Dear Hope Nation,
When I have little kids in my life, I like Christmas more than the average man, but significantly less than the average woman of my experience. I’ve never grumbled about the expense and bother of a real tree, complained about choosing and purchasing gifts for kids. In fact, when my own kids were young, I vicariousized a childhood, every year trying to build up excitement among the girls for a gift I never got but always wanted: a rock tumbler that would turn stones found on our walks into shiny objects worthy of oohs and aahs. If Becca, Meri or Libby had exhibited even one scintilla of enthusiasm, I would have purchased them a rock polishing contraption fit for a gemologist. None did, so now I patiently wait for grandchildren, hoping to share my unfulfilled passion with them.
Remembering my own childhood, my third-grade Christmas sticks out. Having turned eight the month before Christmas, I was now old enough to beg and wheedle and moan for a particular gift. Before this, while I may have made a half-hearted plea for a toy that had caught my eye, I lacked the socialization and media immersion needed to transform a child from a happy recipient into a voracious claimant. I now knew my rights, including the right to drive people crazy with my Christmas demands.
I’d like to say this Gimme List grew out of a close examination of the toys I owned and liked and a reasoned exploration of what gifts might increase this enjoyment. It didn’t. My Gimme List was driven solely by my desire to be one of the guys and included just one item, the toy demanded by every other boy in my third-grade class: a Fat Cat. With a name like Fat Cat, you might imagine a purring stuffed animal that could be taken to bed—if you’ve never met a third-grade boy.
The Fat Cat was a plastic truck with oversized tires and an insatiable need for “D” batteries. Fully charged, the Fat Cat, at least in the commercials, seemed capable of performing most construction transportation with ease. Groups of amazed little boys watched as the truck easily passed over a fallen branch, climbed a sand hill of monstrous angles and carried tools from one small carpenter to another. This truck was not just COOL, it was transformative. With it, a boy would become a contractor, a builder, practically a god of construction.
Here, I must digress and confess I was not then (and am not now) a carpenter, an architect, a builder of any kind. Oh, I can swing a hammer and it will occasionally hit a nail. I can turn wood into dust with a saw, then break it off at the cut when I get tired of cutting. I can even rewire a lamp, sort of, although I’ll be careful to take it outside before plugging it in—just in case. I’ve never longed for tools, never cursed myself for not wanting to be a carpenter, never gazed lustfully at a truck, any more than my friend, Gavin, who designed and built the Tiny White Box, judges himself poorly for never having written a villanelle.
Even in third grade, I was no ironworker wannabe or jackhammer-dreaming kid. I wanted a Fat Cat because everybody wanted a fat cat. Forget that I’d had Tonka trucks since I was five, and never found them fun. Ignore my quick boredom with previous electronic toys—they had no soul, were not imagination-generators and always ran out of a charge within 10 minutes. The Fat Cat would be different, and might even make me different.
I begged my parents, wrote Santa a pleading letter and tried to enlist my kid sister, six at the time, to encourage my parents to scratch my Fat Cat itch. By Christmas morning, I had worked myself into a lather, my emotions equal parts joyous excitement and preemptive disappointment, waiting anxiously to spew out of me. When we finally opened our presents and, indeed, a Fat Cat was there, I shot off the rocket of excitement and danced giddily around for a minute or so. Before my father had even begun feeding batteries into the belly of the beast, though, I saw the Fat Cat for what it was—a hunk of plastic that would move itself across the floor a few times before I grew tired of it and left it under my bed for weeks at a time. This reckoning could have transformed me into a wiser boy, one who recognized that joy doesn’t come in brightly-colored boxes with pictures of laughing children on them. It could have, but it didn’t. I had one thought and one thought only:
Why didn’t I ask for a goddamned electric rock tumbler?
I still ask myself that as I wait for grandchildren that have not been conceived of, much less conceived.
Merry Christmas to you. After all,
You matter. I matter. We matter.
Keith
———-OR———-
Dear Hope Nation,
I was a different person 24 Christmases ago. I was director of an alternative school in Henniker. I was a married homeowner. Libby, my youngest daughter, was only five weeks old, and her mother was recovering from burned feet, one of medical history’s strangest complications from an emergency hysterectomy. Because of those injuries, we had a nanny, known as “Jello Eyeseed” to the older girls. She is now dead, and that makes me sad. (I know these nuggets invite way more, but that’s not a trail I’m traveling today.) Mary (now Meri), my middle daughter was two-and-a-half, a nearly perfect age for her. Becca, my oldest, was five years old and starting to ask questions about the universe. At about this time, Becca, who had always wanted to be a firefighter, recognized firefighters have to risk their lives running into burning buildings and amended her career goal, “I want to be a firefighter teacher,” preparing those women and men from the safety of a classroom.
I haven’t written a ton of poetry of which I’m proud, which is sad given how much poetry I’ve written. Still, I wrote the following for Becca, trying to explain how I viewed Jesus, they guy whose birth we celebrate this season.
Christmas, 1996
(for Becca)
The kid, they say, was born in a manger.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The boy, they say, astonished the scholars.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The man, they say, had a huge midlife crisis
and decided that he was God’s son.
The prophet, they say, could walk upon water.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The messiah, they say, could bring back the dead.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The man, they say, offers a model
of humility, kindness and love.
The Lord, they say, could multiply fishes.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
His blood, they say, has washed away sin.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The man, they say, was a poor carpenter
who laid down his life for a cause.
The annointed, they say, can offer salvation.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
The Son, they say, is living today.
Frankly, I have my doubts.
Jesus, they say, gave good for ill.
Frankly, this I believe.
Jesus, they say, said heaven’s within us.
Frankly, this I believe.
Jesus, I say, resonates meaning,
and he never intended to lie.
No one else who’s read it has liked it particularly—in fact many people actively dislike it. So be it. No one else has recognized the opening line as lifted whole from Joseph Heller’s Something Happened. So be it. No one else has pulled it out every Christmas since 1996. So be it.
No one else was me 24 years ago.
And no one else is you today.
You matter. I matter. We matter.
Keith