Christmas Day 2016
Christmas Day 201
I am spending the day with my oldest daughter, Christie, my son-in-law Ted, and my wonderful grandchildren, Sofia and Daniel. I hope you are enjoying your family as well. Have a very Merry Christmas! Ralph
A Christmas Moment
A Christmas Moment
Tis the season. As my mind thumbs through an old rolodex of holidays past, it always stops at one very special and unique moment in time. If other civilizations in other galaxies are ever capable of capturing our singular most crystalline events in our human lives, this personal moment would be a highlight of mine.
It had been a week of dismal failures and self-deprecation which, surprisingly, had started optimistically, so I was totally surprised by subsequent events. The week before Christmas, my father, following tradition, took his family across the George Washington Bridge to midtown Manhattan to see the city lights, the skaters at Rockefeller Plaza, and the majestic Christmas tree in that same plaza. I looked forward to mashing my nose up against the Macy’s department store window to watch the awe-inspiring train display. Every year I would receive one toy, and that toy was a train car or an accessory to my Lionel train set. I would jostle my way through the crowd to see the half dozen or so locomotives haul their freight around the complex layout, and I would fantasize about which accouterment would be under the tree this year. Would it be the cattle car, the milk car, the lumber station, or the snazzy freight car that carried a gray American submarine which a young lad could place in the bathtub and watch it glide through the water propelled by a wound rubber band?
My brother Jimmy, four years my junior, had little use for trains. His amusements of choice fell into the area of potential destruction—big Tonka dump trucks that he would ram into my locomotive or a large metal cannon that fired foam shells that would knock my train cars off the track, or a sleek bomber that he would fly over my Plasticville buildings and bomb using my father’s fishing sinkers. Over the years pounds of glue held my Plasticville town together.He also liked to annoy me with the repetitive playing of the same record on his toy phonograph.
“Heckle and Jeckle, we look the same
Scootily doo
Heckle and Jeckle we act the same
Scootily doo
The impossible–that’s our game
What ho, Tally ho, let’s go!”
Played and replayed for what seemed millennia.
All the battles in our ongoing fraternal war were settled by my mother’s admonishment which became a refrain. “Ralph, you are four years older. You should understand.” I understood that once Jimmy entered elementary school, he might incur a shiner or two from classmates who were neither understanding nor accommodating.
After the oogling at the Macy’s department store window, the days before Christmas were increasingly darkened by misadventures. The leaden gray December skies seemed to sink lower and lower until they hovered just above my head. My elementary school teacher, Mr. Fox, in the midst of a grammar lesson, broke us up into pairs. One of the twosome was to be a student experienced in diagramming sentences, the other less experienced. The former was supposed to help the latter. I could not believe my good luck when I was assigned to help Tina, a girl with long auburn hair and sparkling blue eyes whom I had noticed since we first moved to the wilds of suburban New Jersey. When we were paired to work together, I mapped out my wooing strategy. I would dazzle her with my expertise in straight and slanting lines indicating modifiers, my recognition of predicate nominatives and direct objects, my savoir faire in identifying prepositions and subordinating conjunctions. I opened up my three punch notebook and copied the first of Mr. Fox’s challenges and waited for Tina to diagram. She placed her head in the crook of her arm planted on the table, yawned, and shrugged. Okay. Time to shine. I dove into the sentence. When I looked up from my masterpiece, Tina was sitting next to Frank Norstrum, recently back from a school suspension and working alone because of disciplinary reasons. At least he was alone until Tina sat next to him, smiling, tilting her head and somehow sparkling her eyes. I self-inspected. I had showered the day before, my fingernails were clean, as were my clothes. What was wrong with me?
Later in the week I went to confession. On the previous Tuesday in a sandlot football game, I was tackled and jammed my thumb, the pain igniting a string of epithets which I was afraid to confess to Father Simon Legree who had warned me about this before. “You should never use the Lord’s name in vain. It is a bad habit. It makes you bad in the eyes of God. Suppose you are hit by a truck after you have cursed. You know where bad people go when they die?” I spent the next half hour after confession performing my penance.
I was deep into mea culpaing for the rest of the week, but Christmas was still on the horizon and Alvin and the Chipmunks and Perry Como and Nat King Cole were on the radio belting out the Christmas oldies. Expectations were high.
I suspected something was wrong on the morning of Christmas Eve. We had yet to get a tree. There were no decorations outside or inside the house. But what unnerved me most was the silence. My parents were not talking—to me, to Jimmy telling him to turn off Heckle and Jeckle, but most importantly not to each other. By afternoon the silence had erupted into argumentation and then shouting. The causes are meaningless to a kid, though I recognized the rough outline—–monetary differences, inlaw differences, imagined and real affronts. A child does not know his parents as people until much later in life, if ever. To the young, parents are more roles than humans who are also struggling through the night. I need to relate some mitigating circumstances at this point. My parents were products of both the Depression and World War II. My mother was one of five daughters who lost their mother in the Great Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. My mother’s sisters were farmed out to an orphanage, while my mother was given over to an aunt who, ultimately, mistreated her. My aunts repeatedly claimed that my mother’s Cinderella plight was much worse than theirs in the orphanage. Her eventual prince was my father who spent his childhood helping his immigrant parents find food and earn money to survive the streets of New York. He “escaped” into World War II. My parents chose to forget their Christmases Past since the memories of those holidays were more fraught with pain and deprivation than joy. Their memories were tarnished by hard boiled neglect and unkept promises and unrealized dreams. Worse, their childhood experiences were robbed of that mystical joy that lights up children’s faces, that sense of awe and wonder that holds out infinite possibilities. They had to grow up fast without the security of a well-loved childhood.
Jimmy looked up at me as we sat on the steps leading to our bedroom. He whimpered, “Why are they fighting? It’s Christmas.” I just shrugged my shoulders. “I dunno.”
As Christmas Eve wore on the shouting match diminished, and the oppressive silence returned. The radio played on and seemed to mock Jimmy and me.
“Through the years we all will be together and
If the fates allow,
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now”
Well, the fates did not allow. No tree, no wreaths, no toys, no expectations. Around nine the radio was turned off and Jimmy and I retreated to our twin beds. I couldn’t get to sleep. I kept staring at the ceiling. After a while, I felt my little brother Jimmy crawl in beside me and bury his face in my chest. He was sobbing. I reached around with my right hand, grabbed his elbow and pulled him closer. Kids have an inflated sense of their power on the world at large, holding themselves responsible for all events. The Tina rejection, the denunciation by Father Simon Legree, and, most of all, my parents’ fight were all caused by me. I drifted off to an uneasy sleep wondering why I was so bad.
I really do not remember if it was the sunlight bouncing off the icy windows or my parents making noise downstairs that woke me up Christmas morning. Jimmy and I staggered out of bed, not saying a word, and then the remembrance of the day before settled on our souls like a wet, cold blanket. We dreaded going downstairs, but we heeded the call. “Ralph! Jimmy!”
We were halfway down the steps when we noticed the transformation. There WAS a tree, fully decorated with ornaments and lights and tinsel. And the ceiling and banister of the kitchen and dining room were festooned with multi-colored balloons. We could smell the turkey roasting in the oven. And there, standing at the foot of the stairs, were my mother and father, arm in arm, smiles broadening their faces. Somehow they had reconciled and gone out and purchased a tree and decorations. Jimmy and I looked at each other and back at the scene and back at each other, afraid to take another step lest the magic evaporate. To us it was a miracle.
The rest of that Christmas Day unfolded with great cheer and harmony. I setup my old Lionel train set, and Jimmy got his metal cannon out and dump truck. I heard Heckle and Jeckle five million times but didn’t mind. I even let him bounce a few foam shells off my forehead just to hear his squeals of joy. Every so often I looked up from my play to watch my parents to make certain the transformation was real. On two occasions I saw my father kiss my mother on the back of her neck as she stirred the gravy on the stove. Later that day my Aunt Marge and Uncle Ray came over and we ate and played Pokeno and Penny Poker—Jimmy and I kept our poker stakes in old socks.
I enjoy recounting memories of previous holidays, especially those Polley and I helped fashion for our own children. The looks of joy and wonder and appreciation that lit up their faces give me joy and wonder and appreciation still. I embrace with tears of joy those memories. I believe that the best gift a parent can give a child is what my parents gave us that one Christmas morning. That gift is very very expensive, even though it does not cost money.
If the universe does, indeed, track every moment, and the fates allow us to relive a chosen segment of time, I would choose that singularity when my little brother Jimmy and I stood on the stairs that Christmas morning. After we had taken in the full measure of the miracle, Jimmy yelled, “This is the most wonderfullest Christmas ever!” My kid brother’s grammar was not correct (double superlatives and all that), but it was perfect.
One Man’s Guide for Men Shopping for Women’s Clothing
One Man’s Guide for Men Shopping for Women’s Gifts
Okay, Men. You have decided to man up and shop for your wife’s holiday gift. This is a daunting task—no doubt about it. But with this guide, the mission will be easier and, hopefully, successful. First of all, congratulations! You have eschewed our fathers’ cowardly tactic of giving their daughters some cash and commanding them to purchase their mother some clothes which our fathers claimed credit for choosing. That strategy was strictly a monetary exchange, no thought involved. It seems to me that women like things involving thoughtfulness. Men I don’t know. I never heard the male recipient of a good deed, say having a buddy bait a hook or pop open his beer (rare events, admittedly) say to the gift giver, “My, that was thoughtful.” You have also avoided the pitfall of choosing a practical gift like my father who thought an electric can opener was my mother’s heart’s desire.
Let’s be clear. You WILL fail. Many holidays past, I decided to shop for my fiancé Polley. I entered a posh boutique (that’s a store with flowery wallpaper and requires a credit card because no matter how much cash you have on you, it won’t be enough) and the rather short lady cracking gum approached me. “Dearie, can I help you?” The “dearie” is a tell. Salesladies see a man in a women’s clothing store or women’s clothing department and immediately think the guy has gotten lost returning from Best Buy or Pep Boys. If I answered, “Thanks, babe.” The “babe” would have landed me in jail or a lawsuit, but she gets away with “dearie.” There are two strategies to choose from. The first is to dig your toe into the carpet and “Aw shucks” the salesperson telling her you want to buy something nice for your spouse but you “justs don’t know nothing about buying no woman’s clothes.”. This gives the saleslady power, not always the best course of action. On my first mission I pleaded Gomer Pyle style for help. “Okay, dearie. Maud is going to fix you up.”
Maud showed me several outfits. I had no idea what Polley liked or didn’t like. I would have to learn this over the years, and you, too, can do this. Like anything else if you want to learn because the objective is worthwhile, you will learn. When you are both shopping pay attention when she stops in front of a window and says something like, “That dress is cute.” “Cute” is usually a ringing endorsement, so your ears should perk up, and that part of your brain not devoted to NFL football stats should retain this image of clothing. Watch what she chooses to wear and what clothes/jewelry worn by her friends she praises. The latter can be tricky—they always praise their friends’ wear, so you have to discern levels of praise…..praise can be a flower or a dagger. If she repeats the praise to her other friends out of earshot of the recipient, it is legit.
Finally Maud shows me a flowing, frilly, purple dress, something I envisioned Polley sporting while she sashayed around the Hotel Taft Ballroom floor. It never occurred to me that Polley would not have numerous opportunities to sashay around the Hotel Taft Ballroom floor. Maud got out the box and tissue paper and started to pack the purple dress. “Honey, trust me. She’s gonna love it.”
Polley didn’t love it. With great tact she explained to me that the only occasion on which she could wear the purple dress was if she landed a dancing role in the cast of the Broadway musical West Side Story. We went back to the store and she picked out something else. So, you WILL fail, especially at the beginning, but if you learn from the disaster, it will pay off.
The second strategy is to demonstrate to the saleslady that you actually know something about what you want and more importantly, what your wife would want. You walk in the store, and there is the salesperson summing you up, judging that in terms of shopping you are dumber than the mannequin poised next to her. You say something like, “It is that time of year. I would like to purchase for my wife an outfit appropriate for a rehearsal dinner that we will attend in May. She likes pastels, especially yellow, and she does not like clothing that is ostentatious or ornate. I have her sizes here on a card in my wallet.” I mentally measure how far her jaw drops.
To accomplish this, men, you have to tighten your belt, straighten your epaulettes, and do your homework. Stroll through the women’s section of a department store. You will see signs like “Young Misses,” “Active Wear,” “Maturity,” “Encore,” “Special Occasion,” “Collectors,” “Point of View.” Yeah, the labels don’t mean anything to me either. There will always be one label you can avoid…..unless…..”Maternity.”
Sometimes the sections of the store are categorized according to type of clothing:; Dresses, Jackets, Blazers, Leggings, Jumpsuits and Rompers (does your spouse “romp?), Jackets, Coats, Jeans, Pants, Pants and Capris(short white pants that are perfect to pack on your next trip to Italy), Resort Wear, Shorts, Skirts, Suits and Suit Separates[?], Sweaters, Tights, Socks and Hosiery, Vests, Tops (not to be confused with Sweaters, Blouses or Vests), Wear to Work (so all of the stuff above is for lounging around the house?), Shrugs (I guess a “shrug” is supposed to send the message “I don’t give a damn.”) One “trendy” garment mill labels their sections Cocktail, Day, Night Out, Work, Cozy Comfort (as opposed to the Harsh Comfort). Other stores label their sections by the name of the designer. I walk into a store, see Maurice A La Font Bleu, and I wonder what Canadian hockey team he played for. The Feldman Collection, Olaf’s Scandinavian Treasures, Martin’s Trendy Stuff, Hugo’s Piece de Resistance mean nothing to me. Don’t be intimidated. These guys probably couldn’t hit a whiffle ball.
Once you choose an item, say a sweater, now you have more decisions to make. First is size. A man wants a blue shirt, he marches to the shirt aisle, finds a blue dress shirt, 16 neck, 32 sleeve, he’s at the cashier’s desk, eight minutes tops. Women’s sizes are more complex—and mystifying. Some stores label their sections by sizes: Petite, Plus Sizes, Trendy Plus Sizes, .Petite Plus. OR there are these designations: X, XXS, XS, M. OR there are these sizes: 1,0,4,6,8,10,12 OR there are these sizes: 1,1.5,2,2.5,3,3.5,4. Finally there is Small, Medium, Large. I find that carrying a small card in my wallet with my wife’s measurements and presenting it to the saleslady helps a great deal. This way I don’t have to remember that a Macy’s 10 is equivalent to a Chico’s 2 or whatever. Want to impress the saleslady and demonstrate you know your stuff, that your savoir faire in the area of women’s clothing is boundless? Ask her if Calvin de la Bouche’s dress sizes “run small.” That’s right. A size 10 blouse by Calvin de la Bouche might actually be smaller in size than a size 10 by Jed Clampett’s Lifestyles. It is all part of the feminine mystique.
If you are thinking about a “top,” you might also have to consider the kind of hole in the top of the top: Neckline, Boatneck, Cardigan, Cowlneck, Crewneck, Henley, Mockneck, Scoopneck, Turtleneck, Vneck, Zipneck. Men usually do not worry about how much of their neck is showing, especially when they are sporting a “top” from Bazooka’s Bowling Alley, but apparently this is important. Watch what your loved one chooses from her wardrobe, try to remember it, and make the choice.
The next decision you will have to make is color. You might have as your favorite color “olive green camouflage” which, admittedly, looks great when you hunt turkey. You must consider your loved one’s best colors, especially taking into consideration her hair hue. Again, on this mission you will encounter experiences you have never imagined. You will enter a forest of colors that you never knew existed and which do not exist in nature, even though the names include features from the natural world. For example, here are some colors advertised in a catalog from a well-known store: Chili Red, Ink Spill, Rainforest Teal, Party Pink, Passion, Shadow, Waterfall, Coral Tile, Smoke Grey Heather, Intrepid Blue, Heather Buff (that is not Heather In The Buff, guys), Sphynx (??….exactly), Dark Prune (why does this not sound appealing?), New Red Amore, Pearl Blush, Venetian Moss (as differentiated from Albanian Moss) , Eggplant, Ballet Pink. Do not be daunted, Men, by the nomenclature. Remember when you opened your first box of Crayola Crayons (64) and encountered for the first time Cerise, and Cerulean and Fuchsia? Think prime colors and you will be fine. You can even anticipate the amount of the bill by the colors the store uses to identify its clothes. If a shop uses the following colors: Xanadu (grey green), Mikado (yellow), Glaucous (blue—powder blue), Wenge (dark brown), Fulvous (gold), Falu (deep red), Eburnean (ivory white), Amaranth (rose red), Smaragdine (emerald green) then expect to take out a second mortgage.
Warning. Two departments I carefully avoid when shopping for Polley. The first is a shoe department. Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, admitted to owning one thousand, sixty pairs of shoes. We guys don’t understand this, but some of the female species do. Me, if I find a comfortable pair of work boots, I would wear them to every event, including weddings. Apparently in the opposite sex’s universe, there are more events than I could dream up, and each event requires a different pair of shoes. I leave shoe purchases to Polley’s vision of the future.
The second department I strongly urge you to bypass is the lingerie area. I once was rifling through a rack of slips and other undergarments (which Polley had hinted at in her Santa letter). I suddenly looked up and saw the stern face of the woman watching me from the opposite side of the rack. She wasn’t thinking that “this guy is buying a Christmas gift for his wife.” If I must purchase one of these accoutrements, I simply tell the clerk what I want and let her fetch the item. At the front desk, in line with female shoppers, avoid watching the cashier package the items unless you arouse some dagger eyes.
Of course, you could take the tact to avoid clothing purchases altogether and go for buying perfume. I am not good at that ever since Frank and Stan, two college buddies, convinced me in one of those dormitory bull sessions that the perfume industry got it all wrong. If girls wanted to attract boys through smell, they should put on smells that guys like. For example, Eau de Freshly Oiled Baseball Glove, or Magnifique New Car Smell. And guys should wear the floral odors that ladies enjoy. I think Frank and Stan were on to something.
Men, that is about all I know about shopping for women’s apparel. Not much, I admit, but it is a continual learning process. My best advice is to march into the fray unafraid and prepared. On several shopping attempts salesladies completely ignored me. As some later confessed, they thought I was standing in the middle of the store while my wife shopped (again, a male shopping in “Women’s Clothing” was to them an anomaly). Others eyed me as a homeless person who staggered in from a gin mill to oogle women as they exited the dressing room. You might have to approach them….the salesladies, not the women exiting the dressing rooms.
Is it worth it? My experience tells me it is. Your loved one will at least appreciate the fact that you walked miles in the mall to find the perfect gift; that you challenged the windmills of style and size denomination and color to pick for your lovely one something that would make her even more lovely. The gift, if she is smart, is in the effort you made, and that effort is much more valuable than money. At least I hope so. I admit I like shopping for Polley. And even failing in this mission has a silver lining. Hey, guys, at the very least she can always return the item and use the credit to shop for something she really wants. This is good. Many women like to shop…or so I am told.
Parkinson’s Whack-A-Mole
The Parkinson’s Whack-a-Mole
So I turned 70 years old. In social gatherings, when an old timer announces his advanced age, people applaud. I really don’t know why people do that. I mean, I really haven’t done anything to help me orbit the sun seventy times.
When I was teaching, I tried to emphasize the dangers of illiteracy and innumeracy. In one class I was aware of the unhealthful habits of some students, so I pointed out stats on drinking and smoking. As usual most did not buy it, citing the legends rather than facts.
“Mr. Maltese, I got an uncle who smokes three packs a day and drinks hard liquor every night and he is 82.”
I reply, “Out of a hundred people who follow your uncle’s regimen, how many do you think will make it to 82?” It usually does not work. Like the rest of us, the young would rather embrace hope than reality. I cannot blame them. When I was sixteen I felt I could drink a gallon of arsenic, smoke a stogie every five minutes, and stand in front of a speeding locomotive and survive. The young always believe that they are immortal. Time is also different for the young and the old. I was eight when I ordered from Battle Creek, Michigan a toy frogman (advertised in a cereal box) which, after loading his foot with baking soda, rose and fell in the bathtub. Hours of fun. “You will receive your Farina Frogman in four to six weeks.” Of course, the latter amount of time was always the reality. Oh how long six weeks was to an eight year old! Same was true when I had to wait a year to get a bicycle for Christmas. Simple math: one year over eight years is 1/8th of my life time. Now, when my cardiologist schedules my next visit a year from now, it seems I walk out of his office, get in my car, drive around the block, the year has passed, and I am back lying on the table and he is taking my blood pressure. One eighth of a lifetime is a great deal longer than one seventieth of a lifetime. Hence youthful impatience.
It seemed like it took me ten millennia to go from eight years old to double digits. I went from my sixties to my seventies in the blink of an eye. In fact, it seems like yesterday I turned fifty. What also seems to speed up are ailments associated with Parkinson’s. As Polley has observed, having Parkinson’s is a Whack-A-Mole experience. It seems that once one symptom reaches a plateau and I cope with it, another pops up. I woke up one morning and my left foot was shaking almost uncontrollably. After my diagnosis of Parkinson’s, my neurologist prescribes The Patch. Next Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem pops up. The Patch helps a great deal with the shaking, but pulling it off every morning reminds me of Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin as a spa technician rips a piece of tape off his hairy chest, and he yells “Kelly Clarkson!” When I first applied The Patch, it burned and itched (the adhesive, not the medication, is responsible). After removal, The Patch leaves a scar that looks as if a cat o nine tails had slashed the skin. The other guys in the locker room at workout marvel at my scarred back. I tell them the flogging was my punishment for not wiping off the treadmill after use. The burning has decreased (as the scar tissue hardens), but it still itches.
I tolerate the shaky foot and the itching Patch when another Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem rises. My eyes begin to burn. Parkinson’s people do not blink very often, so the eyes dry out and burn. Eye drops only make it worse. And the blindness (when the eye begins to burn, my eyelid closes, severely impairing my vision—often it happens in both eyes and I enter Stevie Wonder’s world without the talent) happens at the most inopportune times—carving a turkey, watching a touchdown pass, tying my sneakers.
I was coping fairly well with these afflictions when yet another Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem seeps from the depths of hell. My vocal chords go on strike. I lose not only my teaching voice, but my conversational voice. People bend toward me to hear me whisper, “You are stepping on my foot.” As fast as the moles pop up, I whack at them.
The latest Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem has developed over the last four months. I have recurring bouts of nausea, total loss of appetite (which has resulted in weight loss—a good thing, but I can’t see any way to market this diet). When we visit my gastrointestinal specialist, he says, with some pride, “With Parkinson’s the digestive system is the second system to be affected.” I increase my number of meals to six from the customary three trough feedings and decrease the amount of food at each repast to slivers of meat and spoonfuls of carbs and veggies.
There are days when each Whack-A-Mole Parkinson’s Problem barely peeps out of its hole, and then there are days like Thanksgiving when I was slinging my Whack-A-Mole hammer like crazy. My wonderful, beautiful family is assembled, Wife, Children and their Spouses, and Grandchildren. I lift my wine glass to make a toast, twisting slightly to scratch the maddening itch on my back with the chair back, and my vocal chords project my prepared speech about four inches from my mouth. I notice everyone is straining hard to hear and smiling, pretending they heard. Much louder is my thumping left foot which seemingly could drown out a New York City jackhammer. It is accompanied by a rumbling of my stomach as if a thunderstorm sprung up and is signaling caution about devouring anything on my plate. Simultaneously both eyes blink out, and I finish my toast begging for a cloth to wipe them.
You might find this hard to believe after listing my ailments, but I had a wonderful Thanksgiving—one of the best ever. Satchel Paige once said, “How old would you be if you didn’t know your age?” Tis true. Some days I feel like that child in the Bronx with his face up against the Macy’s Christmas window watching the toy Lionel trains. I think young. I am that teenager who can leap tall buildings in a single bound.And there are those Parkinson’s Whack-A-Mole days when I feel like a man who has made too many revolutions around the sun. What my seventy years have taught me is to be a stubborn cuss. All those birthdays (and all of the history and art and music and literature I have studied—and most of all my parents) have taught me is that you make the most of the cards you are dealt. Life does not promise that every hand will be a winning one. And I know that there are other players who have much better hands to play than I do. I hope they appreciate their luck. And I also know there are players holding cards much worse than mine. I pray for them. And I admire their courage. It is up to me to see the possibilities with the cards I am holding. At least, at the very least, I am still playing. I am still holding the hammer and whacking away at those damn moles and playing my cards the best I know how.