My kids still believe in Santa.
At seven and ten, they are both beyond the age I was when I asked my mom if Santa was God (I had analysed the logistics; any other scenario was impossible) and she dumped the E! True Hollywood Story: St Nick on me. But I’m in no hurry for them to learn the truth. For them, the magic is still alive–and for me, this is everything.
And who knows how long before it runs out? Before they realise that there’s no way that many houses can be covered in a single night; before they figure out the creepiness of some fairy collecting teeth (though I’ve amended that one for them, telling them that dentists–even former ones–have a special arrangement with the Tooth Fairy in which we get to keep said teeth. Not creepy at all), before a big-ass bunny breaking into their house in the middle of the night to deliver eggs sounds more crime than cute.
We’re feeling a few lasts around here of a different nature, too. Yesterday we went to the water slides with some friends and upon leaving, kid hugs were exchanged all around with Little Brother sighing as we got into the car, “I’ll miss my friends while we’re gone.”
And when we pulled up to our house, The Kid remarked that it was our last Wednesday here before leaving for America. For my part, I count down the last time we’ll view each Christmas movie this year; my last trip to the godforsaken mall to pick up something I forgot; the last swim I had this morning at my favourite harbour beach; my last run tomorrow morning; our last full day and night at home with Kevin the Dog before he’s shuttled off to spend time with friends.
This time of year always feels fraught to me, with the sentimental becoming monumental. Especially when a cumbersome trip across the world (to our Covid-stricken homeland, no less) waits in the wings, with its associated pre-trip drive-through tests and their lines and waits, and the airport experience (minus lounge, as a friend recently warned me; THE HORROR!). We’re going? But also, we might not? If we test positive? And if we get there, we’re definitely coming back in a few weeks? Unless we don’t, because we test positive there? There is knowing, and a lot of not knowing. There is faith, and hope, and they are both different things and the same, separate and inextricably part of each other.
And there is a lot of doing, which I do not excel at because it implies a certainty I don’t feel, with my sphincter so tight I could shit diamonds, the anxiety coursing through me alongside the carols. I pushed through the waves this morning, thinking about how I will return to these waters, then hoping it wouldn’t be via a plane crashing into them or my American-bullet-and-Covid-ridden ashes being scattered across them. Thank you for coming to this reading of My Current Fears!
Then I reached the end of my swim, and I did that thing where I float on the water for a few seconds to remind myself that, as Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr proved, hope floats. That I am held. That I have not been undone, been sunk, by all the uncertainty, which is really just a cynical word for mystery, which is itself another word for magic. I emerged from the water and watched as yet another couple–must be the third in as many days–held their baby just above the surface and dipped its toes in. The baby cried, as they always do, and the parents smiled, as they always do, and I saw myself there: suspended over the unknown that will become the known, crying though I’m held there by love. I can’t have my shoulders raised in anxiety and shrugged in surrender at the same time, so I try to choose the latter, trusting that there is beauty in all the not knowing.