A Kiss Under the Mistletoe Read online

  Since I could never get enough of how happy it made my family, over time the dress and I had settled into an easy truce. I came to accept the fact that it could not help me to recapture the feelings I had had when I wore the anointed original. And it seemed to know that, although it was not The Dress, my family’s reactions would make it a most treasured piece.

  After nineteen years of wear, I put the dress on one day and discovered I could no longer easily button it. Could I loosen the belt, perhaps? No, I had run out of room for more belt holes. Not wanting to give in to the truth, I buttoned the dress and fastened the belt anyway, breaking a fingernail to the quick as I did so. The dress countered my determination with sharp and intense rib pain that took away my ability to breathe. We stood at loggerheads in the mirror for a few seconds before I gave in and feverishly began to free myself from its grip. My disappearing waistline and the dress had finally conspired to betray me. With mixed emotions, I knew we would have to part ways.

  As loved ones became new angels and babies were born, so too my Christmases came and went. They were always special and filled with the joy of being with family and friends. Christmas Day would always find my famous Creole gumbo bubbling on the stove and my homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven.

  Christmas Day 2010 Anthony presented me with a large golden box wrapped with a golden bow. Weeks earlier we’d decided that because we felt so blessed, we would forgo gift buying that year. I was both surprised and somewhat annoyed that he had broken the pact and, with pursed lips, I launched into a protest, “But I thought we weren’t going to…” Smiling that same smile he’d worn on my parents’ front porch so many years ago, Anthony waved off my objections and said, “Just open it!” I peeled off wrapping paper printed with the words “Zell’s Vintage” and opened the box.

  Inside was a simple frock.

  A multicolored, multiflowered shirtwaist dress with a wide belt and a full skirt.

  With moist eyes and a choke in his voice, Anthony whispered, “No matter how many years pass, you will always be the girl I followed to school.” Anthony and Sheryl and Sheryl and Anthony were still here, and The Dress was once again back for Christmas.

  TWO TREES

  CHELS KNORR

  My husband, Tyler, and I have two different ideas about the nostalgia of Christmas trees. He remembers Douglas fir. I remember polyvinyl chloride. His were carefully chosen. Mine was 90 percent off at Target’s after-Christmas sale. He remembers the aroma of pine. I remember the smell of dust from the attic. This means that my first real Christmas tree–shopping experience was in the Home Depot Garden Center when I was twenty-five and a newlywed, and still trying to figure out how I, we, wanted to do this “Christmas thing” as a new family.

  I have listened to my husband tell many stories about Christmas as he tries to show me why having a real Christmas tree is so important. He tells me about being bundled up in the bed of the pickup truck with his sister. He tells me about visiting five or six lots to find the perfect tree. He tells me about complimentary candy canes, and his father, spinning the trees around like ballerinas for his mother to examine. He tells me about returning to the first lot trying to find the almost-perfect tree they had passed on a few hours before, when their standards were higher.

  From my understanding, shopping for a real Christmas tree is a lot like shopping for IKEA furniture—buying it is only half the process.

  Tyler and I carry our first Christmas tree inside and put it into the cleanest room in our house, despite the mess of dirt and sap and needles. He tells me about his father holding the tree, and the impatient conversations between his parents trying to get the tree to stand up straight, about his dad crawling to tighten the eyebolt screws against the trunk, only to have the tree move and having to start the whole process all over again. He tells me about carols that turned to cussing after untangling, stringing and restringing the lights. These quibbles don’t taint Tyler’s memories of Christmas, though. They don’t lessen his buoyant nostalgia.

  At my house we left the lights wrapped around the tree from year to year just to avoid this process. Having an artificial tree all my life was a remedy for more than just my dad’s allergies. It was a remedy for conflict. There was no cold. No indecision. No mess. And with the lights already wrapped, no fighting. Conflict, I believe, would have strained my family’s Christmas memories, so we created our own version of nostalgia. The American family stereotype of Tyler’s experience is so sharply contrasted to my, also very American, experience. Mine didn’t involve getting a new tree every year. There was no process of starting over.

  So here I am, the second Christmas as a married woman, and we’re Christmas tree shopping at Home Depot in the cold. I’m told this isn’t the way tree shopping should be. We’re not bundled up, this is our first and only lot, and there are no candy canes. But it feels real to me. The place is covered in pine needles and it smells like Christmas. We haul the tree home and bicker about whether it is standing up straight and which way to face it so the bald spots don’t show. We wrap and rewrap the lights. We try to evenly space ornaments and smooth the wrinkles in the felt tree skirt.

  I am seeing there is something refreshing about tree shopping every December, year after year. Real trees are forgiving. We start from the beginning, with clean carpet and pungent pine. We do not have to reexamine the mistakes of last year’s light wrapping. We do not have to breathe the dust of past errors. Each year we get a blank slate.

  We don’t have kids yet, so I’m not sure how this Christmas thing will work once we do. I do know we will continue to have a real Christmas tree—a new one each year. We will unfold our own traditions. There will be bundling, and scouting and leveling and decorating. We will argue about whether it’s straight and about bald spots. But we’ll never argue about the process of starting over.

  VELVETEEN BOYFRIEND

  MARSHA PORTER

  At nearly sixteen, I was in love with an older man. Richard, with his long, dark-brown hair and soulful brown eyes, was nearly seventeen. He was the strong, silent type, and I was a talkaholic. I loved to share every detail of my day at my all-girls high school during our nightly phone calls. He said little, offering an occasional “Yeah” or “Sure.” For all I knew, he could have been walking away from the phone to watch a ball game and only returning to offer an intermittent affirmation.

  It was at my first high school dance, more than a year before, that we met. After that, we were an item and, though he lived on the other side of town, we managed to see each other every week.

  My sophomore year, I focused many of our one-sided conversations on the English teacher I adored, Sister Margery. We were reading The Catcher in the Rye and the theme was being real. I jumped on Holden’s antiphony bandwagon and began ferreting out any phonies in my school or the world at large. Naturally, I shared my observations with my beloved, and even a grunt from his end of the line encouraged me to continue with details and examples galore.

  If Holden’s descriptions of his boarding-school classmates wasn’t an advanced course in phoniness detection, then his New York odyssey made the distinction between fake and real even more clear.

  I was convinced that Sister Margery, who seemed to see into the hearts of her teenage students, was a mystical mind reader. The discussions she led made us squirm, question and grow simultaneously. It was the children’s novel The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, though, that hit the idea of being real right out of the ballpark for me. I told Richard that my teacher brought a book full of pictures to class. It looked like it was for kids, but I assured him that it contained very adult themes.

  I was so impressed by Margery Williams’s classic that I couldn’t stop talking about it. I even wondered if my inspirational teacher was the same Margery who’d written it. When I found out she could not have been born when it was originally published in 1922, I was sure that her chosen nun name, Margery, was a tribute to my now-favorite author.

  I began to quote, paraphrase an
d adapt Williams’s ideas in my nightly talkathons with, or perhaps to, Richard. I used these ideas to convey my growing love to him. The very idea that someone on the other end of the line was allowing me to share my every thought, from the inane to the insightful, was irresistible. Today I’d compare it to the crush one develops for a counselor or psychiatrist.

  I’d say, “The book says ‘When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.’ That’s just like us! We’ve been together forever (nearly a lifetime: fifteen months), and we do so much more than play (translation: make out). I mean we’re on the phone every night and, when we’re together, we take long walks, watch movies, hang out with friends and dance. Ergo, our love has to be real!”

  Richard would usually offer a one-syllable response that I took as complete agreement. He certainly never argued with me about any of my elaborate comparisons, and I loved that about him.

  Next I moved on to the hurt in a relationship. Just as the Skin Horse had explained to the Velveteen Rabbit that becoming real hurts sometimes, we had experienced our share of pain. I didn’t appreciate it when his mother insisted that he take the daughter of her friend to a dance, and he didn’t like it when the star discus thrower invited me to his junior prom. I was convinced that dealing with pain had strengthened our love, making it more real.

  The tear of the Velveteen Rabbit when he was about to be destroyed in the bonfire punctuated my point. Having this true emotion led to the rabbit’s freedom and made him real to everyone. Likewise, our relationship became real to everyone when they saw us work through problems and become ever closer.

  My Velveteen Rabbit obsession was one of many phases I went through that year, and I was not sure that Richard was especially moved by it. I was wrong; apparently, he had been listening rather closely.

  On Christmas Eve, he brought me a big white box tied with a shiny gold ribbon. Inside lay a beautifully illustrated copy of The Velveteen Rabbit and a stuffed brown bunny with pink satin-lined ears. I hugged Richard, realizing he was actually a very good listener who understood that the book meant so much to me. Our hug led to a kiss, but he surprised me by being the first to pull away.

  “You missed something.”

  Confused, I looked inside the now empty box. “What?”

  He pulled one of the floppy bunny ears toward me. I realized that the tip had been squeezed together to hold something. Leaning in to get a closer look, I gasped. There was a delicate gold ring with a heart cut out in the center. Within the heart was a tiny diamond. It was a promise ring—all the rage at the time. Carefully pulling it from its pink satin lining, he placed it on my finger saying, “You were right about us…our love is real.”

  PERFECT PRESENT

  CHARLES KUHN

  The significance of my purchase that day didn’t register on me at first.

  I had spent more time than usual asking questions, trying to understand the explanations thrown back at me. Mutely, I nodded to the descriptions of pixel density, lens size, battery life, brightness and opaqueness as if fascinated by every detail. Truth be told, I wasn’t.

  Only one thing interested me. The price. “What was the price?” I fumed inside as the saleswoman droned on and on. I know that we men get a bad rap for not being sentimental gift givers, but in this case I really had a good reason.

  Could I afford it? That was the question that I needed the answer to. Two weeks left before Christmas, and I had a set budget for this. The money had been squirreled away specifically for a gift for my wife. I knew if I didn’t use it soon, the funds would be used for any one of a hundred other expenses waiting in line this time of year.

  I had already taken care of the main gifts for the kids, but what about wrapping paper, stocking stuffers, pet toys that would be ripped apart in hours, if not minutes? Who knew how much those would cost? That’s why these funds were reserved, emblazoned with bold black letters in my mind, for Melissa’s gift. My wife, Melissa. I hadn’t asked her what she wanted for Christmas. That was always a risky proposition, but one well worth taking this year.

  My wife. It was still hard to believe. This was our first Christmas as a married couple; we’d just been married earlier that year. No big deal, except I was in my early fifties and she…well, suffice it to say that she was younger than me by a few years. We had both gotten out of failed long-term relationships and had met online through a political activism website which, considering that we lived in different states, made our long-term relationship even more special to both of us. It scared me sometimes, to stop and think about the odds, the long shot of our ever connecting. What would my life be without her?

  The idea for her gift had come to me through long conversations with her about her likes and dislikes, previous hobbies, childhood experiences, secret ambitions and the usual silly, but memorable conversations spent in getting to know each other. Long ago she had enjoyed photography and, after a lot of encouragement and persistent badgering, had shared some of her best photos with me. She was clearly talented. I was confident in her abilities and wanted her to again pursue something that obviously meant so much to her.

  Persisting in my queries, I’d learned that she had given up photography because in her last relationship she had come into constant criticism. She was told the shot was from the wrong angle. Or the light wasn’t right. That the picture would turn out horribly. Tired of being criticized, she simply gave up. She finally sold her camera and, it seemed to me, she lost part of herself.

  I listened as she told me the story. I heard the pain, the lost moments and the desire to take pictures again. I knew right then that I could change that part of her life and help restore her creative spark.

  The next day, I went online to research digital cameras. It was new, it was exciting and it quickly became my Christmas mission. I watched holiday flyers, keeping a stringent eye out for sales and descriptions of cameras that met my requirements. On a Wednesday, I spotted the perfect camera for her. The next two days, I dropped casual comments about our need to go Christmas shopping that weekend.

  We made it to the mall on Sunday. We separated inside, each heading off in our own direction, she on foot, me in my wheelchair.

  This was another special ingredient of our relationship. After our first few e-mails I had explained to Melissa that I had multiple sclerosis, although I worried that this would spell the end of what seemed like the glimmerings of a love relationship. It never stopped her or scared her away. At our first date, I walked into the restaurant for lunch using a cane and promptly knocked over a strategically placed ornamental tree. We laughed, shrugged our shoulders and enjoyed the remainder of our first date, full of stories and laughter.

  Now, three years later, my MS had progressed. My cane was traded in for a wheelchair, and our amusement and comfort had turned to enduring love.

  Of course, by the time I wheeled myself up to the camera counter that Sunday afternoon, the camera I had targeted was already sold out. That brought me to the endless discussion I found myself in with the long-winded clerk. In the end, my budget could still handle the new selection, and I left that day feeling proud of my purchase and certain my bride would be happy.

  Christmas morning rolled around, and I had managed to keep my secret. My wife unwrapped her gift and fell silent. She cautiously opened the box and extracted her new camera, never saying a word. Attaching the strap, she placed it around her neck. After fidgeting with the camera for a few moments, Melissa leaned in to me, placed her arms around my shoulders and pulled me to her face until our foreheads touched. She whispered, “Thank you. You have no idea what this means. You’ve just given me back a piece of myself I thought I’d lost forever.”

  In the days ahead, Melissa pursued her revitalized passion with zest. She photographed migrating snow geese in northern California, soaring hawks in the Central Valley, incredible blooming flowers in our neighborhood, scenic old-growth oak trees in the local park, towering pines in snowst
orms in the Sierras and so many more loves in her life. Her photo gallery grew on a daily basis, as did her belief in herself. There was a mutual growth of our bond together, knowing we could help each other heal and rediscover faith and trust. It was a gift of renewal to last a lifetime.

  CHAINS OF LOVE

  JENNIFER BERN BASYE

  Oh, I can see your face now, Dear Reader. Blushing a bit and thinking to yourself, “Oh no, is this one of those stories? The kind I keep hearing everyone else whisper about…?” Rest easy, my dears. There are no mysterious billionaires with helicopters and handcuffs in this tale, and I am far from a young college coed just learning about the world. No, far from it…

  As a girl, my happiest moments were those when I’d snuggle under the covers in my small room at the top of the stairs (“It’s the maid’s room, you know,” I would tell my friends on the school playground, hoping to conjure up a sad Little Princess sort of life in their minds), listening to the sound of the rain on the roof. My father would play the piano at night and the sound would drift up to the second floor. He’d play Beethoven, Bach and sometimes a little Brubeck if he was feeling jazzy after a long day at the office. And then, done playing, I could hear him turn the heavy lock on the front door on his way to join my mother for the night. Mmm, I would sigh to myself, that is what my life will be like when I am grown. I will have a big house and a grand piano and children asleep upstairs, and they will know how much I love them and protect them when they hear the sound of a door lock turning for the night.