Velociworld

Christmas Cheer

When I was six years old the Only Child boy across the street, who was eight, awakened on Christmas morning to his mother explaining that his father was dead. Sometime between the tuck down to sugar plum faeries and the awakening to the glorious morn dad had had a fatal heart gripper, and expired in his sleep.

We gazed out of the windows at six a.m. as the Fields & Sons ambulance pulled away. My four siblings and I were informed by our parents that all festivities would be held indoors. If we so much as snuck outside and hallooed over a gimcrack there would be Hell To Pay.

I felt badly for Georgie, but I also had received a Varoom motor for my bicycle from Santy Claus, and was ready to fire it up. It was a curious and telling moment in my development.

All of my presents were outside presents that year. Balls, bats, kites. Nothing one could play with indoors. My older brother had been blessed with a slot car outfit that he and my father spent the morning setting up. Add despondency to the mix, because the slot car set up inadvertently had my name on it. Mom was bad about that. I believe my name was on the Vac-U-Form intended for my brother as well. My sisters' unmentionables had my brothers' names on them. And mother didn't drink.

I pouted a bit, and mulled about it, and rent my garments. Then my mother, who was not oblivious to my selfish mulings, took me aside and explained the terrible fate that had befallen our neighbors in words I could take to heart. She laid the worst guilt trip on me I have ever had in my life, and I deserved every bit of it. I also awakened that day to the sensitivity of others. I learned empathy that day, and sympathy. Not that these emotions have necessarily held fast and consistent over the years.

The next morning I took my new kickball over to Georgie's, and asked him to play, and it was popped on the third kick by the pyracantha bush, the Charlie Brown kite-eating tree of kickballers all over Savannah, the pyracantha being much beloved of sadistic parents thereabouts. But it was good.