Jones and I are standing on the sidewalk and I am asking him about his dream from the previous night.

What was it about, Jones? 
Santa.
What was he doing?
He was bringing presents.
Did you get to open any?
Yes! There were chocolate eggs, and inside of them was apple juice!

It was packed with children, as you might expect, but still, it remained a sweet and manageable excursion. Jones was an explosion of excitement, running from one tank to the next, his finger pointing, his face animated by the most desperate urgency, “Look, look, mommydaddy, look!!” And a fish would glide mysteriously past, unaware of this constructed universe in which it lived. A world not quite of this world, beautiful and narcotic, it manifested around us like the dream it most surely was. And then we came upon the eels, and something in them sent a shudder into Jones’ soul and he was done with the aquatic for the day. “No more fish,” he yelled, running off to the Christmas tree in the foyer, to the decorative presents beneath, certain in his heart that each one contained a universe constructed for him alone.

Jones wakes up early from a nightmare.

“Hulk was fighting Spiderman and it made me upset and I cried.”

His heart so pure and simple, still so light.

Outside, it is just starting to snow. As I push the stroller up the street tiny snowflakes hit our faces. Impossibly intricate worlds dissolving upon contact. And Jones is happy, his tongue out, trying to catch them all. Joy now, all residue of his nightmare obliterated. The rest of us, the adults, we can travel decades, lifetimes with ours.

A woman passes smartly by. She is fresh, ready for work, for whatever might emerge into her day. This is the best version of herself that she is offering the world, everything still immaculate and hopeful at this hour. She smiles when she sees us, her lipstick perfectly red, perfectly expensive. And Jones points past her at a Santa Claus that sits on a roof, and beneath there is a large sun room attached to the house. Inside there are two nuns, both of them wearing African dresses, all golds and browns and bright white teeth. They are decorating for Christmas and they are happy, smiling and chatting with one another as they hang tinsel from a tree. It was as if somebody were saying, “Here, I give you beauty.” And to see this moment, to imagine the journeys that brought these women to this sweet, almost invisible point in time was a gift that had been laid in our path. Like light flaring unexpectedly before us, an encouragement for this, and all the days to follow.

A cold morning.

The wind down the empty street invigorating, almost inspiring– a reminder that we are of this world, and not the other. Such deep in the bones gratitude in these moments. The day still brand new, still a kind of wilderness. A field of potential stretching endlessly before us. Jones sucks on a green lollipop. His favourite colour on account of the Hulk, the creature his three year old body most yearns for, and above us the sky is changing. The clouds tumbling. The blue of the sky often indistinguishable from the overcast grey, and all around us the stripped trees and withered vegetation. Jones wants to know where all the leaves have gone, and as I am explaining he sees a tree in a yard that’s been decorated for Christmas. He points and shouts, describing the colours and shapes like the miracles they are. And as we look up and through the tree, a cloudbank rolls away from the sun and for a moment we are struck blind by the radiance, and for the rest of our journey ghost lights flicker before us like answered prayers.

Our son Jones is almost two and a half years old, and he is positively electrified by the creatures.

The idea of them are the current that runs through his body. His sun and moon. His east and west. They are spinning and shining and thumping and roaring through his days, they are everything he wants his universe to be. And so, on a cold morning in the disorienting limbo between Christmas and New Year’s, we took him to the Royal Ontario Museum.

Standing there as we entered, Jones twisting in his jacket to get free from my grip and and run to the “BIG DINOSAUR!”, I was hoping that my son might grow to love museums. I imagined him retreating into them over the course of his life the way he might a lake, emerging nourished and restored after each encounter. Sanctuaries of rich, wide spaces and cool tile. All the marvels of history respectfully arrayed before him, and always, he would have the sense of being somewhere else, a place just outside of time, and of being suspended right before a great mystery that was both his life and not his life.

And then he spun free and ran out into the great hall.

He was just so excited.

He tore from one wonder to the next, identifying each one as best he could. It was astounding to watch. He was a fever. A pinball. A waterfall. A million monkeys typing. I swear to you that he was glowing, he really was.

Watching, I wondered why our children, all so innocent and vulnerable, were attracted to the creatures we consider the most terrible and dangerous? Why run into the jaws of a dinosaur? Why the darkness? And all of the parents there, each one smiling through whatever weight it was their burden to carry, were likely pondering some variant of the same question as they watched their miracles of light streak so beautifully through the museum.

Dear Santa:

I hope you enjoy your protein shake for your long journey.

I would like to know what it’s like to be Santa Claus.

1. Is it fun to fly?
2. Do you like being in charge of your elves?
3. Do you like delivering presents to children?
4. What’s your favourite hobby?
5. What do you do over the weekend?
6. Do you ever think of moving to a sunny place?
7. Do you go on vacation?
8. What’s your birthday?
9. Do you deliver presents to pets?
10. Do you have a pet?

Love,

Talullah from LA

Dear Talullah:

You should know that Santa is very grateful to you for leaving him a protein shake. You are a very sweet girl. Unfortunately, Santa is very lactose intolerant and suffers acute gastric distress whenever he has a protein shake, so he had to give it to Dasher, his lead reindeer, who is a bit of a hippy and really very experimental in his tastes. Last year Dasher tried Ayahuasca– saw serpents and had diarrhea for two days.

Santa isn’t sure how that “blessed” him with “spiritual advancement,” but whatever.

Santa will now try to answer all your questions!

1. It is NOT fun to fly. It is VERY dangerous, especially with all the drones terrorizing the skies! Santa is only able to do it if he gets gassed up and takes his medication: 3mg of Ativan and a magic gummy.
2. Santa is not in charge of the elves! Santa and the elves work as a team, functioning as a single unit without any hierarchy! Also, the elves are very well compensated for the work they do and the netting that surround Santa’s toy factory are NOT suicide nets like those at all the Apple factories in China! Also, any rumours you heard about elf slavery or elf sex slavery are not true! That’s fake news!
3. Santa has had worse jobs. Working at a poultry farm, for instance.
4. For hobbies Santa really enjoys Cosplay, voyeurism and experimenting with surveillance equipment.
5. On the weekends Santa usually just chills and watches Netflix with the wife. Highly recommends Mindhunter.
6. It is amazing to Santa how ill-informed people are! Little girls like you, Talullah, just live in little electronic silos, never learning anything you don’t already believe! Let Santa assure you, there is plenty of sun in the North Pole!
7. We have been to Mar-a-Lago a number of times. Just the best. Saw Melania changing into her bikini once. Not bad at all.
8. Santa will only tell you that he is a Leo with Pisces ascendent.
9. No. Santa would throw-up if he ever even saw a chicken again.
10. Several elves and a turtle.

Upstairs at the bar there’s an unrelenting press of people. So many of them. Jostling together excitedly, they’re all hopeful on this festive night out, each one wanting to feel special in some regard, each one waiting for their life to pivot. Unshaven Bros in sports toques and ball caps, beta predators who only move in packs of two and threes, are looking over at a cluster of Friday night women worrying their phones. Men are pushed up against the bar three deep, each one competing for something.

The bartender is at the centre of it all.

Although completely overwhelmed, she’s working calmly through the chaos. Surrounded on all sides by some sort of want, she makes a millions subtle calculations with each one of her actions. Each person is a problem that must be solved, a fire that must be extinguished. Her face determined, she moves fluidly and with purpose, and all the men encircling her at the bar with their steaks and Keg-sized glasses of red wine, are watching.

A man around 60 leans in. Everyone is leaning in, trying to flag her attention. This man, he’s lived his life handsome, and the confident residue of that lingers within him still, “Can I be next?” he asks in a salesman’s voice. The bartender forces a smile and takes his order, and all the other men waiting stiffen a little, jealous.

He is pleased with himself, this man. He feels special.

When she returns, he leans in yet further, “That tattoo on your right forearm, the roman numerals, are they from your favourite Shakespeare passage? Are you an actress?”

It is not clear that she is flattered by this attention, but she gives a partial, evasive answer.

“It’s a date,” she says, giving the man a polite, discouraging smile. Gesturing to how busy she is, she moves to disengage and tend to other preening, signalling men, but this man was not finished. “This is my favourite passage,” he began, and then in his best Shakespearian accent:

“If music be the food of love, play on.

Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die…”

And she is trapped, so trapped she is almost suspended in air.

Her eyes close for just a moment, as if it is all too much, and then she reanimates herself and begins to applaud robustly, cutting the man’s recitation short. It was as if a battle had been won, and she got to keep the secret of the tattoo– something so important, so crucial to who she wanted to be, that she had it written into her flesh–for herself.

As many of you know, I’ve been engaged in a running feud with Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood for quite some time now.

Typically, the landscape for this war has been social media and chance encounters in our shared neighbourhood of Toronto, but about a month or so ago my mother

turned up the weird by writing Atwood a letter of apology on behalf of my family (  http://michaelmurray.ca/my-mothers-letter-to-margaret-atwood ), as I had refused to so so myself. After a few weeks had passed without my mother getting a response, she wrote to Atwood again:

*****************************************

Nov, 9, 2017

Dear Ms. Atwood:

Hi, how are you?

I am fine, but oh, my sinuses were just awful last week! I don’t know what it was, maybe a change in the barometric pressure or the wind, but honest to Betsy, I just wanted to climb under a rock and die! Even chewing gum was excruciating! It’s at such times when you really need a friend– just so you know that people care and that they’re grateful for all the little things you do for them, like sending hand-sanitizer because you don’t want them to pick up a nasty sinus bug like you did. By the way, did you get the hand-sanitizer I sent to you? I hope so, but you never know with the post office!

Have you got all your Christmas shopping done? I don’t even know where to begin, I’m still trying to catch up on all my cards from last year!

Oh, I think I hear Frito meowing!

That can only mean one thing—he wants his dinner, so I better go!

Yours sincerely,

Barb Murray

PS: In case you did’t know, you can now get a flu shot at Shopper’s so you don’t have to go through all the bother of going to a doctor’s office!

Nov, 13, 2017

Dear Ms. Atwood:

I know that you are a very important person and are probably very busy with your various hobbies and commitments, but that’s still no excuse for being rude! I don’t know how you were raised or what sort of morals you Hollywood types have, but where I come from you write a thank-you note if somebody sends you some hand-sanitizer. It’s just common decency.

I hope you remembered to buy a poppy this Remembrance Day. My father fought in WW II.

In the trenches. There was no hand-sanitizer there. Just death and foot disease. But my father endured all that hardship to help make the world safe for people like you, so I hope you always keep in mind the sacrifices he made for you.

I have been thinking a little more about my son’s behaviour toward you. It’s true that Michael has his issues, but I always taught him to be considerate. If you drop him off at a bar,  he will thank you, and if he gets a present, you can be sure he will send a thank-you note to the person who sent him the hand-sanitizer. Sometimes when he’s tired or anxious or hasn’t been attending his low carb support group meetings, he can get very crabby, so it’s crucial for him, and all of us, to maintain our routines (especially regular BM’s!) and get plenty of sleep.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,

Barb Murray

PS: I have included an article that I clipped from the paper that I thought you might be interested in on Vitamin D. It’s very important that we get enough of it, especially in winter. Osteoporosis is a silent killer. I was a nurse, so I know.

PPS: Did you get many trick-or-treaters for Halloween? We only got two, and they were both teenage girls! And the way they were dressed, my Lord! I thought I should be handing out clothes instead of candy!

PPS: Do you have any children or were you barren?

They all appear so wealthy and beautiful. Dressed crisply in black and plugged into their iPhones, they move swiftly and with such confident purpose that they seem visitors to this world—weightless, as if they might flicker in the dusk and then simply vanish. But the men who carried all of their possessions in hockey bags on their backs, who had decades of anger and disappointment burned into their features, they seemed weighted and permanent, and they stared like fires at these people streaming by.

Rocks left on the banks of a great river.

**************************

To get around the city I now need to use supplemental oxygen, which means I always have a tank on my back with tubing that leads to my nasal passages. In the stores, some people give me tight, warm smiles, the sort of smiles you see more in the eyes than on the lips. “There but for the grace of God, go I,” these smiles say. And of course, other people notice nothing at all, seeing just a form amongst other forms.

A couple, the only customers at La Hacienda, sat at a big, glowing window table.

She looked wary, as if a naturally defensive manner was built into her character. On the TV show of her life she would have been the sarcastic one, the one who always lived on love’s periphery. He was leaning in toward her, having made his body expansive and noticeable in effort to conceal his verbal insecurity, his fear that he was actually boring. And she was leaning away, as if she couldn’t believe she’d ben trapped by Jerome and his stupid man bun, and while he was talking she was actually composing the story she would tell her friends about this encounter later on, but still, there they were. Just the two of them glowing in their youth, glowing in the dark, glowing like a Christmas display in a window, and I wanted to yell at them, to shake them, “Damn it, fall in love, create a story that will last generations!” 

On the street I was trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab. After about 15 minutes a young, college kid in a hoodie showed up beside me. He was so fresh-faced. His smile a simple, uncomplicated thing, his eyes clear. He wanted to get a cab for me. He wanted to run blocks to find one. He wanted to kick through the slush and snow and bring this good deed home to me. He wanted to find the lost dog, he wanted to clear a path for everybody in need, to be that light in the dark, that thing you remember when you think of Christmas.

***************************************************************

Me: Oh.

Me: I didn’t know you were getting a massage.

Me: I thought you were at the Dufferin Mall trying to improve our phone plans.

Me: Sure was off with that one!

Me: Well, I hope the massage is doing the trick, anyway!

Me: Awesome. You really do deserve to have a “tender yet forceful experience that lifts you out of your body and punishes you in all the right places.”

Me: What’s the masseuses name again? Yana? Didn’t she used to be a hot Russian long jumper before some sort of sex scandal? 

Me: Pierre?

Me: He’s your masseuse?

Me: I thought he was your power skating coach.

Me: Both, eh? That’s a little weird.

Me: I see.

Me: He’s a renaissance man.

Me: I do too know what that means.

Me: It means he’s a douche.

Me: You know he lied about being in the NHL, eh?

Me: That’s something sacred, you don’t lie about stuff like that!

Me: Oh, he was in the German league then.

Me: Not. The. Same. Thing. 

Me: Like playing in Peewee.

Me: I would dominate that stupid league.

Me: Whatever.

Me: Whatever.

Me: You did what?

Me: Look, my Fantasy Baseball Stats file is private.

Me: I have no idea why you found a bunch of racy photographs of Kristen Stewart in there.

Me: Not a clue.

Me: Maybe Jones put them there.

Me: Really? That’s the stupidest thing you ever heard?

Me: Look, I’m not stupid just because I failed math a bunch of times.

Me: Or French.

Me: Or any other subject!

Me: I’m Alt-Smart.

Me: No, it’s different than being “special.”

Me: You’re being a bully.

Me: You are not a safe space!

Me: Look, look, why are we fighting? It’s Christmas!

Me: Sure.

Me: Of course I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping!

Me: I’m no rookie.

Me: Practically done.

Me: You and Pierre wanted tickets to that Pentatonix concert, right?

Me: Or was it the travelling version of The Price is Right?

Me: Maybe I’ll get you two both!

Me: Yes.

Me: Wow, that would be great!

Me: I had no idea they made Kristen Stewart sex dolls!

Me: What do you mean, “That’s not what my Internet history says?”

Me: Well, I don’t know.

Me: Must have been some mistake.

Me: Maybe the baby sitter was looking up Kristen Stewart sex dolls? How would I know!?

Me: Also, maybe my account was hacked by a Russian?

Me: Well, I’m a pretty important writer.

Me: The Russians know that if they attribute something to me it will have great influence on the public.

Me: They’re smart, the Russians.

Me: You ever see them play hockey? So very clever!

Me: I did not think that Aleppo was a type of dog food two months ago!

Me: I’m pretty keyed in to world events. Always have been.

Me: I have always stood with Syria.

Me: Sure I did.

Me: I gave away that old bathroom scale to a Syrian refugee family.

Me: Well, yes.

Me: The organizer never did come to pick it up, but that’s on her!

Me: She’s the one who doesn’t care about Syrians, not me!

Me: I care about their weight, about how they adapt to the North American diet!

Me: Don’t want them to get diabetes!

Me: Sorry?

Me: Why did I text and interrupt your massage?

Me: I don’t remember.

Me: Oh, now I remember!

Me: If the last three women on the planet were you, Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence, I would choose you.

Me: Yes, I am very sweet.

Me: I love you, too, see you soon! xoxo