Holidays In the Family That's Left of Center

by Jamie Freveletti

Well, we're well into the holiday season now and if you're like me you're starting to wonder just how you ended up a member of the family that you are. I always think, do other families have these issues? Or is it just mine?

It starts with the Christmas tree. My family is spread out over the country, and I used to grab my husband and kids and drag them to Miami Beach over Christmas. It was a logical idea, because from there we'd continue south to the Caribbean for a week. One year, after landing, I went to my mother's house for a quick reconnaissance to determine what holiday decorations we needed. She had what I fully expected: a fake white Christmas tree.

My mother always had a fake white Christmas tree. I grew up in a middle class suburb of Chicago, where the men were steel workers and bus drivers and the women stayed home and raised a minimum of four children. These families had green trees and you'd best believe those trees were real. They had colored lights and the usual popcorn strands, tinsel, etc. Could we have that? Oh no. My mother was a jazz singer, the only divorced woman on the block, and she was raising her four children with a white Christmas tree with...pink lights and pink ornaments.

I'm not kidding. Our tree was a fake white beast with pink lights and matching ornaments. To this day I can't figure out where she got those rose colored italian lights. We kids just rolled our eyes, because the tree was not our main focus, the gifts were, and we were so used to being different that a white tree with pink bulbs was the least of our worries.

But this latest tree in Miami Beach was so lame that even I couldn't see how I was going to convince my kids that this was actually meant to be a Christmas tree. It didn't even attempt to look real. It was kind of a modern, spindly thing, about four feet high, cut in a perfect cone shape, with a rope around it that glowed white. I suppose the rope was to imitate actual Christmas lights, but who knows who knows what the designers were thinking?

It was as though they'd smoked pot and thought, "whoa, stringing real lights might be a lot of work! Let's just use a glow rope and call it a day."

I called in my husband for a consultation. He's been married for a while now, and so knows enough not to say, "What the hell is wrong with your family?" but instead he just took one look at the tree and said, "Guess we'd better go shopping."

I dare anyone to try to find a Christmas tree in Miami Beach on the day before Christmas Eve. There we were, driving from department store lot to department store lot, coming up empty every time. The kids were in the back playing on their handhelds and every so often glancing up to determine if we were in a Home Depot lot or a Toys R Us, which was what they were pushing for. During this time it occurred to me that my kids might be the same as I was at that age, and the actual shape, configuration, and color of the tree would be unimportant as long as gifts were to be placed under it. I turned to my husband and said, "Let's just buy a fake tree--a green one with the lights attached, and my Mom can use it year after year."

The howls that emitted from the back seat were deafening. Both were so upset, I had to double check that these were the same children who'd been completely uninterested the minute before. I turned to my husband for support.

"Isn't that a good idea? We don't cut a living tree down?"

Surprisingly, he nixed the entire idea.

"I'm not buying a fake Christmas tree. I refuse," he said, sounding a lot like our offspring in the back seat. I sighed and spotted a Kmart in the distance.

"Fine. But I'm losing my faith that we'll ever find a tree."

We pulled up to the Kmart lot, and looked around. There, far in the corner, was a pickup truck with a green tree on the ground next it. We walked up and the Spanish speaking owner indicated with signs--neither my husband nor I could speak Spanish,--that he was down to the last one and he was willing to give it to us for half price. The tree was tightly wrapped with rope (real, not a fake lighted one) and looked pretty sad, lying on the ground. We bought it and the seller threw in a stand, probably in a moment of holiday spirit and because he felt sorry for us and our sad little tree, and off we went.

Once it was unwrapped, watered and the branches fell, the tree was pretty good looking. The kids decorated it and we added some colored lights and tinsel. Christmas was saved. To this day, though, every year, when we go to buy our tree for our own home-we no longer fly down to Miami until after--the kids tell their father, "Remember when you saved us from Mom's idea of buying a fake tree?"

Like mother like daughter.

Happy Holidays!

Another Turn of the Screw

by Michael Dymmoch

This is the time of year when the media have human interest stories revolving around Christmas themes—home for the holidays, secret Santas, gold coins in the bucket. Some publication reruns Royko’s famous “Mary and Joe, Chicago Style" (Chicago Daily News, Dec. 19, 1967). TV news reports the theft of Christmas by real grinches. Channel 5 reruns It’s a wonderful Life. This year, I stumbled into my own Yule season story. Only it’s more like the “Turn of the Screw” than “A Christmas Carol.”

It started when I was approached in front of the AMC Theater by a diffident young man with a South Shore Metra schedule in hand. His red hair and beard made me think of my mother, whose always been partial to red-heads. “Excuse me,” he said. “Could you help me?”

I stopped. He looked lost and a little depressed, and I’m used to giving directions to tourists.

"I’m trying to get home for Christmas. My mother told me I’d be more likely to get help from a woman.”

OK. That sounded like something I might tell my son—only I’d add that a woman might be more likely to be scared of a strange male asking for help. This kid didn’t look scary.

“I have to get to the South Shore station at Michigan and Roosevelt,” he told me.

Easy enough. I pointed toward Michigan. “Just go up to Michigan Avenue and take a bus to Roosevelt.”

“I can’t. My wallet was stolen. They took my student ID, credit cards, everything.”

“Then you need a policeman.” I looked around—never a cop in sight when you need one.

“No, I’ve been to the cops. They gave me this....”

He shoved another paper at me. I didn’t look closely, but at a glance it was a...

“...Police report. But that’s all they could do. I need to get to the station by four o’clock or I’ll miss my train.”

Ah. It was either a scheme to scam me out of train fare or a real hard luck story. I couldn’t tell which. So many panhandlers accost us with sad tales that city dwellers are pretty much inured to hard luck stories. But his story was plausible. And what the heck. I’m willing to plunk down $25 in a bookstore for a good yarn, why not bus fare for a line I haven’t heard before? I gave the kid $2 and said, “This’ll get you to Michigan and Roosevelt.”

“But I don’t have money for the train. I just need $44 to get home, $18 to get to South Bend and $26 for the bus from there to Evansville.”

“Can’t you ask your folks to send it to you?”

“They can’t. That’s just the thing. They won’t wire you money if you don’t have an ID.”

I hadn’t thought of that. But I wasn’t going to give him $44 even if I'd had it.

“OK,” I said, “Let’s go to the station.” I figured I could buy him a Metra ticket with my credit card and he’d be that much closer to home. And maybe his fellow Hoosiers’d be willing to front him the difference.

He followed me back to the steps leading up to Michigan Ave, and took the lead crossing it to get to the bus stop, ignoring the don’t walk signs and signaling a bus driver to let us on even though we weren’t at a proper stop. As we rode south, He explained that he’d come from school on a train and had fallen asleep, waking up at 71st street without his money and IDs.

When the bus driver called the South Shore stop at Michigan and Randolph, my new young friend told me he wasn’t going to go in there because he’d been there earlier, begging for help, and he’d been told by a cop to leave or be arrested for panhandling. We stayed on the bus.

At this point, the needle on my bullshit meter was flopping in the red, but I wanted to see how the drama would play out. When we finally got off the bus, the young man led the way to the Metra station. Climbing snow-covered steps and following him down onto the enclosed platform, I wondered if what I was doing was sane, never-mind safe. But there were other travelers around, and I really wanted to see how far things would go.

The end was anti-climax. The Metra station ticket dispenser wouldn’t accept credit cards--something I find amazing, since you can even pay for parking with credit cards these days. Unable to buy the kid a ticket out of town (which he wouldn’t be able to use or return if he was just scamming me), I broke down and gave him what cash I had ($9) and wished him luck.

He said he’d go back to Michigan Avenue and try his luck with other passersby.

I noticed, however, that he didn’t stay on Michigan, but kept going west. So I was left thinking he may be just a scammer with a better than average line. If he was scamming me, he’d worked really hard for my $9. And I got a story out of it.

But what are people to do when they get robbed in a strange city and can’t prove their identity? What would I do under the circumstances? What would you do?