Every year during the holidays there is always a day when my brothers and sister get together to try and make our mother cry. It has been happening so long that it has almost become an unspoken contest. When it happens, when the tears pour down her face, right before she hugs the perpetrator, a twinkle of accomplishment flickers in the eye of the winner. We all notice it. I would not say we are looking for it, although we are. Nobody ever says anything, no congratulations, no pat on the back, no high five. There is no reward from anyone. We simply smile and go on with our Christmas. Everyone else gives the gifts they were going to give, if there are anymore. The winner has usually staged theirs to be last. They might even give a smaller gift earlier in the exchange to bluff the others. One year James, the architect, made her a doll house. He comes from the Franklin Lloyd Wright school of building, so you can imagine the nature of the model. It was totally mom. From the gabled roof, through the country home structure, down to the avante garde flare of aesthetic functional modernism. I do not know the words like he does. He tried explaining it to us when she unwrapped it. We all thought it was a vain attempt to pull himself up in the ranking. Mom liked it. Her lips trembled. She gave him the obligatory hug, but we all knew it was not enough. Later, when James suggested the drive up to the lake to look at all the lights, we were not any the wiser that the model was just that, a model. He had actually built the damn thing for her. We pulled into the drive with her knowingly wondering in disbelief whose house this was. Yeah, he won that year.
I never win. If pigeons were the carriers of creative ability and artistic skill shitting out their patronage to the world, my brothers and sister would be statues in a park of perpetual summertime. I would be the one locked away in a walled gazebo with locks on the door. There are four of us total. James, Julie, me, and then Sam. In that order. The middle son. That is me. I fit the common psychological archetype to a tee. All of us do. James made his living working within the corporate office world until he could break away with his own creations. He shows stability and intellect with the ability to compromise his dreams and desires until a future point in time when he can fully realize them. He is driven and determined. He builds houses for the rich and famous when he is not designing ornate skyscrapers and art galleries. He is the first and eldest child and knew Dad the best and longest out of all of us.
Sam, the youngest, is a rock star and everything that goes along with that in this day and age. Since the early days of MTV good looks and musical talent are not nearly enough anymore. Video may have killed the radio star, but the internet has taken the video star to new realms. Not only do you need all the others, you also need to be interesting and you need to know how to act. I do not mean manners and such. I mean Hollywood. Music may have been his initial foot in the door; however, after his first feature length film musical score he has been lead actor, director, producer, script writer, art director, and all around rag sheet celebrity. He wins a lot. Not just Oscars and Emmys and Grammys and Razzies. He wins in our secret contest all the time. From songs he composed specifically for and about mom, to full length albums with the Philharmonic Orchestra, to entire movies that he produced, wrote, and directed about her life with all A-list actors and actresses. He won the second of our contests ever held. You might even say Sam was the founder of The Big Cry. Our father won the first.
It was Christmas Eve. Dad never came home. Mom thought he left for good. We were all very young at the time. We did not know what to think. We did not have much money back then. Not like all of them do today. We always made our gifts and put them under a wimpy plastic tree in the living room. That tradition never died no matter how wealthy we would become. Making gifts, that is. Not the fake tree part. It just seems more real to give that way. You give a piece of yourself. That is worth more than just knowing what each other wants. Now, we can all buy what we want. The trick with making a gift is to do it in such a way that it touches another. In our family our mother is the final judge.
The phone rang. It was the police. Our father was dead. He slid on the ice off a steep embankment. Normally, he might have been able to control it. Unfortunately, he was carrying our first real Christmas tree on the roof of the car. He over corrected from the weight of it, causing the station wagon to spin out and then over. The way mom describes that tree you would think there was no way it could fit in that small, cramped, living room much less a better off family’s two story home. On Christmas day she was at the morgue identifying the body. On his person was a set of handcrafted jewelry that he contracted his best friend to fashion out of some simple rocks and crystals they found on their honeymoon.
Sam was only five, then. The rest of us all think he was an accident due to the large age gap between him and the rest of us. He might have been a final effort to rekindle a suffering marriage. We do not know for sure. Mom never talks about it. She only talks about that tree. And those earrings. And the necklace. The next year, Christmas, we all make our gifts avoiding the elephant in the room. All of us except Sam. He was too young to know any better. It was a card he made. I am sure she still has it somewhere in a special box that she can look at every year or when the memories get so overwhelming that she needs a bit of reminder and closure. Sam won big that year. The card had a crayola child’s rendering of a happy stick family in front of a square and triangle house with black spiraling smoke coming out of the chimney. All of us were represented by some trademark in a six year old’s head. James had glasses, Julie had curly yellow hair, I was rather plain, and Sam was smaller than everyone. Mom and Dad were both bigger than all of us and holding hands. Geez, it is even burned into my memory and I have not seen it since the day he gave it to her. There was also a single tree next to the house with a star on top and cherry ornaments. Everyone was smiling. On the inside was a terribly misspelled inscription, “I know Dad is with us, but I still miss him too. Merry Christmas.”
Then there is me and Julie, the two middle children, the first to get hand me downs, the last to get shotgun for the front seat of the car. She won two years in a row. The first year she announced her engagement to Bill, the CEO of a major fashion magazine enterprise. The second year she was pregnant, which is well and good in its own right. Them naming the baby after Dad, to keep his name alive and all that mumbo jumbo, that brought the waterworks. She pulled it on us at dinner Christmas Eve before any of the others could dole out their attempts.
She won other times too. I do not want you to think she is totally one sided and matronly. She started with a small fabric shop making dresses for old ladies on the side. Soon, homecoming and prom became her top seasons. Then, weddings, Bat Mitvahs, costume balls, and any other high society event you could think of. When Sam took a date wearing one of Julie’s dresses to the MTV music awards, that little fabric shop was already well on its way to being a full blown national curiosity. Overnight it turned into a rage. Beverly Hills teenagers with a computer and their rich father’s credit cards paved her way from sales clerk to designer. Needless to say, one of her wins was with a dress. Nobody really knows why it sparked the Big Cry. I do not think Julie even really thought she would win that year. Something in it reminded her of another time. You could see the far away look she gets when Mom settles into a memory. She did that. Then, she stood, moved across the Christmas rug to Julie for a hug, and started bawling halfway there. Julie made her that too. The rug. It has been there with us every December since my sophomore year of highschool. Same deal with the rug also. Nobody knows why she won. Something about it sparked something inside of Mom. That’s how Julie usually wins. It is like her and Mom speak a secret woman language. They know things about each other that the guys will never see. In some ways she fits that middle child thing like me. In other ways not at all. Maybe it has to do with being the only girl. Maybe it has to do with being a girl. I have never understood girls very much. My ex-wife could vouch for that.
That was how I won that year. The news of divorce. I tried to hide it until after the holidays since I know how difficult those can be for my mother. I mean she did lose her husband that day. It was hard to keep coming up with excuses for Marie not being there. She missed Thanksgiving and I was too torn up to rehearse a suitable reason for her to miss Christmas also. She knew how important this was to my family. They were suspect and I was too shaken. I blurted it as casually over the passing of the honeyed ham as Julie announced her wedding date. All eyes stared like I pissed in the cranberries. A part of me thinks mom already knew. We lived close and visited often. Since Easter those visits had been just me, alone. Mom stood, came to my side of the table to console me, and started bawling halfway there. Some win, but I took it. I took it when I lost my track and field scholarship due to a twisted ankle at a 50k Fall Fun Run. I took it the next year too, when I enrolled in a Technical school nearby. I took it when I lost a good job on the management fast track thanks to a corporate takeover. I have always been a math person. There is not much creativity in numbers. Especially not accounting.
I won on good notes also. Not many times, but they are there. My first trophy and when I got the aforementioned scholarship are just two examples. They might be the only two I can think of right now. They might be the only two. Julie and James were in three of my four years of highschool. James was a valedictorian prospect my Freshman year. Sophomore year was the trophy. Julie made the rug right before she graduated early with a full ride to Sarah Lawrence. And then comes along my nickel and dime offer from a halfway decent state school. Sam had three years straight without any of us to deter his highschool achievements. Almost all four. He could have taken it sophomore year also, but that was when I lost the scholarship. He had the first freshman group in the history of the school to win the battle of the bands hands down. The prize was a spot playing at the Winter Formal where he debuted the first song he wrote for mom. His junior year he was lead role in a stage version of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” His program bio read blah blah blah and ‘he loves his mother very much.’ He must have taken part of a cue from me and the other from Julie his senior year. On Christmas Eve he told us that he was graduating early like Julie, except this was his of his own design. He had no intention of going back to that school and had already made arrangements to get his GED. A buddy of his, a bassist, had a brother with a drum set that lived in LA. He would be leaving as soon as they could to take the music world by storm and become the next Steely Dan. She cried for a week. Many years later Sam pulled a similar stunt by coming out of the closet. Nobody except Julie even suspected he was gay. I guess it goes back to that woman language thing. I bet she knew about my inevitable divorce before I did.
This Christmas. Dinner. Sam and Julie sat with their respective others. James and I sat alone. We had all accepted Sam’s homosexuality, but this was the first time he brought a guest over for dinner. He must be really serious about him. I hope he does not try the civil union thing for the win. It just does not have the same ring as marriage. It is way too sterile sounding like getting a judge to pronounce you in a court of law. Neither does it have the cultural backing, no matter how flamboyant the ceremony might be. His name was Robert, not Rob, not Bob, Robert. The two of them sat close to each other. Bill and Julie were separated by their kid. He was just old enough to sit in a regular chair with a booster seat. He had been talking for a while, but this was the first Christmas he could coherently form sentences. Mom was eyeing him hungrily like grandmothers do. Just waiting for any morsel of cuteness she could lap up into the experience stomach and digest into a perfect memory. When he asked her to, “Please pass the margarine,” with the epitaph of, “Grammy,” tacked on to the end, I thought the game would be up. The glaze came. The lip trembles. Then, she passed him the margarine. Who would have taken that one? Bill and Julie? They taught him the manners. We always considered Bill and Julie a team. Maybe the kid just joined up with them.
Announcements. Sam did not try the civil union angle, but it was close. He and Robert were moving in together. They bought a nice house in the hills. We should all come see it some time. There is plenty enough room. “Maybe next Christmas,” he said with a knowing wink that our ritual would never change. Bill and Julie tried to use the kid again. He got into some fancy rich people’s school with notoriety coming out of the grants that they throw at it for tax deductions. James got a new job offer building an eco conscious orphanage. It was touching listening to the sad tales of children losing family members, but not the tear jerker. Maybe it would be more effective if I were watching it on television with pictures of the kids telling their own stories, crayon drawings of mommy and daddy together in heaven, and all that other crap that they use to get you to sponsor a hungry child in a third world country. I do not think James was really trying. This was just news.
All eyes looked at me. I thought about telling them of my severe depression since the divorce, but they already knew that. I thought about the promotion that passed me up in favor of a younger, more energetic employee. I thought about the rope down the street that hung in my closet waiting for my neck later this evening. I thought about loneliness being traded in for finality. I thought about the end. I thought about the possibility of maybe being in a happier place with those poor orphaned kid’s parents. Even if I went to hell it would still be better than where I was. They kept looking at me, waiting for me to speak. To be trite, the silence was deafening.
“Nothing new, really.”
They waited.
“I still have a job.”
This satisfied them. The conversations continued.
Gifts. This was actually a mundane Christmas. It seemed like because I quit trying, they all did also. James and Julie were of the same mind. Julie made a two foot by two foot cement garden stepping stone for every year of mom’s life. They were beautiful and intricate with tile mosaics depicting significant events of that year on each one. Many of the tiles were hand crafted with stamped in images or decoupage photos. Somewhere on each one was the year in a different format and font. Watching mom examine each one starting from her birth to the present made me think of a Flintstone’s scrapbook. The intensity grew as we realized where it was going. She had her first words, the first day of kindergarten, yearbook pictures from each grade, stories she told us about middle school, going to prom with dad. We all knew the wedding was right around the corner. Then, the births of the children signified by some of their greatest wins from Christmas future. Now, Sam’s tile. Just five more to go until dad dies. I wondered if she would have him in that ugly paneled station wagon carting the tree off the side of a cliff faced road bend. It did have the tree. We all expected that. It was very prominent in the center of the tile with a male angel draping the necklace and those earrings over a branch. We should have expected the necklace and those earrings. The angel was watching over a praying family huddled close. She paused a moment, held it close to her heart, here it comes, the glassy eyes stared off into memory, the lip trembled, wait for it . . . then Julie spoke! She sabotaged her own win! She said, “Not yet, momma, keep going.” Mom held it in. In each stone there was always that angel somewhere hidden watching over us. Many times you really had to be looking for it, but he was always there. The rest of them were a no holds barred homage to both the happy and the sad times. My trophies, Sam’s albums, James’ houses, Julie’s dresses, her marriage to Bill, even my marriage to Marie, the birth of their child, graduations, colleges, career paths, it was all on them. Even I wanted to cry. Sam excused himself for a quick prima donna restroom break. James, the sensitive stoic, wiped a dribble and stifled a sniffle. There was no way my brand new dishwasher could top that. I did not even expect it to. Even the new landscaping plans that James laid out were overshadowed by mom’s audible plotting of Julie’s tiles in chronological order along the new paths and in the flower beds. Sam gave her custom made, tuned sets of chimes that played obvious notes from mom’s favorite symphony in soft wind conditions. Harsher winds would clang out the climax. A short dialogue, strategically placing them on James’ blueprints, led back to hearing specific parts when she is near this or that portion of her life according to Julie’s tiles.
Bed time. Everyone had left to their rooms for the night. I was gathering my things to go home. Mother was alone in the den drinking a glass of red wine. She stopped me with only her voice.
“Don’t you think Julie’s tiles are amazing?”
“Of course I do, momma.” How is that for the straw and the camel? That rope looked more promising. I wondered if I should leave a note.
“They made me think about a lot of things. About our lives.”
“Yes, momma, they did.” They did.
“She said she was going to make one for me every year.”
“Yes, momma, I heard that.” I guess I will not make next years mosaic.
“They helped me with one thing I have always known, but never knew how to put in words.”
“What is that, momma?”
“It is about you.”
Me?
“How you have always reminded me of your father. Your practicality. Everyone always gets me these fancy things, but you get me a new dishwasher.”
“You were complaining about your arthritis and the old one broke. I knew you needed it.”
“That is exactly what I am saying. You always give me what I need. Not just during Christmas. All year you are there for me, taking care of me, living next door like you do. I know your life could have taken you other places, but you always made sure that you would be there for me. Close at hand. I just wanted to thank you, son. I do not know what I would ever do without you.”
Then she started crying. It was not grandiose. It was not in front of everyone. It was not a game winner. It was more than all of that. It was special. It was like she knew.
“You know your father was going through a hard time when he passed away. He was almost ready to give it all up. We were having troubles. Of course you know about the financial issues. Our marriage was also a little rocky then as well. Sometimes I wonder about the convenience of the accident. Then, I remember how strong he was and the rest of it fits. The tree, the necklace, the earrings. They are symbols of that strength and practicality that reminds me of you. He was showing me that he was willing to try and that it will all work out.”
I had never heard this version of the story before.
“Let’s keep this between us, okay?”
“Okay.”
It was all I could say. I left. Mother and I never said, “goodbye” to each other. It was understood that we would see each other shortly. There was no necessity in goodbyes.
