Essays

Every year, when the stresses of the holiday season begin whipping up into frenzy, I weather them by imagining that I’m roaming around the world described in the Dylan Thomas story “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”: the magic of winter, the mysteries surrounding older family members, and the odd flexes of time when normal schedules are suspended.

For years, I imagined how much fuller my life would be if I could strike up a tune at a party, if I had the secret knowledge of music that every one of my friends seemed to have acquired. I felt that something was missing, something that made me a bit inferior to everyone I knew.

I am drawn to the homes of famous writers like a wayfaring pilgrim on a lifelong literary crusade. Somehow, I manage to talk my patient husband into going along for the ride. But he doesn’t really mind. He has seen what these nerdy excursions mean to me.

He appeared at my threshold late one night, uninvited: Cactus Man, a ceramic figure in biker regalia, planted with a suggestive succulent. What began as a gag gift from my Ultimate Frisbee teammates grew into an outrageous ritual that, for our little tribe, came to embody the Christmas spirit.

I knew what it was instantly. Even shrouded beneath a bedsheet, the shape was undisguisable.