Santa has had his back turned to me for months. We were renovating, and I had to heave him, his torn cardboard box, and a bunch of fake snow and evergreens from the closet where they once hid for 11 months of the year. They saw daylight in December. Sometimes they would stay out long enough to see New Year's, but that prompted panic in all of us.

He sits with his red shoulders hunched and his ruddy face and knit cap angled away. Mold or dirt or something gross from the basement is discoloring the powder-white tufted hem of his coat. Little kids would not like this filthy, sullen Santa at all. They would not think of gum drops. They would think he is an asshole. I thought he was an asshole a few times, until I realized he lived in imaginations, stories, and dreams. As I got older I understood that I had to blame myself if I did not get what I wanted.

I remember Jerry's daughter as a little girl with a magic marker and a shiny catalogue. As she circled everything she saw I told Jerry, this is no good. No good.

She was young enough to forget the hundreds of things she had surrounded with black indelible rings. Christmas morning was always terrific. A year or so later she was more specific. The lists started. In perfect penmanship and with many erasures and underlines, we received for mailing a letter to Santa. If she only knew he would end up a dejected and soiled thing perched on a box as water flooded through the basement.

Jerry and I were having a normal day until we unfolded Erica's list. Long. Very long.

Again, I told Jerry, not good.

He said, Erica, that's too much for Santa. He has all your friends and all the kids in your school and all the other kids everywhere to worry about. Pick just a few very important things that you really want.

We soon read through the abbreviated list. Jerry even said, Uh Oh.

I tried to explain: Erica, you still have 20 things here. Santa can't know what is most important to you, and he probably can't give you all of these things. What if he picks a few things, but they are not really what you want? I think she understood this. I think she started to believe that Santa was a sham and an asshole for it. In other words, she was growing up and would soon see through the fairytale gauze of childhood. The other side of growing up has been good for her. Replacing Santa is her father, and he is wonderful and better than Santa anyway. Some of us, like me, step through that thin mist as childhood clears and The Rest Of Our Lives begins, and struggle. I have not made it safely through my teens yet, and I am 38.

Today I am going to pretend that rotten fat Santa is not sitting with me here in the basement, smirking. I saw a high school friend's father today who said, I was at Dan's house over the weekend and we looked at his yearbook. I saw you! You look the same!

Hiding my face at first, I peeked out and said, that's good, right? Then I drove back to work in tears, remembering the many things that I thought were possible when I was 17. Santa is such an asshole.

___________________________

For fun, I asked Google, who will I marry?

Then I took a quiz that asked me to agree or disagree with prompts including: showers are for stupid people, you used to or still do throw rocks at animals, your love life is sad, you love the smell of wood, most of your friends are hobos…

My answer? You'll live in a tree house with your husband (or wife) in the jungle. Your kids will be like Tarzan. That's about it, I guess.

Lily thinks that Google is useless. While I took the quiz she had jumped in my lap, licked my neck, whined, and tried to stop me.