. I took Highways 299 and 5. There were winding mountain roads, snow, and something evil they call tulee fog. There was much screaming in the car. And then we college friends met up in San Francisco to do some last minute shopping. I remember the tree at The Cannery and the decorations at Ghiradelli Square. I drove a couple friends home to the Sacramento area and we stopped for coffee and pie at the Nut House.

I remember the year my mother went into the hospital after discovering an enormous tumor. My stepfather was so lonely and sick with worry that he’d call me long distance and ask me - again and again - about all my classes. I remember the year when my sister and mother kept calling me to ask me if I was coming home for Christmas and if I was I should wait to buy gifts. Something didn’t seem right. Of course I was coming home, and why were they telling me to postpone Christmas shopping? When I got home I found out why. My stepfather had taken my mother out to their favorite Chinese restaurant on her birthday, then they came home, he sat in his favorite chair with his favorite dog on his lap, and his heart exploded.

They didn’t tell me what had happened because they didn’t want it to affect my grades. My grades were fine; life was not.

I miss my sister and my stepfather, and I’m fully aware of how fortunate we were. How fortunate I am to have known them, how fortunate to have had that time together. To have all those memories. To have memory.

So many Christmas remembrances this year and so few, really, are about the presents. I think about those Christmases in California because that was where I was introduced to something called holiday guilt. The San Jose Mercury Newsand the San Francisco papers and newscasts reported every Thanksgiving and Christmas that thousands of people weren’t going to have happy holidays. They had little to celebrate. They were poor. They had drug addictions. They had gambled away their homes. They had lost loved ones. They were sick. Their kids were sick. Their cars didn’t run. Some had no cars. Story after story. Their holiday turkeys were stolen. The house was broken into and the few gifts they had were taken. They hadn’t paid their taxes and now the government wanted their houses. Reading the newspaper and watching TV have become oppressive during the holidays. Should I feel bad if my holiday is happy? YES!!!

This year was filled with stories of unhappiness. There are still Katrina victims out there. (Say, weren’t there also hurricane victims in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida? NO!!! Just Nawlins, and don’t you forget it.) There are soldiers who are risking their lives in the desert. Reporters questioned one after another: Isn’t it awful not to be home for the holidays? Well, duh. And you people went to Columbia to study journalism?

And, despite a robust economy, some people won’t be having a Christmas this year. But it’s an offensive thought. You can be poor, you can be sick, you can be desperate, and you really can have a Christmas. Maybe I sound cold, but I’m not. I just know that Christmas exists and it can be celebrated, no matter how awful life happens to be on December 25. I wish the MSM could recognize that and stop this annual guilt trip. For over thirty years, we’ve been subjected to holiday horror stories. Enough is enough.

Terrible things happen this time each year. When I went up to visit my mother on her birthday, I found out that my friend’s mother who lives in the same place had just passed away. Last week I found out that the old man who had the little dog I’d visit with had died. I’m thinking about the people in Oklahoma and Texas, but the MSM is still stuck on Louisiana and Banda Aceh. I’m also thinking about the people in the Midwest who lost their homes to tornadoes. Maybe they’ll get a mention in the end-of-year TV news specials. The press carefully selects the stories they want us to feel bad about. There’s much to feel bad about this year, and I don’t need the media to rub what they want me to feel bad about in my face.

There are also things to feel good about. Some seem like small things. Like when someone in the assisted living community dies, another resident will adopt the pets. That little dog has a new parent now and they’re both so happy together.

So I will spend the rest of this year thinking about those small things. My wish is that you do the same.

…All together now: How poor were you? My sister, who had returned to Chicago, was working in a factory for minimum wage and living in a little apartment near the L station. (When I visited her there a year later, the building smelled so bad that we had to hold our breath starting from the sidewalk, all the way up several flights of stairs, until we were in her apartment with the door shut tight. To this day I don’t know what that stench was.)

She was so poor that all she ate was caramel corn, but she always said that job was the best she ever had and she was happy then. She stood on the L platform in bitter Chicago winter wind at four o’clock in the morning and traveled far to get there. She liked the immigrant women she worked with. She liked her little apartment. Most of her life she would be over two hundred pounds, but this was a time that she would be thin. She didn’t eat because every spare cent she had she bought clothes for me and sent them so I’d have something wonderful to start school. My sister had extraordinary taste and I was her Barbie doll. Everything she wished she could wear, she bought for me. She sent my mother money so we could eat.

Things were grim. My mother had been told that her leg was so badly damaged that the knee might not ever heal. She didn’t drive, we walked everywhere, and she waited tables to support us. This was not good news. Also, the bathroom was upstairs in our wonderful split level apartment. She couldn’t get up the stairs. I remember distinctly a bucket. The bucket was my responsibility. So was shopping and cooking. We lived on bologna and egg sandwiches.

Christmas came. I remember a white plastic clock radio that I had all through high school, college, and through three jobs after college. I’d listen to KGO talk show hosts and Rush; in high school I listened to Dr. Don Rose. I grew up with that radio. It finally died - but I had it for over twenty years.

Again, I had no idea how bad things were, but that was a wonderful Christmas. Out of desperation, my mother cut off her cast and returned to work. And that’s where she met the man who would become my stepfather.

…My mother was determined to avoid her crazy Italian family. She kept us away from relatives successfully when we were in Chicago, but when we moved to Arizona, I was reintroduced to my half-sister, her husband, and aunts, uncles, and cousins I hadn’t known. I adored my uncle and his Maltese wife and wished I could move to Phoenix and stay with them. They had two refrigerators in the kitchen. For some reason that impressed me. My cousins - their daughters - were exotic beauties. One looked Egyptian and walked around in a negligee and would go outside in it to roll around with her two Afghan hounds. Again, this made an impression.

Another uncle was there. His wife was Mexican and I adored her, too. She was exciting and cooked all things spicy. Everyone had fabulous food and fabulous dogs. The downside was the fabulous ticks. When we got off the plane in California, both my mother and I were hosting a few. I’ll spare you all the details. (I even found a couple in my pink fuzzy slippers. Ugh.)

I didn’t want to leave the non-stop adventure that was Arizona. But my mother left my sister and all our pets behind, and the two of us moved to the Bay Area. We stayed with another uncle who lived in a small bachelor’s apartment over a garage. It was rented out by an old Italian couple. I loved them and enjoyed going to their house downstairs and across the small yard, playing with their dog, and drinking red wine out of water glasses. My only bad memory was polenta.

My uncle had a great dog, too, and we ended up moving into a house next door to the old Italian couple and their garage apartment. They owned that property, too. It was a typical California bungalow and there were lemons and loquats growing everywhere. Again, I had no clue that we were desperately poor. I thought that when my mother had me picking mustard greens in the apricot orchards it was because she wanted to introduce me to new Italian dishes. My uncle kept jars of dried mushrooms in the house; I remember my mother would cook small bits of bacon with the mushrooms and mustard greens and we would eat that. A lot. And I remember all the fruit. So many apricots and so many lemons. I’m amazed I still have enamel on my teeth.

It was glorious. And when my mother started working in a little Italian restaurant, she found a split level apartment and bought trendy new furniture for it. It was the most wonderful place in the universe. Life was perfect. And then she slipped on the wet ice plant, fell over the overpass, and exploded her knee.

…And so we moved to Prescott. It was my mother, my sister, me, two cats, and my raccoon. We were sitting at O’Hare waiting for the plane to take us from the city that we knew was home to a place that was completely foreign. And that’s when we heard the voice on the loudspeaker.

“Will the lady with the raccoon please come to the ticket counter?”

I swear it seemed as if everyone in the airport sat down at once. My sister turned to my mother.

“I think they mean you.”

Turns out that my beloved raccoon - who should have been named Houdini - escaped from his cage. His paw was bleeding. Several burly airport workers had him trapped, but were nervous. When my mother ran up to him and picked him up and kissed him on the face, the men exclaimed:

“He’s tame?”

My mother said of course he was - why would she be traveling with a raccoon who was wild? A woman approached my mother with a pink pill in her hand. “Give him this - it’ll calm him down.” (When we had settled in Arizona and the pets were out of their cages, we found that pink pill buried in a corner of the cage, hidden under layers of The Chicago Tribune.)

My sister and I hated leaving Chicago. There was so much there to love. The Cubs, the museums, the zoos, the parks, the Loop, Italian beef sandwiches, pizza, the Jewish delis, the Swedish bakeries, Bill Jackson and Cartoon Town, Franklyn MacCormack, Fahey Flynn, WLS, WCFL, the lake, the river - everything we’d known. The only thing that made Arizona palatable was that we watched High Chaparral and expected something that looked like Tucson. It would be an adventure, we told ourselves.

Prescott was not Tucson. And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but my sister and mother both hated it. We had nothing to do and no money, so we walked a lot. I remember my sister announcing wherever we went how much she hated “this f*cking town.” I had to compare it to Chicago, too, and I recall that my classmates were tired of hearing how great Chicago was and how awful their home was. I was not scoring any points with the little Prescottonians.

Then one day something strange happened. It occurred to me that I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. I loved Arizona. I loved everything about it - including the giant bugs. We were there barely a year, but it was a year of bliss.

I made great friends and had fantastic adventures. But how could it have been a great year? My father died in April, crushing any fantasy I had that he would retire and move to the desert to reunite with my mother. My raccoon, my best friend in the world, discovered that he was, in fact, a wild animal and he wanted no part of domesticity once he experienced the great outdoors. One day he left and didn’t come back. We saw cicadas for the first time. My mother’s cat was run over in our driveway on my mother’s birthday. The black cat who traveled with us from Chicago spent less time with us once we settled in Arizona and we’d see him from time to time and call to him, but he stayed away. We would see his paw prints in the snow on the dead cat’s grave. Soon after, we stopped seeing him at all.

I can make a long list of all the horrible things that happened in the short time we lived there, but to me it was one long Christmas. I can’t even explain why. I had no clue how poor we were; all I knew is that we were living in a real house instead of an apartment. It didn’t matter that our Rogers Park apartment was superior in many ways to the house - it was still a house. In fact, we lived in two houses while we were there. My half-sister owned the properties and we left one house to move next door to a house that never got warmer than thirty degrees.

My mother left my sister and me there to ice over while she scoped out California. It’s a little blurry, but I think she was there for the holidays. So what made this Christmas so special when I barely remember the details? I’m not sure. I remember bitter cold, my sister struggling in a primitive kitchen with a crappy oven and a deformed turkey, sledding down icy hills on big pieces of wet cardboard, then sitting in front of that oven thawing out toes my sister thought were frostbitten. I remember getting a pair of fuzzy pink slippers. Maybe they were from my aunt and uncle in Phoenix…I’m not sure. And I remember a paperweight - I still have it - that is a small furry seal sitting on a rock. Seal Rock. Did my mother bring this back from California? I have no idea. All I know is that the house was so cold, I was sick, we had no gifts that I can recall except for the slippers and the furry rock, but I was so happy.

So when my mother returned to say that she was taking me to live in California I was devastated.

Every year it’s the same. It doesn’t feel like Christmas, but then, at the last minute, inevitably, the spirit kicks in. This year was a little different: the spirit never quite fully kicked in, but it turned out okay. I made a fabulous dinner and my mother had a nice day. WGN repeated the Bozo, Gar & Ray special, so I sat her down in front of the TV and hoped that it would stimulate some memory. It did - for about two minutes. She decided that watching me cook was more interesting.

T put her to work peeling potatoes. I protested, thinking she’d cut herself, but he assured me that she’d be fine and she was. Then he sat her down with photo albums with lots of pictures of dogs from her past. Last Christmas I sat in the emergency room with her. This holiday was much better.

And really that’s all I can ask for. Was I disappointed that George Bush didn’t make a trip to Iraq? Not really. Seeing Rumsfeld distributing lobster tails to the troops scratched that itch. But I do expect him to go there once an Iraqi government is in place.

Anyway, the WGN special might not have stimulated much memory in my mother, but it certainly got me thinking a lot about my childhood and past Christmases. I’ve been thinking a lot about Chicago lately and I have an urge to visit. For years I had a recurring dream: I was walking to school, going past houses and apartment buildings I’d passed a million times, and it was always so real. Chicago. It’s my kind of town.

So I can’t help think about how awful it was when my mother moved us to Prescott, Arizona. It’s sketchy, but our last Christmas in Chicago was minimal. We were preparing to move, so it didn’t make sense to have a big holiday. I will always remember this one, though, because of Norma and Jim. They were an older couple who loved to go to the restaurant where my mother worked. They’d wait for a table in her section to open up just so they could visit with her. Again, we lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and Norma and Jim were Jews.

And, knowing that we were going to have a small holiday because we were packing up and leaving the city, they invited us to their home to celebrate Christmas. Norma cooked a traditional Christmas dinner and wrapped, in beautiful Christmas paper, three gifts for us. She decorated a tree especially for me. We decided to call it a Hanukkah bush, but I couldn’t help think that her creation of a Christmas for us was one of the most generous and kind things I’d ever known. She had bought for my mother, sister, and me beautiful leather purses. In fact, I’m thinking I might still have the purse because it was in my closet in my stepfather’s house when I was in high school and college, still in pristine condition. I know I moved some of my purse collection to my mother’s house after college…I just wonder if it’s here or if it was left behind. Proof that a good handbag can last decades. And these were all well-made and very well selected. My sister and I carried ours for years. (My mother was never big on purses. She only used one to carry tips home from work. When she stopped waiting tables, I never again saw her with a handbag.)

What a nice thing for them to do, I kept thinking to myself. Why would anyone go through so much trouble to celebrate a holiday that they really don’t celebrate? These are such good people. So thoughtful.

It might have been a small gesture on their part, but it’s one I will never forget.

This is one of those rare times - what is it, four times in the last hundred years? - that Christmas and the beginning of Hanukkah fall on the same day. My Jewish niece in Chicago sent this e-mail message to her Seventh Day Adventist mother in California (my sister, who converted to Judaism when she married her first husband, then went Christian with her second, but always fantasized about becoming a nun).

I went online to see if I could locate the source and found so many parodies of Mr. Moore’s poem that I’ve simply included the spot where I stumbled upon them.

This is worth a look:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/historical/a/twas_the_night.htm

The version of this one was slightly different on the site, so I’ve taken the liberty to morph the two. Here goes:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck,
How to live in a world that’s politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to “Elves,”
It seems “Vertically Challenged” they were calling themselves.
And labor conditions up at the North Pole,
Were said by the Union to stifle the soul.

Four reindeer had vanished with much propriety,
Released to the wilds by the Humane Society,
And the EEOC had just made it quite clear,
That Santa had better not use JUST reindeer,
So Dancer and Donner and Comet and Cupid
Were replaced with four pigs, and you know that looked stupid.

The runners had both been removed from his sleigh,
The ruts were too dangerous, intoned EPA.
And people had started to call for the cops
When they heard prancing noises on their own rooftops.
Even smoke from his pipe had the people quite frightened
And his fur-trimmed red suit was called “Unenlightened.”

And to show you the strangeness of life’s ebbs and flows
Rudolph sued the old man for the use of his nose.
He had gone on TV and in front of the nation
He had cried out to Oprah for due compensation.

So half of the reindeer were gone and his wife,
Who suddenly said she was sick of this life,
Joined a self-help group and then left in a whiz
Demanding from now on her title was Ms.

And as for the gifts he had nary a notion,
That making a choice could cause such a commotion.
Nothing of leather and nothing of fur
Which meant nothing for him and nothing for her.
Nothing that might be construed to pollute
Nothing to aim at and nothing to shoot.

Nothing that clamored or made lots of noise,
Nothing for JUST girls or JUST for the boys,
Nothing that claimed to be gender specific.
Nothing too warlike or too non-pacific.

No candy or sweets, they are bad for the tooth.
Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth.
And fairy tales, too, while they’re not yet forbidden
Were like Barbie and Ken…just better off hidden.
For they raised the hackles of those psychological
Who said the only good gift was one ecological.

No baseball no football, someone could get hurt.
Besides, playing sports exposed kids to the dirt.
Dolls were too sexist and should be passe,
Nintendo ’twas found, rots your brain cells away.

So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed.
He just couldn’t figure out what to do next.
He tried to be merry, he tried to be gay,
But you’ve got to be careful with that word, they say.

His sack was quite empty, laying limp on the ground;
No suitable gift for this year could be found.
Something special was needed, a gift that he might
Give to all without angering the left or the right.

A gift that would satisfy with no indecision,
Each group of all people in every religion;
Every ethnicity, each color and hue,
Everyone, everywhere, yes, even you.

So here is that gift, its price beyond worth…
“May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on this earth.”

The weirdness continues. Maybe holidays bring back the past, but ever since I caught the news story about Marshall Field, I’ve been stuck on my childhood in Chicago. My mother always took us to the Loop at Christmas time so we could see the store windows and toy section at Marshall Field. We didn’t actually shop there - it was too expensive - but it was wonderful to think that one day we would.

A woman that the reporter interviewed summed it up pretty well:

“Macy’s is New York. Marshall Field is Chicago.”

After the holiday, Chicago’s landmark store will become a Macy’s. And this got me thinking about the call from the truant officer. When I was little, the phone rang and I picked it up. It was someone from the Chicago pubic school system who wanted to speak with my mother. Not here, I said, she’s working. Anyone else there, like an older brother or sister? None of your business, I thought to myself. Ah, this is what my mother means when she says someone is trying to “pump me” for information. Who was this person asking all the questions?

Turns out that I was truant. Chicago schools wanted to know why I wasn’t there, suffering with the rest of the little children. My education was important, the woman told me. I wasn’t being educated if I was sitting at home. That’s when the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I was in an apartment filled with books and a new set of encyclopedias - I was convinced I could get an even better education at home. And then I blurted it out.

“The reason I’ve missed school lately is because we’re moving to Arizona. We’re leaving Chicago. My mother wants to be sure that we see as much of our city as possible before we move away. The museums, Downtown, everything. We have to see it all and we don’t have much time.”

She backed off. But I wasn’t surprised about the call. I knew I’d been outed. If you lived in Chicago and you met someone you wanted to date and the first date went well, you immediately got on the waiting list for tickets to Bozo’s Circus. At one point the wait was ten years, so that’s why - if you were thinking about having kids - you had to act fast.

To this day I don’t know how my mother got tickets to see Bozo before we left Chicago, but I remember everything else about that day. I remember what we wore, what the weather was like, and I especially remember how pissed off the other mothers in line were when Bozo, Ringmaster Ned, and Oliver O. Oliver walked up to the line and started flirting with my mother. These were my heroes. I watched these guys on TV everyday and they were hot for my mom. It was peculiar to say the least, but after scanning the other mothers in line, it was also understandable. My mother never looked like the other kids’ mothers. (Let’s just say she was very well put together. She was wearing the ivory dress that she didn’t like - thought the scooped neck showed too much chest and the skirt was too short. It zipped up the back and a tie criss-crossed at the waist up to her chest in a pseudo corset style that was popular then. It was my favorite, so she agreed to wear it. Good call.)

I was mesmerized. So close to them and they were talking to us. They were real! And although I didn’t get picked for the Grand Prize Game, I went home happy. The next day I showed up at school prepared with a handwritten excuse from my mother, but it was no use. Every kid in Chicago who went home to eat lunch watched Bozo, and there I was in my charcoal pinstriped dress with the red tie. My teacher knew, the principal knew - it was all on tape so how could I deny it?

I ran home from that school every day so I could catch Frazier Thomas and Garfield Goose. I liked Bozo (Bob Bell was the best), but I loved Garfield. Yes, I know Gar was a goose hand puppet. I loved that goose. So when I was channel surfing and landed on WGN and discovered that the station was going to air a two-hour retrospective — Bozo, Gar & Ray - I was thrilled. I told T that he would finally have the chance to see my first love, Garfield Goose. And my second love: Cuddley Duddley, the big stuffed dog - The Trib’s mascot. (My father gave me a Cuddley Duddley for Christmas and he was taller than I was. Long silky ears…ah, so cuddly. My third love, Bill Jackson, would not be in this retrospective. Jackson was WGN’s competition. Whole nuther story.)

Well, I watched the show and it was both wonderful and horrifying. There was so much I remember - but so much I’d successfully purged from my mind. And now it’s all back. I hadn’t forgotten Ray Rayner and the duck, Chevelston, who used to attack him every chance he got - and how could anyone forget Clutch Cargo and his pals Spinner and Paddlefoot? — but I did forget about those three animated shorts from the fifties that WGN ran incessantly throughout the Sixties. Hardrock, Coco and Joe, Frosty the Snowman, and Suzy Snowflake.

T watched for a while and left the room after Suzy Snowflake, saying it was just too damned creepy for him. He called it “scary.” That’s it! That’s exactly what it was! I had the same reaction when I was a kid - Suzy Snowflake was scary! And now she and that damned Suzy Snowflake song are both back in my head!

Aaaaaaaaaargh!!!!! They repeat this special tomorrow; I’ve got to inflict this one on my mother.

My attempt to avoid traffic and shopping areas until 2006 failed today when I realized that
Old Mother Hubbard and I had more than dogs in common. Knowing I had to prepare a holiday meal and knowing I had no main course in the house, I had to take a deep breath and hit the road.

I drove past the big shopping mall that’s about a mile from the house. For years you could fire a cannon in the place and not hit a soul, but this year it’s been packed. Traffic is always tricky because people seem to realize at the last second that they need to be at that mall. Without signaling or even looking, a person will cut across three lanes of traffic to turn into the mall parking lot. One needs to be on the alert.

But what I needed was not at this mall. What I needed was at the giant discount warehouse store. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as crowded as I’d expected and the lines were actually shorter than usual. How odd, I thought, but I’m not about to complain. I still didn’t have what I needed for Sunday’s dinner, but I figured I could pick up last minute items on Christmas Eve.

Things were going well until I had to get out of the parking lot and head home. I needed to turn left, but that traffic flowed from the main drag into more malls - and it was backed-up. I quickly inventoried in my head what I had just purchased and wondered how long it could sit in the car. Two days? Three?

In a panic, I turned right instead of left, then immediately realized my error. For some reason I thought I’d be able to get out on the main street and make a U-turn, forgetting for reasons I still do not understand (perhaps my mind was clouded by the dopamine rush caused by discovering super cheap contact lens solution on my trip) that the street went straight up a steep hill all the way to the next city with no opportunity to turn around anywhere. And traffic was at a standstill. I’d just turned on the radio and heard the bad news. At the top of the hill, where the monster corporation sits, there had been a terrible accident. People were being airlifted out and there was at least one fatality. The road was officially closed.

All I could think is that if my car radio wasn’t always tuned into our big news-talk station, I would never have known I was trapped. I looked to my left. There was a non-stop stream of cars and no way I could make a quick U-turn and head the opposite direction. All of a sudden, the turn lane was empty with no cars in sight. I had room and time to turn around and head towards home. I was so happy, I let the others behind me who were looking for escape routes to pull in front of me.

It took about half an hour to drive a mile, but I spent that time thinking about the accident. They happen everyday, but they’re especially awful around the holidays. But later that night, after I’d fallen asleep on the couch, I heard T open the garage door and drive away. It was 2:00 AM. That’s when I heard the helicopter.

I went out to the front of the house and watched it circle our neighborhood. A circling helicopter in your neighborhood is never a good thing. I figured it was stupid to be out so I went back inside and waited for T to reappear. He finally did and explained that the street at the bottom of our hill was closed and lined with police cars. An officer had flagged him down and asked for identification. It appears that someone that we didn’t know but the cops were familiar with had broken into a department store in the strip mall down the street and nailed another safe. They thought he was hiding in the luxury apartments (the ones we love to walk the dogs through because they’re so beautifully landscaped and home to so many bunnies). The apartment complex and our neighborhood were on lockdown. We had a SWAT situation that lasted for hours.

This is going to be an unusual Christmas, I told myself. It’s bad enough that I’ve felt off-kilter lately; for some weird reason I have a strange metallic taste in my mouth that won’t go away. It started a week ago and I didn’t think anything of it at first. Then we decided to walk the dogs through the shopping center near the river, and T thought it would be a good idea to pick up Chinese take-out from the place we used to go when we first moved here and it was the only Chinese restaurant around. Since that time much has happened, including my aversion to Thai and Chinese food. I don’t know why, but one day I had Thai food for dinner and I got deathly ill. A fluke, I’d thought. The next time I had Thai, I puked it up again. And the next time, too. I started to think that it was time to give up Thai.

But it was also Chinese. This last excursion was the clincher. I can no longer eat this stuff. Odd because I’m one of those people who have no issues with food and will try just about anything. I’m not aware of any allergies and I only remember a couple times that I had strange reactions when I was a kid. Nestle Strawberry Qwik was one of my favorites, and I’d drink it knowing that I’d break out in hives. It was worth it. Then, when my sister was Jewish, we were spending a lot of time at the neighborhood deli picking up taste treats like kishke and Halvah. My other sister and my mother watched, transfixed, as I consumed a bar of Halvah. It was the most wonderful thing I ever remember eating and I was enjoying it so much…until I noticed my mother and sister weren’t blinking. I was slowly swelling up like a whale. First my lips, then my face, then my entire head. My sister thought it was the coolest thing she’d ever seen.

I haven’t had Halvah since, but I’m so tempted to find out if I’m still allergic. Anyway, it was a long night what with the SWAT team in the ‘hood — and you can probably tell I didn’t get much sleep, so here’s to a more normal weekend.

T and I have been discussing the War on Christmas. He says there’s no such war because no one is keeping anyone from saying Merry Christmas. Keep in mind that T is an atheist. During a recent new story about a nativity scene in Ohio - I think - that has had baby Jesus stolen not once, but twice, I blurted:

“Why don’t they just nail him to his manger?”

I immediately froze in horror. T almost fell off the couch laughing. And that sums up just one of the great problems with religion. People who don’t like it don’t like it because of what they perceive as a lack of humor. My theory is that God does have a sense of humor (think duckbill platypus), so a little sacrilege here and there isn’t going to set him off.

With that in mind, T and I have introduced a new holiday to celebrate that should please both secular progressives and the believers. It combines Kwanzaa, Diwali, Ramadan, Hanukkah, and Christmas. And there’s an official carol that can be sung to the perennial favorite, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.”

Have a jolly Kwaliramahanumas
It’s the best time of the year!
Well I don’t know if there’ll be snow
But have a keg of beer

Have a jolly Kwaliramahanumas
And in case you didn’t hear
Oh bygolly have a jolly Kwaliramahanumas
This year!

T has offered another composition: “Oy Vey In a Manger.”

This has been a test of the Emergency Yuletide System. If you have been offended, ask yourself why. I know I was offended when I heard that for a performance in its “winter program,” a Wisconsin elementary school changed “Silent Night” to something more secular: “Cold in the Night.”

Cold in the night, no one in sight,
Winter winds whirl and bite,
How I wish I were happy and warm,
Safe with my family out of the storm.

Let’s review the lyrics to “Silent Night” for a moment.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight
Glories stream from heaven afar
Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ, the Saviour is born
Christ, the Saviour is born

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth

First of all, can I say how much I hate the new lyrics? Is it me, or there something nefarious about them? Something’s out there and it’s going to get you, so hope that you’re someplace safe…and warm! Ugh - creepy. And frankly, the new lyrics are just…bad.

Remember that I was raised in a Jewish neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side. Most of my classmates were Jewish and so were many of my teachers. Where did I learn all the Christmas music that I still know today? Other than from Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters? Why, from public school, of course! I distinctly remember my teachers and classmates singing Christmas carols - with all the original lyrics - and not one teacher prefaced the songs with a message about insensitivity towards the other faiths at the school. All the kids and teachers of different faiths sang the same songs and if I remember correctly, we all seemed to enjoy it.

At home I was being raised by a lapsed Catholic mother. There were no religious symbols in our apartment. No crosses, no pictures of Jesus, no murals of The Last Supper, no statues. My mother hated that stuff. She said it gave her the creeps and it was bad luck to have it in the house.

In our apartment windows during the holiday season we hung big illuminated Santa faces. Yes, really big light up Santa faces. My mother’s Christmas motif was always Santa. We had Santa mugs, too. There may have been a wreath on the door. There was a tree and a color wheel. (Still love those color wheels.)

But what I remember most was walking down the street at night - those cold Chicago winter nights - with the moonlight and the snow, and looking up at the other apartment windows and seeing the menorahs. I remember the quiet, the stillness. The simplicity of a single symbol placed in a window. Every night another candle lit. It was tasteful. It was beautiful. It was Christmas.

But back to those idiots in Wisconsin. Their winter program included Santa Claus, Kwanzaa symbols, menorahs and La Befana. La Befana? Yes, a mythical witch that’s a part of traditional Christmas celebrations in Italy. Funny, my Italian mother never mentioned any witch other than her sister Helen. (And I always liked Helen.)

A statement was issued:

“The law is clear - Christmas is constitutional. When a public school intentionally mocks Christian Christmas songs by secularizing their content, they cross the line from a neutral position, which the Constitution requires, to a hostile position, which the Constitution forbids. Changing ‘Silent Night’ to ‘Cold in the Night’ - come on, let’s stop this madness! Does the school not realize that Christmas is a national holiday?”

Frankly, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Catholic, a Methodist, a Jew, a Buddhist, or a Muslim. Those new lyrics are tasteless and offensive. But call me biased; I never met a Christmas carol I didn’t like. And it appears that the school has restored the original lyrics. Good call.

As for me, I always put a simple wreath on the front door. Inside, I display any cards we receive. Understated. Perhaps, too understated. I’ve noticed Annie’s parents, the Jewish Republicans who live down the hill, have more decorations than we do. In fact, they have a light up snowman in the front yard that looks like an enormous Swarovski crystal Christmas pin. It’s just wonderful.

We walk the dogs at night and I look at the decorated trees inside the houses. I see all the lights, the inflatables, the nativity scenes, the sleighs and reindeer, the luminaria, the candy canes - all of it. All the symbols of the season and I love them all. My wish is that everyone would enjoy them as much as I do.