Hap Happiest Time

Well. . . yesterday I got the Christmas bug.  I was filled with the spirit.  Still, it was a mixed bag of a day and not simple nor single thing.  

It began early.  I had mistakenly made an appointment to get my mother's car serviced at nine a.m.  I sat with my mother for a minute lamenting the fact and wondering about getting around.  She said something about driving me somewhere, and I scoffed.  

"You are not driving anymore."

And the shit storm began.  She nutted up like the hillbilly she is.  It is not verbal.  It is nonverbal.  Hillbillies are not an articulate lot by and large.  Oh, you may find some vociferous and some may even be loquacious, but by and large it is not a verbal culture.  The Hatfields and McCoys, for instance, didn't try to work out their hateful problems with strongly worded letters.  

And I, of hillbilly heritage and too quick a temper, responded by throwing the keys on the table and saying, "Okey dokey, if you can drive I can go home.  Can you get your walker in and out of the car by yourself?  You need to have the car at the dealership at nine.  I'm going back to living at my house again.  I didn't know you were O.K. now."

It went on, but you get my drift.  It was ugly.  And, of course, I carried the grief and the guilt with me after.  I've never, ever been happy after losing my temper, neither when I win nor when I lose.  Anger is always a losing proposition.  See Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice."  There are two kinds, equally destructive.  

Driving the car to the dealership, I tried letting go.  By the time I got there, and it was a very short drive, I was feeling freer.  I pulled into a long line of cars at the service entrance.  The dealership is huge, but the service line moved along.  There were men and women in uniform shirts swarming everywhere.  Within minutes, I had my "advisor," Robert.  He looked over the job request I had sent in online, then reached in the car.  

"I need to see the mileage," he said.  He hit a button on the steering wheel I'd never noticed that said "display."  What I had taken to be the mileage wasn't.  It was something else.  He clicked the button a few times and said, "20,000 miles.  It's a 2017, but it is practically new."

I was stunned.  I had no idea.  20,000 miles.  Huh.  

Robert told me the car would be ready in an hour or two.  He'd call and text me to let me know.  

Ten minutes in all, perhaps, before I was limping back to my mother's.  It was less than a mile.  The day was beautiful.  My knee and hips and back were barking as I walked across the giant parking lot full of new Toyotas.  I stopped for a minute to look at the price of a new Tundra pickup truck: $78,000.  And that is one of the cheaper brands of pickups.  I'd say every third car on the road is a pickup truck now, mostly Ford F-150s, but a good number of GMC and Chevrolet's, too.  How do they do it?  How do they afford a pickup truck?  

I'll keep driving beaters and bangers, I guess.  

By the time I got back to my mother's house, I'd figured out that I should just forget what happened earlier.  I walked in and asked her if she would like some breakfast.  I made us avocado toast with an egg on top, half a sliced kiwi each, and some sliced tomatoes.  We ate as if the argument had never happened.  

I cleaned up after breakfast and looked at the clock.  What to do?  I sat down with my computer and did some mundane tasks that needed doing.  A text came in from the service department.  It contained a video.  The repairman narrated the video as he made it.  He'd done everything but said the car needed a new battery.  He said he didn't rotate the tires because they were the ones that came with the car.  He took the camera down to confirm that the date on the tires was 2016.  Tires become hard and brittle and he recommended putting on a new set.  

Man. . . this dealership was full tech.  I called Robert back and told him to put in the battery but hold off on the tires.  He said the car would be ready in 45 minutes.  

I showed my mother the video but it didn't register.  I waited a bit, then began my trek back to get the car.

When I got there, Robert was on the phone.  I waited.  

"O.K. then.  Thanks.  And happy holidays.  [pause]. Sure. . . merry Christmas."

"You got called out on the happy holidays thing, eh?"

He grinned.  "You never know," he said.  

"Nope.  You never know."

But I DO know that Christmas has made a comeback.  There is a segment of society who grew up with and love Christmas, and they are sick of "the war on Christmas."  I don't mind.  I like Christmas.  It is part of my inherited culture.  

I drove back to my mother's and got my things.  I was going to the gym, then home to shower and shop.  There wasn't much time.  The day was wearing on.  I'd forgotten, though, that the cleaning crew was coming that day.  I looked at my phone.  It would be close.  They may still be there when I arrived.  But nope.  The kitchen floor was still damp, so they hadn't been gone long.  I took my travel bag to the bedroom, then decided to look at some images I'd downloaded from my Boulevard shoot.  I put on some music.  I got carried away.  I had to "touch" these things.  I liked them.  I liked the blur and the softness in some of them.  It was life as perceived, I thought, soft and blurry and fragmented.  Not all of them.

But some. 

It was three-thirty before I headed out for the Boulevard.  I needed to get cookies for my mother's neighbors.  I needed to get little treats for my mother.  I had found nothing satisfying at the grocers.  I would do it all at Williams and Sonoma.  

Holy moly, though. . . I wasn't the only one.  Cars were parked on all the adjacent streets.  The parking lots were full.  But the holiday spirit gave me a present--I found a spot in a temporary dirt lot that others had ignored right next to the train station.  I just needed to cross the tracks and pass through the park.  Everywhere there were people.  Kids galore were running around and playing in the late afternoon air.  The street was a beehive of activity.  Everyone looked beautiful.  There was light, there was shadow.  And just like that--BOOM--I was buoyed up from the darkness and into the light.  It was nearly Christmas.  This was nice.  

W&S was packed with pretty people buying expensive gifts--$500 espresso makers, $300 mixers, $450 Creuset Dutch ovens.  I, however, was only looking for cookies.  

"Can I help you," asked one of the staff.  

"Do you have shortbread cookies?"

"Um. . . maybe. . ." she said walking me toward a shelf.  "Yes. . . here."

"O.K. Thanks."

I looked at the small box.  $36.  

!!!

I walked back to the boxes of candies.  Toffees of all kinds, similarly priced.  What the hell, I thought, don't be a scrooge.  It's Christmas.  My arms were full of big tins.  

"Can I get you a basket," asked another of the staff.  I hesitated, then fumbled.  

"Sure."

I looked around putting a few more things in the basket before joining the checkout line.  It didn't matter.  I was having fun.  Mother's and daughters, grandparents, entire families, all smiling and laughing, handsomely dressed and wonderfully polite.  This was the village, I thought.  This is where they go, what they do, people from those upper middle class romcom movies.  

And me.  

"It's the hap, happiest time of the year."

I was smiling when the pretty young cashier called me over.  She wasn't much out of high school, I figured, maybe second year of college.  Like everyone else, she was immaculate, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, each strand of dark hair perfect, not one out of place, her skin flawless ivory.  Petite.  Black sweater.  Perfect smile.  Textbook manners.  

I put my things on the counter.  I explained apologetically that these were presents for the neighbors.  

"O.K.  I can put them in separate bags and pack them with tissue paper," she said.  

"Oh, that would be great.  I'm sorry.  I know you are busy.  It's kind of crazy in here."

"Yes, it's gotten pretty busy today, but it's o.k."  

She set about sizing things, getting the right bags, plumping the tissue paper beautifully.  

"I'm leaving it so you can easily look inside to see which present is which," she said.  

For many of my years living here, before the cruise ship people had found their way here by Google Maps, my friends and I would do ALL of our Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, walking down the Boulevard and back again, and then we were done.  So I said to the cashier.  

"It makes it so much simpler.  You don't have to think about things.  You get the presents and are done.  Here I am now with a whole day's head start."

She smiled and agreed that it was much simpler.  

When she had all the gifts in separate beautifully tissued bags, she placed them neatly together in one oversized bag for me to easily carry.  I am a sloppy mess of a person.  I wanted to start all over again and turn out as she had, like the seemingly perfect families shopping up and down the Boulevard, the smiling happy people.  

As she gave me my receipt, she smiled that perfect smile that was somehow authentic without invitation.  

Surely there is a factory somewhere that makes them, little perfectly cut Tiffany diamonds and rubies and amethysts.  

Stepping outside, I felt as good as I have all year.  Ho-ho-ho, I thought without irony.  Ho-ho-ho.  

Before crossing the street, a fellow said hello.  He had three books in his hand.  

"You look like a California surfer," he said.  "Are you from California?"

I laughed and leaned back against a street pole.  

"No."

He offered the books to me.  "These are for you."

I just looked at him, grinning.  

"I'm a monk," he said.  "These books are on meditation."

"I don't need them," I smiled.  "I meditate."  I figured that he'd buy it along with the whole California surfer thing."

"Are you from California," I asked.  

"No.  Ohio."

I laughed again.  "Me, too.  A long time ago."  

He left me with a wave to continue his monkish duties.  I watched him approach a tall middle-aged blonde woman who laughed and waved at him without reproach.  There was truly something in the air.  

I crossed back through the park and over the train tracks and put the big bag of gifts in the back.  What to do.  I still needed to get groceries for dinner.  I drove back to my house and went inside to get my travel kit.  The house felt good.  I had new support beams under the kitchen floor, new siding replacing the old, rotten boards.  I had a new roof.  There was still a lot of work to do.  I had painting and mulching and re-rocking and gardening, but with luck, my hundred year old house was solid again.  I grabbed the keys to my mother's 20,000 mile freshly serviced Corolla, threw my bag in the back, and called my mother on the bluetooth contraption that was so new and thrilling to me.  

"What do you want for dinner."

"Whatever you fix."

Some of the neighbors were there, so I let her go.  

I was still light at the grocery store.  I would make chicken, asparagus, and brown rice.  It wasn't the same crowd as on the Boulevard, of course, but they all seemed imbued with the same spirit.  

Ho-ho-ho. 

When I got back to my mother's house and unloaded the car--shoot!  The gifts for the neighbors were in the back of the Xterra.  

They'd be fine.  I had a lot of shopping left to do tomorrow.  

It is tomorrow.  I'll be a busy little beaver today.  I hope I feel as good as I did yesterday.  I've been depressed for a very long time now, most of the year, through my mother's five falls and subsequent hospitalizations, through her three week stay in rehab, through bringing her home, through house disasters, rotten support beams, months of carpentry, a new roof, watching my bank account shrivel while taking care of my mother's affairs.  It has been a very bad year, and I know that I am experiencing a mania from which I will crash hard.  I am not bipolar, but this has to be crazy reaction to what came before it.  I can already feel the bliss receding.  It's going to be a long, hard fall.  But everything changes after Christmas.  Dry January.  A focus on health.  A change of habitual activities.  That is my intention, at least.  

But more on that when the time comes.  

For now, Merry Christmas Eve to all.