Convenient Store Christmas

We arrived at the most ill-placed-for-foot-traffic convenience store that you ever did see. I ran through its sluggish doors. Among the six of us, there was twenty dollars. We would each need to miracle ourselves two gifts: one for Secret Santa and the other for the Grab Bag. I knew right away what I would get.

When I was four, my mother handed me seven smackeroonies. Eager to shop like a big girl, my older brother and I braved cold concrete Chicago. I found a palm small, heart-shaped box in Humboldt park. Every upward thrust of its blackened red top hummed out the first few measures of "Für Elise." Salvaged from a house fire, it was still over budget even with Jacobs' share. The white-haired pawn shop owner with a shiny gold wedding ring and worn ostrich smile took pity on us. He threw an extra something my brother’s way for his sacrifice.

Twenty years later, my mother gives the box away. It was too kitschy for her tastes. But on the eve of our convenience store Christmas, it was kismet that I should produce another perfect gift for Mommy. Three thanksgivings, two relocations, and one wheelchair sentence since, it was important that this gift restore some light in her hazel eyes. LemonHead’s, it had to be LemonHead’s.

Mommy would devour whole lemons, dipping their wet fibrous insides into pink salt after zesting their rinds into tea. My grandmother swore her obsession for the especially sour citrus started in grade school. She and her peer’s, in awe, would pucker than ease their mouths into smiles as the pebble hard candy softened and grew sweet. We rummaged through isles in search of the yellow and blue box as Papa and the twins crawled in and out of bargain bins.

Jacob, unlike the rest of us, was disgruntled by our financial woes and found our grandmother's celebratory efforts unsavory. He sang of prosperous times when Mommy worked two jobs, not because she had too, but because she could not be stopped. She worked as if there was a clock set to ring out chaotic alarm beeps at any moment. When it had, like in a game of musical chairs, she won a seat – turned out it was a permanent spot. Jacob chose to donate his three dollars and thirty-three cents to the group's tax. Affronted by his poor mood, I struggled to appreciate his contribution. I saw only a whiny teenager, soon to start a tumultuous first semester at college, far away.

At the checkout, we made sincere attempts to hide our gifts and half-heartedly averted our eyes from each other’s pockets. I trembled in my seat all the way home, much to the chagrin of my sister Susanna, (the youngest twin) who sat in my lap. Visions of my mother, so pleased she could walk, exploded on the sea's horizon as we crossed the bridge onto the dirt-filled roads of our little town.

Grandmother placed a hand over her eyes and thrust out the other before we could cut gentle steps up the un-railed stairs to our home. We looked both ways, our gifts released into the bag she held only when the coast was clear. Satisfied by the weight of it, she jostled the contents around a few times. “Go upstairs and wrap your other presents with newspaper. Yesterdays, not todays,” she said as she wobbled and wiggled the downstairs storm weathered door open. “Tell your mother I’ll be right up in a minute.”

Mommy was sitting at the table with our neighbor, her best friend, Mary. Mary was, and I do believe is, married in heaven to Santa. A beautiful spirit, she made generous purchases in the final legs of her life. More valuable, she gave words of wisdom and quick hugs with a lifetime worth of comfort in them. I feel their heat in low moments, all these years later. “How did it go?” she asked when I sprung in through the screened entry, right after Jacob.

“Perfect,” I beamed with teeth big and small.

Pallid, Mommy nursed a steam filled mug that competed with the heavy humidity in the air. It was no colder in the tropics at Christmas then it was on quiet summer nights in the City. I was scared she would scald her tongue again and she read the worry on my small brown face at a glance. A cough or a chuckle escaped her chest and she moved to trap it, stopped, and gave me a gentle nod.

“I’m okay. Mommy is strong, remember?”

I shook and looked away. A month earlier, our house needed some electrical work so the power was cut. I had wrapped one of my cold lamps in a blanket. With the restoration of light came a fire that froze me in place. Mommy had been asleep. My little brother, John had jumped her awake in the smoke-filled room, a shout for every bounce. “Fire, fire, fire!” Mommy catapulted into her chair, rolled to the back porch, and lifted up an eight-gallon pale of water to douse the flames. Luck restricted the damage to Susanna’s and my shared room, and my mothers’ hands.

Guilt is a funny little turtle. Rough on the outside, soft within its shell. Like my mother, almost. My mother lifted the mug and I huffed, “I’m sorry mommy.”

The cup paused, midair. Mommy's eyes widened and Mary shifted in her seat. Mary reached out a hand to me and pulled me on top of her knees. I could make eye contact with my long torso mother this way. I pulled the box of LemonHead’s held behind my back, like crossed fingers caught in a lie, out into the open. “I hope you like it,” I said, crestfallen by her silence.

Mary squeezed my shoulders and my mother’s cup knocked on the laminate table. She picked up the box and pulled one melted white ball apart from a yellow one and dropped them both in her mug.

“It’s perfect.”

***

Today, my daughter Mary plays with the kitschy red box, her eyes alight with every start of its song. My mother handed her the naked present as she swept into the threshold with only a cane to aid her, despite the overstated odds of several stubborn physicians.

Jacob calls from the airport convenience store, “I’m taking requests. I’m already grabbing mom's lemon heads now.”

Susanna and John sit before a fireplace that is always warm but has never been lit because its presence makes little since here in the tropics, though it is pretty to look at.

My grandmother and grandfather’s ever smiling faces rest above it, home with me always – felt in spirit more than ever with us all at Christmas.