Romeo and Juliet

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Oh, I know.  It's only July.  Not quite still a fresh and new year, but not quite over and done with, either.  It's that month in the calendar of 12 where, officially, it's not smack-dab in the middle of the year like it is in June, which gives us the summer solstice.  By now, the heat is sweltering for so many and welcomed by a mere few.  Back-to-school planning and shopping commence.  People stop mowing their lawns because the grass turns crunchy and brown from the very same sunshine which grew it up several inches taller than normal just a few months before.  Why, National Ice Cream Day happens every year on July 21, a day that, if you are bold, you can ask for extra samples at Braum's and not feel at all judged about doing so. And let us not forget about Christmas in July.  

In the southern hemisphere, winter falls in July.  Therefore, in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, in order to have Christmas with a winter feel, Christmas in July events are undertaken.  Here in America, which borrows from this concept readily (greedily, even!) when it comes to marketing and bottom lines, mid-year sales on new cars mimic the usual end-of-year December sales pitches usually seen on television or heard on the airways come mid-December, only in July salesmen don Tommy Bahama shirts and khaki shorts and accent their alohas with red Santa hats rimmed in white.  A haze of animated snow falls over the television screen.  Jingling sleigh bells are sprinkled right in.  Canned, of course, just like bad ham.  

Amid the scorching summer months, people miss the gift giving and the jollies elicited by commercial holidays of a capitalist nation. They are excited by the idea of Christmas in July, and once again people here buy things they often cannot afford.  

I have gotten lots of wonderful Christmas presents in my life. I suppose I'm typical in remembering most strongly the gifts of childhood: the time I got what seemed like a thousand outfits for my Cabbage Patch doll who now sits naked on the floor of my bedroom, the time I got a red velvet purse festooned with pearls, and a matching hat, which I wore with great pride to school as a buck-toothed and freckly first grader.  Also, the time I got the handmade doll from my GrandMaud I called Hope, whom I still have.  But the other day I got another wonderful gift...and it's not even really Christmas. 

Let me tell you about it.

I awakened Sunday morning to the sleepy gaze of my furry friend, Cookie, who'd gotten up on the bed during the night and was stretched out across my legs, comfortable, with her head on a pillow which somehow found its way to the wrong end of the bed.  And yes, when I opened my eyes, there were hers.  It made me laugh out loud, which made her felt-like ears twitch. 

I came into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee, caramel-flavored, and then sat down to check email.  The apartment was ice cold, I remember it vividly, and how cold was my nose!  It's freezing in here, I thought, and I imagined it starting to snow.  In my mind's eye, it was the kind of snow that looked like someone had torn up lace, and it drifted down slowly and beautifully for hours.  Yes, it was THAT cold in here!  I figured the kids would be slow to stir on a "cold" Sunday morning.  Good, I decided.  A little more time to myself.  I sipped from my coffee mug, one of a pair of light blue-green celadon in color.  The set had been an earlier gift from the same man much earlier in the year, or quite possibly late last year, of course I do not remember.  He does that, This Guy.  Little gifts, tokens of friendship or fidelity, it's hard for me to know sometimes but speaks intimately to me nonetheless.  Reading material he happens upon during his days that he passes along to me via US Mail, stickers from controversial events he attends, funny and thoughtful greeting cards.  Small Dollar Tree goodies for the kids and bath goodies for me.  That's how he is...selfless and huge-hearted, seeming always to think of others.  

After I finished poring over my electronic mail, I sat back to consider the last year of my life, and then went back even further to the years before.  I remembered back to a dream I had about Christmas as a child of about 8 or 9.  In that dream, I had gone with my mother not to the mall but to downtown small town America to get some shopping done, and it had really snowed earlier in the day.  In my dream, my mother hadn't died yet, and coming down the street we saw a sleigh being pulled by a team of horses wearing jingle bells.  The sleigh had wheels, which was a good thing, given that the snow hadn't stuck. I must have really been sleeping hard, because outside one store was a group of carolers wearing old fashioned clothes: hoop skirts and bonnets for the women, top hat and tails for the men, singing "Fa la la la la," just like the little people displayed in a miniature tabletop village at Dillard's and The Christmas Store itself!  When we finally emerged from another store, there was Santa, wishing me a Merry Christmas. "Merry Christmas," I said back shyly, and in that moment I still kind of believed in him. (I have to tell you I was devastated when I learned there was no Santa. Shattered. I remember sitting out on the curb knee to knee with my best neighborhood friend Ramie, saying, "Well, maybe there's no Santa Claus, but there is definitely an Easter Bunny. No one would make THAT up!" And she set her mouth defiantly and said, "Yeah!").  

My first year in college at Friends, my roommate and I went to a concert that featured singing by our nationally regaled collegiate choir, The Singing Quakers.  There were several sing-alongs of popular Christmas songs, and ballet dancing by young, strong women wearing white tutus, a kind of personification of innocence.  Even if these women would deny being innocent, even if they would resent being called innocent, that is how they looked.  There was  also, wonderfully, a reading of E.E. Cummings' Little Tree.  This concert was a fundraiser, and in the lobby there were gingerbread cookies lying on a paper plate, ginger men and ginger ladies, so many it looked like a small nation, and they were only five dollars. What a deal! I bought them before the concert started and brought them in with Reagan and me so they could hear, too. I sat behind some teenage girls, and one was fooling around with the another's hair the whole time, carefully laying this strand over that and the effect was really very relaxing. It reminded me of my second grade friend Erica (well, we called her Erica Miss America, which she absolutely hated and I am sorry to say I still feel ashamed for calling her a name that displeased her) who used to pay her little sister a quarter to mess around with her hair--gently! 

After the concert, Reagan and I went to a holiday party where we knew almost no one, but enjoyed a friendly chat and some wonderful food and an excellent Dr. Pepper I found extra fizzy, superior in its own right and which I drank from a plastic glass featuring a holly and berry design.  I remember that night getting back to the dormitory, Fry Hall, and packing my basket of toiletries down the long corridor to the community bathrooms for my shower.  However did we survive in those days without private suites and baths and cell phones like these kids today are afforded?!  One washer and one dryer stood in a small room at the end of the hall if you weren't fortunate enough to have a home to retreat to on the weekends to refuel and regroup and refresh your basics.  Fifty cents a load and sometimes free detergent if the person before you left some behind out of either generosity or hurry away from the mundane, take your pick. 
 
When I went to bed that night, I realized I'd had a perfect day.  Joy lay on my chest like a cat. Good thing it wasn't a real cat back then, because animals in the dorms were against the rules unless you were Lacey Neptune, who had a private room and a ferret and starred on the Lady Falcons basketball team. She and her long blonde ponytail and her stowaway ferret hailed from Texas.  Lacey was the type of girl small hometowns threw parades for upon her seldom-during-basketball-season returns. Maybe that's why I strongly dislike parades, and I'm so sorry to say it, but I do.  Parades are nothing but a one-sided celebration of something that only matters for the persons benefiting from it.  Whether you're in the crowd catching the candy or atop one of the floats like the plastic and fixed and too-perfect  figures on the highest tier of a wedding cake, parades don't matter much unless you are the focal point or unless you're hoarding the goodies as fast as they are being tossed out.  

But.

My gift the other day, my very own Christmas in July?  It was a heavy cardboard thing shaped into a hollow book, a kind of understated, romanticized hide-out for small treasures that have no place else to go. The print is Parisian and flowery, muted in color, with postcard reprints of the Eiffel Tower and of the Arc de Triomphe,  I have a hard time figuring out if I love the gift itself the most or if I love that there is a man in my life who listens to me and knows me and does what he can to make me sure I am aware that he sees who am, the real me.  Not Mom Liz.  Not Work Liz.  Not the once-was Dance Hall Liz, and not Student Newspaper Liz.  Instead, to him I am Elizabeth.  I am amazed at how astute  his perceptions are of himself, of me, of the world, and of where he wants to be and what he chooses to do with his mind, his heart, his time.  I feel a deep gratitude for This Man and for the depths of our conversations, for the sincerity of the time we spend laughing.  We have been friends since 2003 or 2004, I can't remember of course...but I think it was 2004.  Quite awhile in dog, ferret, cat, and human years, and every time I am with him or talk to him I feel my spirit soar.  I only wish I had known all those years ago just how insightful and thoughtful and considerate he is.  I wish I had taken a chance all those years ago instead of pawning him off onto someone I worked with at the time.  I wish I had known how unbiased he is.  How interesting he is to listen to and how interested he is in learning as much as he can, every day.  How well-traveled and fair.  How he always seems to know what to say and what not to say, and how he tends to reserve judgment or at least not say everything that comes to him at the exact moment he thinks it.  How passionate about football and justice for the underdog and the greater good he is.  I appreciate that he strives to keep connections with the interesting and wonderful people he grew up with.  I value that he has a strong connection to his family.  I pretty much think it's the best thing ever when he tells stories of his parents and how, if we are on the telephone together I can hear him smiling as he speaks.  To be with him in person when he recounts these tales, I see and silently salute the smile in his eyes.  On so many levels, I  respect the person that he is.  The gift he gave me on Sunday probably doesn't mean as much to him as it does to me, but I know I will keep it forever as a tangible reminder of this very blessed time in our lives.  Something to hold in my hands and open up to stare at whatever mementos are chosen to be kept inside.  He must've known it would be something I would love and cherish, and he couldn't've been more right.  A most perfect Christmas in July present indeed.  

Merry Christmas in July to all who don't mind hearing it.  May the rest of the year bring up hope, happiness, and a measure of sanity to the goings-on in the northern and southern hemispheres and our homes and relationships and chaotic lives alike..