Christmas, Bloody Christmas

Single digit countdown to Christmas. I'm listening to this Marlon Brando documentary... I forgot about the kidnapping of his son Christian, the troubling path he took... his struggles with substance, his eventual early death.  I can't help thinking of parallels with Nick Reiner. Something about sons... the way Marlon intended to keep his free from the abuse and poor handling he had experienced by his own parents. 

When we were kids my sister's boyfriend lived next to the Reiner family; I remember playing there, watching them get in the car and drive away.  We loved Christmas even though we never got anything we asked for. My father liked Macy's.  He'd pick something out that he thought suited us girls-- ice skates, some strange walkie-talkie toy that didn't work well-- a home badminton set... nothing extravagant. Every year I wished for a horse. I would keep it in the garage and ride it to school. One year my father planned a trip to a dude ranch. My cowgirl fantasies were on fire, but it was cancelled.  Someone died... or my father drank too much and had another episode.  It was a pattern-- the disappointment, the broken promises.

Families like the Reiners-- they looked happy. Carl made little jokes. My father never made jokes to the children. The prelude to Christmas was filled with activity-- Glasswax stencils on the windows-- chains and beads for decor... cookie-baking, our stockings hanging, rows of greeting cards lining the fireplace. Making things for my family-- using whatever I had to buy something and wrapping it.  My father always seemed miserable-- even Christmas morning... whatever he got, it was all meaningless although he seemed to like the holiday breakfast; we had rolled pancakes and he had coffee.

There were some good things... our housekeeper understood me-- she'd collect lengths of yarn and wind them on spools.  I loved this present, in a homemade box. I'd make lanyards and ropes; sometimes she'd give me scraps and rags and I'd make doll clothing-- tiny quilts. My aunt gave me a book.  She was a teacher and it was always a good one.

I bought my son unusual toys-- solid things like wooden trains and small building sets.  Shapes-- things from museums. I remembered wanting some stuffed toy with a rubber face-- a Yogi bear maybe. One waited for these things.  Months of longing and mostly disappointment. A doll made of a clothespin consoled me. My son had this reindeer made from a sock. It was everything... at night he sang to it in his baby language-- held it right up to his face. 

We give birth to a miracle creature-- a blank canvas. We swear we'll keep them safe and pure. I tried my hardest to be an intentional parent.  I listened, I explained, I watched. Still... at some point, somewhere, my son behaved badly.  He was angry-- he was rebellious and rude. Where does this come from?  One spends years of hours going over and over one's mistakes.

One Christmas I was breaking up with a boyfriend who put slutty underwear and one set of dishes under our tree. I could not decipher the meaning of these.  In a mood, I took my son downtown and we sat in a diner on Ninth Avenue drinking cocoa, listening to cheap Christmas loop-tapes, waiting for our musician friends to wake up in the dark afternoon and join us. A cop came out of the bar across the street.  We heard a gunshot and in seconds he was lying there in the road. It was his own gun. My son saw nothing except the slew of NYPD cars that converged with what seemed like seconds; he had a little toy police car and it was thrilling for him. At least I think so. I wrote a song called Christmas Lights. It was the epitome of a black Christmas. 

Still... I swore I'd never break a promise, and I haven't.  Not to him, anyway. There was a time when he was so ruthless to me he threatened to slit my throat.  He was a teenager... he was angry at me, at his life. We as parents would do anything.  At that moment... what scared me was not that I would die-- that was meaningless-- but that he would ruin his own life as a murderer without parole.

The irony of the Reiner's son tragedy: all they cared about, I assume-- was that their son would not sabotage himself-- that he'd be saved-- safe.  I would have sacrificed anything-- money, my life... to set mine straight. He's good... but there is no guarantee.  There are good times and bad times. Once we wreck ourselves the scars open up and bleed at times. Here these struggling parents-- and as they say one is only as happy as one's least happy child-- gave their very lives-- everything they had-- and their son is ruined. Drugs ruin people.. so do bad experiences and the reasons people begin to anesthetize themselves.  I dated a few addicts; watching me wrap gifts way back my stepmother commented: 'Give him a carton of vodka-- that's all he wants.' The substance is not what they really want, but what they need.  It replaces the issue, it disguises the wound. Who knows what bothers these boys? Who knows what bothered my son? I was frantic some nights waiting for a phonecall and that only made it worse. The news that he had been arrested felt like good news. At least he was alive.

Christmas morning marks the birth of the baby Jesus who was marked for tragedy. There is no parallel here except the suffering of parents. The Reiners are no longer here to grieve for their son's tragic life. Marlon, with all that talent and crazy love for his first-born, was unable to prevent the spiraling. Me-- my son seems to thrive although I will surely disappoint him at Christmas.  I can't possibly fathom what it is he really needs, although I am pretty sure I gave him the essentials, that he outgrew his teenage angst and attraction to the bad-boy narrative-- that he is a solid man and has a moral backbone. It's a twisted Christmas story and we're all a little battered and torn this year. There is no closure, nor happy ending. The world goes on... Christmas will be over... I will remember good and bad ones.  We usually can't get what we want but try to remember the many who do not get what they need. There will be deaths, births, flashing lights and choirs of angels... and there will be next year, for those of us who remain to mourn the ones that do not.  Amen.