Wise Men and Other Stories (2 page)

After witnessing her simple and efficient methods for years, I was amazed to learn how much effort some people put into wrapping Christmas presents.

I don’t fault people who go to the time and trouble to wrap a gift nicely. Many people even have their gifts wrapped right at the department store—which is the way I would do it if money were no object. You could accuse them of being lazy or of wasting money, but the way I see it, they’re supporting all those gift wrappers working in all those gift-wrapping departments for the holiday season. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But we do need to keep things in perspective. I think we all agree that when it comes to gifts, it is the thought that counts. And the gift wrap—being once removed from the gift, and twice removed from the thought—should actually matter hardly at all.

So that’s why I’m out there getting rid of the paper as soon as it comes off the gift. I figure the fewer distractions there are, the more likely we are to get down to the important things: the good feelings between the person receiving the gift and the person giving it.

If I could, I’d even get rid of the gifts. But I’ve been told I will be barred from all future family functions if I start hauling away presents as soon as they’ve been opened.

One of my friends is always telling me, “I’ll hold a strong thought for you.” That’s what I want under my tree. In a perfect world, we’d remove the wrapping paper and find strong thoughts from all our friends and relatives. And when I stop and think about it, that’s exactly what I get.

But still, every once in a while, the thought gets lost in the Christmas shuffle. That’s why I think it would be nice if we could do away with the gift-wrap and the presents. Then we could all sit around the tree on Christmas morning and share our thoughts of each other.

But most of us can’t quite bring ourselves to do that. The kids probably wouldn’t understand that kind of Christmas as well as they understand a Barbie Christmas or a Wii Christmas. And there’s something to be said for the joy of giving.

It’s the pros and cons of issues like this that make me think life is not so much wonderful as it is ambiguous. Fortunately, wonder and ambiguity are not mutually exclusive.

I myself would probably not be very good at sitting around a tree telling people how I feel about them. I suspect many people are the same way. That’s why we enjoy giving presents. If we can’t tell them how we feel, we can at least try to show them with a little gift at Christmas.

And if you’ve really neglected someone throughout the year, you can get them a
big
gift at Christmas. Retailers love guilt.

We are funny creatures. We usually know what’s important, but those things seem so weighty and imposing that we are easily distracted. We go bowling when we know in our hearts and souls that we should be spending time with our children. Or we
don’t
go bowling when we know in our hearts and souls that we need time to relax and be with friends. I think it was Aristophanes who first said that many of life’s mysteries would be solved if there were only some magic formula to accurately determine whether it is the right time or the wrong time in one’s life to go bowling.

And, of course, we spend lots of money on big Christmas presents when all most people want is to know that they are loved.

Anyway, I said it was no accident that I ended up being the one in my family to gather up the wrapping paper at Christmas. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life trying to find the right balance between the package and the contents—between the things we regard as distractions and the things we consider to hold meaning.

Along the way, I’ve known a number of people who have spent the better part of their lives focusing on their own personal gift-wrap instead. Appearance is everything. They wrap themselves up without realizing that many people would be more interested in what’s inside.

And I’ve known yet another group of people who have spent their lives stripping the distractions away. These people are best described as “focused.” They figure out what they want to do with their lives and they focus on that, refusing to be sidetracked. They have found their gifts, but they sometimes forget to share them.

As with most things, the answer probably lies in moderation. It’s true that too many distractions can prevent us from realizing who and what we are—from being aware. But in keeping with life’s ambiguity, it’s those same distractions that give life its rich texture. We don’t need to become hermits, but in everything we do, we need to try to find what’s important.

I have an inkling of what’s important at Christmas. And since I can’t strip away the gifts, the least I can do is get the wrapping paper out of the way.

Here’s wishing you an Uncluttered Christmas and a Very Ambiguous New Year.

I’m going to a costume party this weekend, and I don’t know what to wear. I’m not very creative, so I’m thinking of going as my evil twin. Or I might go as an Olympic water polo player. Something about me in a Speedo and a bathing cap strikes me as funny. It could also be pretty scary.

If I really wanted to scare people, I’d go as a midlife crisis. The dictionary defines it as “a period of emotional turmoil characterized by a strong desire for change.” A professor I once had defined it as the death of your father.

I haven’t reached a midlife crisis yet, but I hear footsteps. And when I turn around to see what’s coming, I see myself, way back there—so far back that I may never catch up. So far back, I’m almost gone.

In between are lots of people that sort of look like me. There’s me the father and me the son. Me the husband, brother, son-in-law, and my old friend, me the soccer coach. Me the student, the writer, the foreman, the public relations guy…you get the idea. Sometimes I look back and wonder what happened to that other guy. Is there anything left of him or is he gone forever? It’s frightening.

I think this happens to a lot of people. We go through life taking on various roles, and if we’re not careful, we lose track of ourselves. Before you know it, people are saying, “What happened to him? He used to be so much fun.” Meanwhile, you wander around, fulfilling your duties, but with a vague sense of disillusionment. Then your father dies, and next thing you know, you’re headed for the beach in a convertible with a woman half your age while your wife and kids sit around waiting for the child support checks.

I don’t want that to happen to me—except maybe for the convertible part. So I think I know what I’m going to do for this costume party. I’m going to go as myself. I just hope somebody recognizes me.

Last weekend, I put up the Christmas lights at our house. My greatest fear is of falling off the ladder while I’m decorating. I know I have to go sometime, but I want it to be in a blaze of glory: foiling a band of terrorists by taking a bullet for Santa at the mall... stopping a herd of stampeding reindeer in order to save a sleigh full of Christmas toys for the orphanage... something dramatic. What I don’t want is to be found dangling from the downspout with a noose of burned-out Christmas lights around my neck.

I can hear the kid next door now:

“Mom! Some big, fat Santa in a dirty sweat suit just hung himself.”

Fortunately, his mother will be there to comfort him: “That’s not Santa, stupid. That’s Mr. O’Mary. Now get back in here and practice your Nintendo.”

This year, I have a new problem: something has been eating the lights I put around the bushes. My daughter thinks it’s a rabid raccoon. The neighbor kid thinks it’s an alien that eats electricity. I think it’s the new guy who lives in the condo down the street. He used to work as a geek in the carnival. When the carnival came to our town last summer, he said, “This is it. I’m home!” Ever since then, decorative lights have been disappearing.

Tonight, I’m going to stand guard, and it occurs to me that this may be how I go out: defending the Christmas decorations from a light bulb-eating carnival freak. But more likely, you’ll be able hear the neighbor kid yelling, “Mom, some big, fat Santa in camouflage pants is being eaten by a rabid raccoon!”

And his mom will say, “That’s not Santa. That’s Mr. O’Mary—and my, doesn’t his house look festive!”

My best friend, John, will probably be mad at me for telling this story. But it’s such a great Thanksgiving story, I can’t resist. Forgive me, John.

This happened many years ago, during John’s first year of college. He had gone East from Idaho in order to attend a prestigious university. And now that his first school vacation—the Thanksgiving holiday—was at hand, he had decided to remain out East rather than travel back to Idaho to be with his family. He had some friends at school, but most of them had gone home for the holidays.

So come Thanksgiving Day, John woke up in a deserted dormitory building. That in itself would be enough to depress many people. Waking up alone on Thanksgiving Day. But he got up, got dressed, and was doing fine. Until he called home to talk to his family members, all of whom were congregated at his parents’ home for a big turkey feast.

One by one, John talked to everybody at his parents’ house.

“They were all having a great time,” said John. “I could imagine them sitting in the house warmed by the wood stove... the Salmon River and the Sawtooth Mountains off in the distance... the perfect Thanksgiving Day setting. And there I was, talking on a pay phone in an empty dormitory 2,000 miles away.”

I envisioned John talking to his mother who, of course, missed him terribly and wished he had come home for Thanksgiving. John’s older brother, often the aloof intellectual, had come home for Thanksgiving, and he, too, said that he would miss John at the dinner table. Then John talked to a steady procession of aunts, uncles, and family friends. All were having a good time—and all told John he should have come home.

All the while, John could hear the sounds of the holidays in the background. The nonstop hubbub of multiple conversations taking place simultaneously. The excited rise in pitch whenever another guest or relative arrived. The collective exclamation when the turkey was removed from the oven.

Finally, John talked to his father who had just returned from the traditional Thanksgiving Day pheasant hunt. His father probably said something to him like, “Missed you on the shoot, boy.”

John got through the phone conversation, got himself dressed in jacket and tie, and bravely went out for his turkey dinner at a nice restaurant near the university. But between the phone call and sitting alone at the restaurant, he found himself getting very depressed.

Fortunately, just a couple of tables away, there was an elderly couple. They were also having dinner alone. They saw John sitting by himself and invited him to join them for Thanksgiving dinner.

Unfortunately, John declined.

“That was so stupid,” he says now. “There I was, all alone at Thanksgiving, missing my parents, and there was this nice couple—probably with a kid in college somewhere who couldn’t be with them for the holidays—and they were nice enough to invite me to have dinner with them. And I was too stupid to accept.”

After that, John was so self
-
conscious that he rushed through his turkey dinner. He even skipped dessert so he could get out of the restaurant as quickly as possible. Instead, he stopped on the way back to his dormitory and bought a frozen pumpkin pie and a quart of Cool Whip.

When he got back to his room, he scarfed down all of the pie and whipped cream in less than ten minutes. When he was finished, he was so bloated, tired, and emotionally exhausted that he practically passed out in his bed—empty pie pan at his side—and slept through the rest of Thanksgiving Day.

“It was the worst Thanksgiving I ever had,” he says. But don’t feel too sorry for John. He gets lots of sympathy from anybody who will listen to his grim holiday tale. My wife and I, for example, were so moved by this tale of pathos, that we made a special Thanksgiving dinner for him when he visited last year—and it was only October. He won’t fess up, but I’m sure he’s parlayed his story into similar sympathy meals many times over.

But the real bright spot of this story is, of course, the nice elderly couple. They tried to do the right thing. And even though it didn’t work out that time, they are to be lauded.

It takes courage to reach across the gulf that separates one human being from another. We revel in our individuality, but there are times—and Thanksgiving is one such time—when we should be with other people to celebrate the things we have in common: occasional loneliness, yes; but also compassion, humor, an appreciation of beauty, and a once
-
a-
year hankering for hot turkey and cold cranberry sauce.

So the next time somebody asks you to join them for dinner, think seriously about accepting. And if you are doing the asking—and if you happen to be asking a self
-
conscious young college student from Idaho—please persist.

What was the best meal you ever had? The topic comes up every year at Thanksgiving at our place. After we’ve consumed another meal seemingly beyond compare, I invite friends and relatives to draw comparisons.