It is Christmas Day; I am in the Big Top for the moment, which is what we call the little apartment above the garage that I use when I am here in the Northland. It has some great memories and was Dad’s last great project, when he could still do things.
 
It will rapidly become uninhabitable for reasons I will get to presently, so I am enjoying this last pot of coffee up here alone as another poignant moment this trip.
 
I trudged over after dinner to shovel out the steps that lead up the exterior deck. There I found the wheel of baby Swiss cheese that I had sent weeks ago laid carefully next to the back door. It was still in the plastic delivery bag and it looked all right, despite being outside for a while. Made me wonder what people think. Why deliver to the garage when there is a perfectly good house right next to it?
 
The lights of the Ambivalent Santa blazed out from the roof of the regional hospital to help me as I shoveled. It is a big illuminated display that the staff commissioned years ago to serve as a beacon to those in town, and in the little resort towns across the dark bay. I am sure it was intended to be jolly, but the look in the eyes on the old elf carries a distinctly maniacal tinge.

Judge for yourself; maybe I am oversensitive this year, but I have always felt that way.
 
That is the image that looms over the Big Top for the month between Thanksgiving and the New Year.
 
The Sly Santa.
 
I slept hard, as I hope you did, thought I hope your body was not aching from being curled up in a car the last two days.
 
I was ready for the Holiday, though Mom and Dad are struggling a bit since my last visit ninety days ago. My brother and sister have been here since, so we are doing what we can, but still, the darkness and the gray snow weighs on my spirit.
 
I went down into blackness, and stayed there until I awoke in the dark. It is timeless here at the 45th parallel, and the sun does not appear until mid-morning. I got up, to see what time it might be on this Christmas morning, the celebration of what is good and right in this world.

Damn.
 
That is precisely what I said when I stepped onto the mat in the bathroom and it squished wet through my sock. Damn.
 
Lights on, fast. The water heater seemed to have failed overnight. I had fired it up late yesterday and it appeared to have failed sometime in the small hours of the night, when Santa was supposed to arrive.
 
I mopped frantically with the shower towels, shut it down, and heaved the cut-off lever to cut the water. Maybe it will work, it is dry enough where I mopped, and now all that remains is to replace the thing on Christmas Day.
 
Ugh.
 
I don’t mean to leave another problem here; the point is to take care of the problems that have cropped up since the last visit and I am not doing so well on that.
 
How can they continue to live here in this place, in the harsh winter? It is so nice in the summer, and so hard when the winter comes.
 
Mom broke her printer again. The business model of the bastards in the industry is to give you the device for virtually nothing, and then sell you the ink at vast and continuing profit. Mom was making one of her books, this one a history of the Antique Club, and naturally ran through the black ink. She replaced the cartridge by jamming new ones into the bowels of the thing, which is not where they go. It took me a while to figure it out last time, but I did, and we talked about it extensively. When I opened the device, there they were again, jammed in the wrong place.
 
It is always the same thing. I come here and spend hours trying to make incompatible technology, pieced together by a succession of kids, and all purchased at the cheapest possible price, work together in seamless electronic harmony.
 
It never works out, and Mom predictably ignores the intricate solutions.
 
It reminds me of the last conversation I had with my Grandmother, a sharp and quite lovely lady in her time. We stood on the porch of her little stucco house in Massilon, Ohio, my small sons sleeping in the van. The rain was coming down, soaking the postage-stamp lawn. It was her last year in that house of memory, or close to it.
 
“Do you think we should bring the children in?” she said earnestly.
 
“No, Grandma. We will just let them sleep until they wake up. I’ll keep an eye on them. They will be fine.”
 
She considered that for a moment, gravely, and asked: “Do you think we should bring the children in?”
 
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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