Casual

...That’s okay, kid,” he answered...

...My father cocking his head to the side to concentrate on cutting out the sections of a grapefruit for breakfast...

...There was the simultaneous feeling of titanic generosity and utter miserliness, an endless calculation of love measured to the penny, and an irrecoverable sensation—the proud knowledge that one has, in a rage of magnanimity, squandered every cent, matched with the shameful awareness of just how paltry the result looks...

...They have the rhythm of plainchant, paeans lifted up to Santa Claus...

...Why should I remember the longneedled ponderosa tree we had when I was 6? The heavy-scented balsam tree, bending under the weight of the ornaments, when I was 8? The Douglas firs, the Black Hills pines, the juniper...

...J. BOTTUM...

...Tinker Toys, Erector sets, and Lincoln Logs...

...North, and climb inside that I slammed the car door on the monkey and cracked it down the middle...

...The grief was so sudden and precise, the desire not to let Scooter’s mother see me cry so strong, the look on my face, reflected in the window of her Buick, so perfectly preserved, that I can almost relive that sorrow just by remembering it...

...But while I was trudging past the almost deserted Christmas-tree shop in the school parking lot, a salesman suddenly leaned over the fence to ask if I wanted a wreath...

...But then, five blocks from home, Scooter North’s mother pulled over to offer me a ride...

...If I bought the Irish handkerchiefs for my grandfather, it was at the heartbreaking expense of the potholders for my mother...

...The steam rising while we washed the endless Christmas dishes, until the fog formed into little rivulets that raced each other down the kitchen window panes...

...I don’t have enough money left,” I said...

...It’s Christmas...

...We’re closing up here...

...A children’s toy catalogue came in the mail the other day—or rather, an adults’ toy catalogue, filled with the opportunity for grown-ups to buy at outrageous prices the toys of their childhood: Sting Ray bicycles with banana seats, slinkies, pogo sticks, cap guns, and the kind of open-springed, bouncing nursery horses no liabilityconscious manufacturer would dare offer children anymore...

...The ink-and-paper new-book smell of Kipling’s Jungle Books, read with a flashlight under the blankets after my mother had come in to shut off the lights and whisper one last Merry Christmas...

...And the next year as well, I was almost in tears as I walked home, listening to the dry snow crunch beneath the black rubber overshoes my father made us wear, and with nothing but a Christmas card to give my mother after the store where I’d planned to get her genuine rhinestone earrings closed earlier than I expected on Christmas Eve...

...If I spent the extra $1.43 to buy my older sister the metal stands instead of the plastic to hold her dolls, it was at the wellunderstood cost of getting the plastic tea set instead of the china for my younger sister...

...The heft of the Swiss Army knife from Uncle Howard, smuggled in the pocket of my dress pants to church...

...And it was while I was struggling to hold my packages, thank Mrs...

...But it’s the buying of presents, rather than the receiving, that remains my strongest memory...

...The scalloped holly sprigs set on the sideboard and mantel, with a stern warning every year not to eat the berries...

...To dwell on those memories is more to remember that I did have a certain feeling than to recapture just how that feeling really felt...

...Creepy Crawlers, Flexible Flyers, Raggedy Ann, and Raggedy Andy...

...and yet, even now, I’m not convinced that I shouldn’t have gone with the taffy for Aunt Helen and saved the money the chocolates cost to buy my grandmother the larger size of glass ornament...

...I can call up every detail—except the emotion, the overwhelming waves that beat upon my sisters and me down the long stream of days in the Christmas season...

...They come faded like last year’s pine needles that fall from the box of Christmas ornaments when you bring it down from the linen closet...

...When I was 8, I decided that what my 9-year-old sister really needed was the savings bank I found on the discount counter of a junk store, carved from a coconut shell in the shape of a beatnik monkey, complete with beret, sunglasses, and bongo drums...

...Just hearing the names of those desperately hopedfor toys is like listening to an ancient, half-forgotten litany of secularized Christmas...

...Give it to your mother...

...Very little in my life has ever been judged as carefully...

...The silly-looking plastic mistletoe my mother would hang, giggling with my father over some joke they wouldn’t explain to the children...

...A cold sparrow peering out across the lawn from under the snow-covered lilac hedge, while I sat at the window, waiting for my parents to wake...