Ben Camino's Christmas Thing (First Published 2019)

Ben Camino's Christmas Thing
 

 

Missy got a truck. 

I think she's happy for a minute. 

She was blue earlier. "Don't know why," she said. 
I think I know but I'm not saying. 

I'm blue most of the time. 

I think I know why, but I'm not saying. 

I did a thing. I dreamed it up and Gordon said yes, 

and now it's real.

A truck for Missy.

That made me very happy. 

For a second. Maybe less. 

Now I'm blue. 

But the gloom is less gloomy when you look at your sister, and she says, 

"I got a truck!"

Lots of people have trucks, I know.

Some of them, I assume are blue anyway(s). 

But still. A truck.

People are cleaning up in the kitchen. 

Gordon, Margaret, Missy, but not Noel.

I got out of the cleaning up because of my leg, although

to tell you the truth, 

three or the four of us have some leg issue 

this Christmas. 

The girls, Claire and Katy, are in the back room. 

I decided not to drink. I decided to feel everything.

There's so much pain and shame and sorrow

 and yet  . . . and yet.

"Wow, I got a truck," Missy keeps saying. 

Gordon is singing along with "O Holy Night" on the "radio"--

or whatever this online thing is called coming through his television (if that's what things with screens are still called). 

I'm sitting in Margaret's grandfather's chair. 

There's a computer screen and a big big screen 
both showing the same online fireplace scene 
with Christmas music oozing forth from it. 

So many screens between me and whatever oozed its way out of Bethlehem and Mary oh so many so deep cold winternights ago. 

The Deacon who preached Sunday said that the gospel turns the fairy tale around. 

The frog kissed the princess and the princess became a frog. 

Condescending.

He didn't say that. I said that. 

It's one of my favorite words. 

Mostly because people don't understand that it describes something beautiful, and I, linguistic sinner that I am, like to understand the meanings of things. And words. 

At least the Deacon cited his source -- Sesame Street.

His allegorical interpretation: God kisses us (through Mary, I'm still working on that image) and He becomes one of us. 

My leg hurts and doesn't seem to be getting better, 

at least not as quickly as I like. 

Also, there are things I don't understand (if anyone wondered). 

I had tofu kabobs for dinner and all the rest. For a minute, 

I wanted meat. Lots of meat. 

All the meat. The very best meat.

I want things I don't have. Pout. 

"I'm gonna' go look at my title," says Missy. 

"Because I have a truck." 

When she opened the card with the registration and stuff,  she cried and cried. 

We surrounded her with a hug and kinda squeezed together, 

and she cried and cried and cried some more. 

I want those kind of tears. I want everything I can't have. 

Or just everything, I guess. 

Now, Gordon is singing something silly to the tune of "In the Bleak Midwinter." 

Gordon is doing this while holding his old little dog who is probably dying. [dear reader, the dog died; the previous year my little dog died, in case you are keeping track]

To the tune by Gustav Holst: 

"On the feast of angels/the most horrible dog in the world." 

Then he slips into his phony German language for a line or two. 

I have no idea about my brother sometimes. 

I also got a gift for Christmas. A nose hair trimmer. 

From Missy.

Fair enough. I gave her a truck (Gordon and I that is). She gave me a nose hair trimmer.

I'm trying to laugh not cry about that when Gordon goes into his Michael Caine impression and says . . . 

"Well Joe, your sister and I have been meaning to address this issue with you for some time. 

Your nose grooming has been . . . minimal to say the least. 

We reckoned the time for a nose-hair intervention had come. 

We don't want you walking about London with a nose like Fagin's."

I said something like: 

I hereby vow that from henceforth and forever, 

my nose grooming will conform to her majesty's highest standards.

Oxford accent. 

Margaret is talking to her mother, speaker phone mode. We all listen in for a bit. 

Then, "In the Bleak Midwinter" comes on the fireplace mix again, and Gordon perks up. "Wow, that is gorgeous. What is that?" And I excitedly tell him all about Christina Rossetti and recite the poem/song from memory. And we share that. 

You need useless information? I'm full of it. Full. of. it. 

I makes me happy, though, to tell him about one of my favorite poets/dead people.

It feels good for a second or two to be happy, because, right now, in truth, I'm mostly sick of myself.

On the other hand, my nose will from henceforth be seriously well groomed. 

I talked to the kids on the phone. Lauren sounded mature as she should, as she does. Jenny, in the background mostly, chattering like a hyper high-pitched chipmunk. "Are you . . .  drunk?" I asked. "No, no . . . daaad." 

Nathan sounded solid, normal-ish. He used a billion travel points or something to get them a room at The Pierre (see Joe vs. the Volcano). He deserves it. 

It's 70 freaking degrees here. Allergies are operative. We sat outside for awhile. Not very long. Gordon spent much of the day cooking ribs, sausage, chicken, Apparently it was all perfect, the best he'd ever done, fell right off the bone, not dry like that Chicago stuff, etc. They all say that everytime he cooks. I have no reason to doubt it since I don't eat meat.

Katy and I have coffee with dinner. Why? Because her friend left some Peppermint Schnapps last night. I would buy Peppermint Mochas at Starbucks with all my points and rewards and stars if they would just make them like this. 

Katy made Missy and all of us very happy when she went on and on about how much she looooooooved the blanket Missy had made for her. And I really believe her. Then she went to her room and brought out a doll Missy had made her when she was five. It was based on an obscure cartoon character (a Platypus doll) from an already obscure cartoon show (that Katy loved). She raved and raved about that doll. Remembering the wonderful thing Missy had done for her once, even as she thanked her for today. I guess before Missy opened that card that said, "you have a truck," that was the nicest part of her Christmas. 

I may have slept eight hours last night. Felt like twenty. But I guess it was more like eight, since I didn't get to sleep until after 3 A.M.  And I got up before noon. 

We had been at midnight mass. It was nice, but I was exhausted. At one point, we turned to each other and I asked, "Did I really just get here yesterday?" We laughed and laughed hard for a long time, almost certainly annoying the folks around us. But despite our levity, they were still kind enough to hold our hands when we sang "Our Father." 

Fireworks are going off all over Apache Shores (Missy's neighborhood). That used to drive Rorie (my Westie) crazy anxious. Missy's dogs are more Texan-ized I guess, so they don't seem to mind it as much. When we were kids in Texas we always got Black Cat firecrackers in our Christmas stockings. I always wondered if my parents argued about that before deciding? Or if Dad just stuffed our stockings with Black Cats after Mom was asleep. 

We prayed for all family and animals before dinner. They always ask me to pray. Heck, when I was 22 or so, everybody asked me to do the sermon at my dad's funeral. And then, not long after, at my uncle's funeral. Uncle Bubba's father, Harold (really, John Harold, just like Uncle Bubba). 

The toasts are where and when the others tend to express prayer-like sentiments.We mention our parents. Noel. Margaret's father. 

Margaret's father died on Christmas Eve. He always used to take her to all the pro sports games in Houston when she was a girl. He traveled a lot, but when he was home he liked to go the games (he got a lot of free tickets). Her mother never wanted to go. She remembers that as being a very special thing to share with her father. She told me that she was glad that Jenny and I had that together. Me too.

"Pancho!" "Big Boy!" "Come on! Come get your dinner!" "Pancho!" "Big Boy!"

John Harold Ricke, Uncle Bubba, was ringing an old ship's bell or school bell or something and calling his donkey and his last big horn sheep.He used to have a lot more sheep, but the coyotes got them a few years ago. 

John Harold is a vet, some would say a red-neck (but a rather suave one), a Trump supporter, a Fox News junkie, an NRA hard-liner, a hunter. 

In short, he's a big softie. 

He's killed many deer and other animals I guess (based on the number of heads mounted on the wall of his den). But these days when he goes out with a gun during deer season, he generally settles for just taking pictures and bragging about how big the deer that he didn't shoot was. He's a super-tall, lanky Ricke dude. Still talks about his father as "daddy." Annoys the hell out of his sweet wife Carol. And, as I suggested, loves Pancho and Big Boy. A lot. As he should.

There has been a donkey on this land, where we played, swam, hunted, and roamed as children, for as long as I can remember. I have no idea how old Pancho is, but I know that he and Uncle Bubba go back a long way. And I have no doubt that he is Uncle Bubba's best friend. 

I think John has got some cronies down in town, but he lives up here -- in the hills, in the country. Where my father and his father loved to hang out. With donkeys and stuff. I'm pretty sure he genuinely loves his time with Pancho and Big Boy. He really mourned when the other sheep were massacred. He loves feeding them, taking care of them, complaining about them, and probably unloading his mind and heart to them. And when he calls them, with the bell and everything, it's a thing of beauty. 

Of course, me being . . . me, I was deeply moved by this gigantic Ricke man, closer to my father than he ever was to me, booming out his call of invitation to the donkey and the sheep as the darkness and gloom came rushing on, this Christmas Eve late afternoon.

I may have cried, or, perhaps, as I often do, I wished I could have.

Behold, it is dusk, on Christmas Eve, on the land that Uncle Harold owned before I preached at his funeral. On the land that my father loved to play and work on long before I preached at his funeral.

A bell is ringing through the hill country gloom.  "Come be with us donkey. Come be with us sheep. We are going to feast in honor of Baby Jesus, the God who came to be one of us, taking on animal skin and subjecting Himself to animal needs. We care for you in His honor."

Well, OK, Uncle Bubba really didn't say all that. He probably didn't think it either. But maybe it's better somehow to use the traditional liturgy he has developed over many Christmases and many vespers of ordinary time:

"Pancho!" 

"Big Boy!"

"Come on now!" 

"Come get your dinner!"

I guess Missy is to me like John Harold is to Pancho. And, of course, since I am an ass, this should make be obvious. 

She feeds me. Takes care of me. Calls me. 

She buys me a travel-size Cholula, not to mention a 

nose hair trimmer. She makes me a blanket, and, when I said, a shawl would be nice, she made me a shawl. 

I am glad to say that, though I'm so often so selfish, I am, at least, a highly-evolved enough animal that good thoughts enter my mind from somewhere: 

"It would be a good thing, the right thing, a fitting thing, to do something in return for this person." Not to pay her back; that would be impossible. But to say thank you for your tender care of this ass, this featherless biped with a soul.

How fun to give her something she would never have imagined in appreciation (not return) for her goodness. To gesture towards being the kind of person you should be. 

Whatever, I had the thought. Maybe I dreamed it up. Gordon joined in. And Missy cried.

So, anyway(s), sometimes, yes sometimes, maybe we get something right. And we do Christmas like wise men.

Missy got a truck. Pancho and Big Boy got fed. Gordon learned to love "In the Bleak Midwinter," and I got to see that on his face and in his heart. On the other hand, I preached a couple of funerals before my time. Noel is gone. Margaret's father died on Christmas Eve. My little dog died last Christmas. Gordon's little dog was not long for this vale of tears. And the gloom gathers as it is wont to do. And still Ben Camino insists on using words like wont. 

And we are going to feast in honor of Baby Jesus, the God who came to be one of us, taking on animal skin and subjecting Himself to animal needs. In whose honor I eat tofu.

this is what I wrote on Christmas Day, 2018.

Here is a blurry picture of Missy opening the "truck card."