I’ve had these times before, times when I had to make things happen out of seemingly nothing, times when no matter what I do, it’s just so hard.  I was younger then.  I was stronger then.  And I believed then that I was special.  I was raised to believe that, not in the give-everyone-a-trophy kind of way of modern-day, but in a way where I knew if I worked hard enough, anything was possible.  I believed if I never gave up, like ever, I could, I would, have that anything.  Like I said, I’m not new to this stuff-of-hard, and what I know from before, what worked then, was to tune out the noise, to just do.  The people who come with me, come, the people who don’t, don’t.  Always I miscalculate who will be there and who will not.  You think I’d learn to get that right, but I don’t, and I think perhaps that part hurts more than the actual hard time.  Some would say these times of hardship change us, but they don’t.  We do, well I do what I have to do, and then, when everything is calm, return to some other natural way of being.  I’d like to say that I’m better than that, that I learn and apply or grow, but always I tend back to my norm, then the hard times become only a story.  Those stories aside, what I forgot is that these times are some of the most special, ever, because in the calmness, in the stillness of those times when one just does, all you have is all you have.  And if you truly believe you are special, then you’ll wake up one day and actually be special.  On that day it will be over, the hard times will be over.  But until then, it seems so dark.  This time, this hard phase, is particularly dark.  It seems all I can see is the dark.  I forget what I am made of.  I forget where I came from.  And most importantly, I forget to believe I’m special.  That is especially true in the night.  That is my two o’clock in the morning, my four o’clock in the morning, my all-consuming thoughts of the night.  The dawn does come though, and I’m better in the day.  I know how to laugh.  I know how to sell it, even though it’s sometimes not easy on five hours of sleep because I cannot seem to sleep longer, not when it is still, not when it is so difficult.  If only I could have some relief from that.  If only I could truly believe in that same way I did when I was younger.  Or is it true what the world would have me believe?  Am I no longer special?

Christmas is coming.  That – a good night’s sleep – was on my list.  I asked for that as a symbol of a time to come, I hope, when the panic no longer remains to interfere with sleep, of a time when something special truly comes.  But I didn’t really have it in my heart.  I think I’m numb to it all now, to the pain, to the difficulties, to all of it.  I feel like it just gets worse and worse and darker and darker to the point where I want to stop trying.  So Christmas was not something I wanted to mark, not when I couldn’t even have a Christmas tree, not … this Christmas.  Yet I wrote a story about Christmas, about shopping for Christmas trees in my childhood, about making my list, about my childhood schemes to catch Santa Claus.  Even then, I intended to write a story simply asking everyone for their Christmas lists.  I didn’t intend to write the story about the rest, certainly not about my stealth missions to try to catch Santa Claus.  That story wrote itself, like it – the very act of trying to catch Santa – holds the key to my future, or perhaps holds the key to feeling the oh-so-important special.

Yesterday, I talked to my greatest childhood cohort, my brother.  I asked him if he remembered the stealth missions to catch Santa.  He asked, “hanging down on the stairs with mirrors trying to see into the living room through the stairs”?  Knowing he is a man of few words and that I wasn’t going to get him to recount all the details of the weekends’ rehearsals during the weeks before Christmas, I simply said “yes”.  He said “of course, I remember”.  He said something about our parents sitting in that living room.  He had a warm tone in his voice, so I was satisfied that I had happened upon one of those commonalities, one of those memories that because he was intimately involved in the years of those secret missions, needed no more elaboration beyond his palpably warm emotion as he spoke of our parents.  But I was left with … a want.  I want just one more secret mission.  I want to know if there might be something I forgot, something I might have seen in my youth that would mean something more now, something that will make me feel like I’m special, something that will make me feel special enough to make it out of this time.  But how do I do it?  Where do I start?  Am too adult to think of a scheme for the rehearsal?  And exactly how do I do my rehearsal?  Worse, I have no idea where in this house the magic will arrive, if in fact, there is such a thing.  In my youth, it was obvious where the magic was.  It was in the living room where Santa Claus left the presents.  And then, it was obvious how to make a plan: avoid the creaking floor spaces, use the mini flashlights obtained with cereal box tops, and only a mini light mind you, make our way to the stairs, hang upside down, use a mirror positioned towards the living room looking through the stair risers, and … wait.  That was the rehearsal, meticulously planned and executed.  And of course, on Christmas Eve, we’d do it all again, for real, this time wearing our white Christmas Eve nightgowns and pajamas, a costume to make it all special, that is, if we could stay awake.  Now, I have no parents to keep a watchfully preventive eye, well I have a dad, but he is far away, and not inclined to indulge my silly behavior any more.  Even my brother too lives far away to help me.  I’m not sure my sister could even remember.  She was too young.  I walk around my house, contemplating how to do this scheme, recognizing Santa himself isn’t coming, not to a grown-up.  This time, I’m searching for some other kind of magic, a kind of magic that will make me feel special, a different kind of magic that doesn’t have a face or wear a red suit.  But what is it?

Not knowing what it is I need to see, where to find it, nor even how to do this sort of a scheme anymore, I go about my tasks today, thinking that a way to do a nighttime rehearsal will come to me if I make my house a little bit more ready for Christmas.  Before today, I had placed little, cinnamon-scented pine cones in a crystal candy holder.  I strung lights on the roof line.  One string of lights is visible inside the house through a line of wooden-paned windows that form the Southeast side of my house with the view of the back side of the hill separating the canyon from the City.  I got a little payment today, a miracle really, and enough for a tree, the thing I wanted most on my real Christmas list.  I found a tree for twenty dollars.  It’s flocked.  The men at the lot realized my budget, and that the small trunk of my car would be suited for a particular tree, and saying the words chiquita and blanco, they produced this little, white tree that had been situated under about five large trees from the back of a white pick up.  The men were kind about it, all of us recognizing the tree was a bit pathetic.  After having rejected three larger, more expensive and more normal Christmas trees, I exclaimed that this tree was perfect, “pathetic and broken down, just like me”.  The older man would hear nothing of that and, in Spanish, went on about me with the word bella, or bonita or something close.  It’s warm today, and in accordance with that weather, my attire is a black dress, a faded black dress actually, a sundress of sorts with black lace for straps and a black ruffle on the bottom, and a black over-sweater that doesn’t quite stay on.  I’ve always liked black.  It makes me feel like a princess.  I know princesses are supposed to wear white, but black … I see them as wearing black.  I’m not sure when I first decided that, but I know it to be true, princesses wear black, and especially black lace.  A bella dress, the outfit for purchasing a less-than-perfect Christmas tree, an outfit for my rehearsal.

Once home, I took the tree out of the trunk of my car and found my white lights.  I set up the tree in the sitting room part of my bedroom and decorated it.  But that room wasn’t quite right.  Right now the sitting room is furnished with a long library table under which is situated some empty boxes, the product of work I have done to clean out papers from my old business, and three remaining boxes.  In those remaining boxes I have my childhood memories — papers, pictures, cards, little things.  I had a little time today, so I decided to transfer these little things, these memories into this wooden chest that will hold them in a safer state until I can get them sorted and into books.  The chest was in the kitchen, so I moved the chest to the sitting room, and sorted out the contents of the boxes, taking the time only to categorize and separate newspapers and clippings from photos from cards and letters, three distinct piles, which I placed in separate parts of the wooden chest.  Mixed in the boxes were a few trinkets — the keys to my lost-long first car, stolen away about three years after I first got it, some framed pictures, a small little doll, and … a little snow globe.  As a little girl, I loved snow globes, except it upset me to shake them because I didn’t want to cause a blizzard to the little people and the deer in that snow globe.  Nobody likes a blizzard.  I closed the chest, now containing these old pictures, newspaper clippings, cards, keys and the doll.  I placed the snow globe on the top of the chest.  It looks like Christmas.  The tree is on the other side of the chest next to the library table.  My bunny walked up and sat patiently next to all of this while I tied a red bow into his bunny bangs, a Pebbles bow.  I do so very much love hair decorations.

And that’s it.  The only rehearsal I can imagine: I’ll wait up, just a little, turn on all the Christmas lights, the outside lights, the lights of the Christmas tree that sits next to the wooden chest.  The lights will reflect against the wooden window panes that view the hill that separates my canyon from the City.  I’ll sit there with my bow-wearing bunny, and surely whatever is out there, whatever magic there is, if it exists, I will see there in that display.  Just before I go to sleep, I’ll walk to this place, this place I have in my bedroom so that I cannot be whisked away by a parent and miss it, and then wait … for a sign.  That will be my rehearsal tonight.

On Christmas Eve night, I’ll do it for real.