All I Want for Christmas
My mother and I email back and forth about Christmas.
I tell her Really no expectations but more ideas if you want them:
Then start a list:
Yellow queen-size jersey sheets
Winter jacket for Jessey
Snow boots size 7.5 women/5.5 boys (we are wearing the same size these days and can share the broken zipper ones and new ones)
AA rechargeable batteries (we seem to always need more)
An electric tea kettle
Dog jackets and booties
Animal water fountain
Somehow that last one felt luxurious enough for me to lean into untapped wants
I want a real fir tree cut down, filling our home with the freshness of forests in winter as if we are not in a climate crisis. Unless of course I can have a live tree growing up through the middle of our house with a firefighter pole sliding down beside it.
One of those outrageously expensive robot litter boxes
Someone to come every week to clean my house top to bottom and leave with dinner simmering
on the stove
A 3D printer capable of building a slide from my parent’s house to ours. From California to here. From my sisters to me
A year to write a book like it’s my job
A best friend for Jessey that lives on our block
A Chill Pill for when I get really wound up
A giant box of Stover’s chocolate for my Nana to open one last time
For my father to tell me as a tween that I can tell him anything and for me open my mouth
A bike trip with my mother where we ride down the southeastern coast again like that is our life
A space in time where it was okay to mix up whose drink was whose at a party and hug
A trampoline in my parent’s yard with nothing but time to jump until it’s dinnertime
An afternoon at the lake swimming with my sisters
A tutoring session in the basement of that woman’s house who called candy brain food and even
though I hated it I also felt more accomplished after every session
One of Uncle Jim’s stories and to get to go to his funeral
A day at the beach with Jessey, where he loses track of time, where each scoop of sand sifted
between his fingers brings him back into a world richer than Minecraft
Sleep so deep I wake up unsure, for a moment, where I am
For my father to tell me he loves me bigger than the world and feel it
To walk in the Oakland Hills one more time with my old dog and watch her zip up and down the
ridge
To play What’s That Sound with three-year-old Avi as a cat behind the kitchen door
Jessey’s handprint in a playdough ornament that weighs down a branch and crumbles over the
years.
How about an overnight done up the way Eloise would have it or the family in Home Alone 2:
Lost in New York — I’m talking a king suite at the Plaza with a Christmas tree inside our living
surrounded by packages from F.A.O Schwarz, a personal chocolate fountain and a jacuzzi tub
and room service where I never see a bill.
That’s all I want for Christmas. Please and thank you.
