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I've noticed the complexion of Niagara Falls is much healthier these days. A Festival of Lights has really spruced up the streets, the trees--there's a warmth unparalleled in a glance. From our glorious office space on Third and Niagara, we have a spectacular view not only of the lights, but also the occasional fireworks. Nothing like the glitz of holiday cheer to get one through possibly the most miserable chapter of the year. A few strands of lights, a delicate snowfall to complement, and the smell of fresh cut trees can dizzy you up and out of reality so that you can't help but be traumatized in your return trip through the atmosphere.
With so much bitter wind blowing and snow falling, chapped lips and numb digits, it's a miracle on any street that we're thawed long enough to enjoy the wintry, wonderland fuss.
It's a solitary time. Everything frigid and icy seems reminiscent of when, as a youngster, I was relegated to the sofa to read or simply stare out the window. "It's too cold to go outside. Have some cocoa." Cabin fever setting in, and nowhere to go but farther into myself.
The year after my brother died, or perhaps the same year, we drove south from the blustery mess of Buffalo to Atlanta, Ga., where my aunt lived for a brief time, for Christmas. I was vehemently opposed--I wanted to stay home. In the snow. In the cold. In front of the familiar tree, its fatness eclipsing the view out what my mother called our "picture window."
Mostly, at the age of 6, maybe, I was worried about how Santa Claus was going to find me. I must have asked my parents at least two dozen times during the car ride there, "Are you sure he'll find me?"
It wasn't so much childish greed--I was an introvert, lonely in the presence of grief, I only wanted to be found, to be remembered.
It was dark, we were almost there but held up at a railroad crossing, the train stretching for miles in either direction, no end in sight to my impatience. I was worried we'd miss bedtime, and Santa would miss me.
That winter, I got a giant Barbie head. I combed that hair, braided it, made up her face with eye shadow and lipstick, and washed it clean hour after hour, only to begin again. I was happy. Stupidly happy. My cousin and I played beautician ad infinitum that Christmas. I don't recall much else--save one memory.
It was green. It was dry. And when the snow fell--a pristine dusting over the green-carpeted lawns, so light you could still see the fierce blades rising up--they shut down schools, and my grandfather and I, we went for a walk. We talked. I felt like an adult, just walking next to him. He was young then. And so was I. So very green like that grass.
I'd like to think much hasn't changed. For years I clung to the notion that Christmas would--as it had when I was 6--remain crystallized. Untainted.
I wanted to embrace holidays. Like falling in love, they promised to be blissful. I wanted to feel safe in the sweetness and mirth we were supposed to be experiencing. But heartache flared up every Christmas, without fail. For nearly a decade, my house was sparse in holiday decorations, save the tree, and Christmas mornings were marred by the gaping hole in our family. I was forbidden to listen to "Silent Night" in the presence of my mother. She wasn't trying to be difficult; she was trying not to cry. That song, nearly 22 years later, still unites her and I in unspoken devastation over who was lost, and what was lost as a result.
I don't know how old I was when I discovered Santa Claus was really my dad, with a much more modest belly then, darting in and out from under the tree, carefully stacking gifts for the morning.
I couldn't sleep that night. I was staying in my brother's room. Sleeping, I think, even though I was big--too big--in his crib. I had, looking up, a clear view out the window, at the stars. I thought I heard Santa's sleigh bells ringing overhead. I was terrified; I was delighted. I wanted to tell my dad.
I made it halfway down our staircase, tacky wrought-iron rail with gold carpeting, itchy to the touch, the first half obscured by a wall, when I saw him placing my presents under our tree. He didn't see me. I retreated to the top step, contemplating what to do. Looking back, it's easy to mark that moment as quintessential innocence lost. The first jolt into adulthood, that unpleasant place that recedes from expectation, disappoints viciously. In the way that childhood, mostly, cannot. Finally, I called out from the stairs.
"Dad?"
The whole house shook from his giant body stampeding through the dining room through the living room and to the bottom of the stairs.
He was gruff, trying desperately to remain calm, I was about to cease to be his little princess, and I could see he was panicked.
I started to cry. I cried so hard, I was so sad. I cried like the time I became overwhelmed by the secrets of reproduction in the fifth grade, coming out of our bathroom after having watched The Toy, sobbing, feeling dirty for finally understanding what sex was.
"Daddy," I said, choked with the kind of snot-filled tears that stain permanently every child whose life has crumbled inexplicably, "I know there's no Santa Claus."
I was angry with him. The memory of that day is one of unyielding pain. Santa Claus was the best lie ever told, and the most hurtful, too.
That Christmas Day, I blew the whistle to my cousin, a year older, and felt the wrath of my aunt, her angry mother, for having shared my secret. I was being scolded for not perpetuating a lie. I was hostile, and for perhaps the only time in my life, I was resilient to anger. I had too much of my own.
A few Christmases after that debacle, I remember sitting in the family room of my parents' old house, my old house, in front of the tree, breaking down. My mom asked me what was wrong. I tried to articulate my maudlin mood, the devastation that Christmas was over. The anticipation had topped out, and now was sagging like my limp stocking emptied of its contents.
Every year I try to recapture the nostalgia--and I can, briefly, anyway. Last week, shopping with Mom at Target, I weakened at the sight of candy-filled tins displaying covers of children's Golden Books. Driven nearly to tears by commercial tactics trying to break me. "Mom, do they have the Poky Puppy? Mom, help me find it!"
I can't look the Salvation Army bell-ringers in the eye. Parents shopping with their kids for toys, telling them they can't get this or that, deprivation due to financial constraints, makes me cry. The last hour of Christmas Eve keeps me up with anxiety. Taking down the plastic candles from the windows after growing accustomed to the soothing glow is always a struggle.
I have abandoned tradition, stopped helping decorate the family tree. The ornaments are too sentimental, wreak too much havoc on my emotions. Pictures of my brother glued to felt bells, an angel doll purchased at the old Clayton's toy store during the two years I was an "only" child. God-awful silver-plated shapes of trees and angels and Santas and candy canes, engraved with names and dates, signifying fierce attachments, that will rust before they are cast into the trash. The taste of pineapple and almond strudel--the one thing my mother will always make for my father on Christmas, as it was his mother's tradition--hard going down as we try to pass quietly through the early hours of the loneliest day of the year.
I was raised religious, but I can't find solace in the Christian significance of the holiday. Shopping makes me nauseous. Family get-togethers aren't the same since my grandmother went into a nursing home, and making idle conversation with my grandfather, devoid of purpose since he lost his love, seems like alms for the poor.
There's always something stopping up the flow of merriment. But as is the case every Christmas, I try to find the beauty.
I try to roll with the temporality of so many smiles, of the rush to soak up the manufactured portions of the holiday, and of the giddiness that ensues--both in children and adults. I try to endure the way my heart swells and sinks into its habitual melancholy, seeing the remnants of a light snowfall clinging to barren trees, half-naked on a good night, when the moon's out. I try to look more folks in the eye, offer reassurance with evidence of my ache.
The truth is, the holidays remind us of just how much we suffer, all of us, in our relative pain. Of how happy we could be if every day were Christmas, and how hideously real each day is in its absence.