I can't compete with Santa

The challenge and lament of kindergarten teachers the week before Christmas strikes a winsome chord in me as I wind down from a spate of arts residencies in far flung public schools. Ponder days disappeared from my date book mid Fall. Early excursions o’er gray interstates to small Ohio towns took my imagination elsewhere.

As small fingers smush graham crackers and gum drops onto frosting spackled milk cartons on the last day of school before that jolly benevolence and his friendly team of mammals drop in, I’m home at last, watching snow fall on black branches, without a thought to the snarled traffic at 55th and Woodland.

I heard this week, while driving, an interview with Alan Menken. He writes soundtracks for movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. Asked if it delights him to have his creations glued, like gumdrops on butter icing, to popular consciousness, how could he answer but yes?

That some of my songs are now ear candy for select grade schoolers in the midwest delights me too. Scale that up by a factor of millions and I might have an inkling of fame’s delight. Is delight scalable, I wonder, or does fame bring a sack of antidotes to the progeny of joy?

This morning I putter in the kitchen, Bob Dylan’s Every Grain of Sand flooding my ear canals. How many songwriters stand in awe at the fact that a young man from nowhere (pardon me, Hibbingers) rose to fame and fortune on a sleigh named song? Access to stunning women, valiant musicians, world travel and the never-ending press parade - all are his because of words he conjured up to sing us.

Dylan’s fame became more than celebrity - neigh cult yet short of worship. The volume of his resplendent work, dependable as Old Saint Nick, assures us of his mystical existence. We don’t quite care if the cherry nose is from too much sherry or too long stints in the barren winds of inspiration. We love him, our fond jester. This clause is non-compete.

Except for the miracle workers who teach our kids to love school, competing with Santa is moot. His job, disguised as Dylan or parents or other consummate sages, is to twinkle and bestow. Ours is to anticipate, provide ballast in our reverence, and to glory in the magnitude of good.

Photo Norbert Aepli, Santa Clause on skies in Adelboden, Switzerland, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Short takes

I’m at Target with Tom in search of Merona boxers, Andrew’s brand. A shopper scrutinizing Fruit of the Loom points us to the next isle and joins us as we ponder. Her son is keen on Meronas too. Here we crouch and murmur, two grown women, conversational in the nostalgia of picking out underwear for our grown sons.

What size, really? Medium looks too small, doesn’t it? She says her son’s an athlete - something rigorous like curling. Andrew rides a bike all over Toronto, I tell her. Trim waistlines. Mediums then.
Knit or woven? The knits are softer, Tom interjects. But which ones? Something fun - the green flamingos? Andrew likes green. Or maybe the understated black with thin gray stripes.

As we hand mediums back and forth, the other mom reminds me of a happily married Liz Lemon, eloquent and droll, easy to like. I want her to take the last of the wide green and navy stripes in her son’s size. ‘Naw, go ahead, I’m not attached to them,’ she grins. Tom and I proceed to check out as she squints at the penguin print.

Here I am two days later, folding clothes and wondering what that was. Pawed through racks at Target felt like the backyard fence, the coffee klatsch, the hair salon. What is it about women that has us relaxing into the company of strangers?

As I set down the laundry, a frail finger cut rips wide open on the basket of socks and undies. Were my Target compatriot at hand, I’d show her the welling blood. Attuned to small time adventure, she’d warmly fuss as mothers do.  Not that men do not, or cannot do the same. Women are just more practiced. As the men catch up, we are all the wiser.

Painting by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, The Marquise de Pezay (or Pezé), and the Marquise de Rougé with Her Sons Alexis and Adrien