Deja Vu Doo

I’ve always been one of those people who never forgets a face. If only I could as consistently remember the names that went with them. Sometimes I do. Once when I was in my early twenties, I saw a man and his girlfriend in the parking lot of an apartment building. “Aren’t you Warner Fox who came to Knollwood grammar school in the third grade?” I asked him. “Yes,” he answered with a look of amazement. “We were in Mrs. Smith’s class together,” I told him. He was amazed.

But here’s the thing. If I fix a name to someone that seems to suit them better, I literally cannot get it out of my mind. Jack and I lived next to a very nice older couple when we were first married, and though the man’s name was Ray, I persisted in calling him Neil. I tried and tried, apologized and apologized. Eventually, he began to answer to Neil. The human brain is a strange device and in my case, a sometimes torturous one.

For example, I put out sunflower seeds every day for the squirrels and birds—I never get it why people want squirrel-proof feeders. I’m an equal opportunity sunflower seeder, so much so that the squirrels put their little paws on the glass of our back doors and peer in if I’m late for lunch. Anyway, I’m putting out the sunflower seeds that David says I’m pouring out like little lines of cocaine—hmm—and all of a sudden, I notice that my tried-and-true sunflowers are mixed with little white birdseed pellets. I don’t like this and say so. David doesn’t understand the problem.

“The birds can eat both and the squirrels can eat the sunflower seeds,” he tells me.

Long a person who doesn’t like chips in cookies or nuts in brownies, I explain that now the birds have to pick out their stuff or mix it up and the squirrels as well. “Now it’s just annoying for everybody!” I say.

“It must be really difficult living in that head of yours,” says David. He has no idea. Obviously, I have digressed but this whole blather actually does have some thread of relativity which is about how our minds work or don’t.

Today, Jack and I were in Sam’s, the giant-portion store, and during Christmas rush no less, when I looked up and locked eyes with an Asian woman some twenty feet away. We both immediately smiled, waved vigorously, and yelled over the din of the crowd, “Hello! Hello!” We were both very happy to see each other, but as I wheeled my cart closer to her, I could tell by her expression that we were both in the same predicament. As I passed her, we both said, “How are you?!” then as if by unspoken agreement, neither of us answered but just kept on truckin’.

“Who was that?” Jack asked.

“I have absolutely no idea,” I replied.

Maybe this hectic world makes our synapses jump when we see a familiar face in an unfamiliar setting. Now if I could only match a familiar setting with the face. (She might be doing the same thing right now.) Or maybe people knew one another in completely different lives and in some strange warp their elliptical paths cross over in a grocery store, or on the street, and sometimes they notice and sometimes they don’t.

In any case . . . weird.

My Thought Process

My sister Jennifer looks at the decoration--calling it that is a stretch--on my dining room table. On either side of a blue vase with some glittery stuff in it, I have placed my very expensive Publix Mrs. Santa salt shaker next to my Publix Mr. Snowman. On the other side is Santa with Mrs. Snowman (or is that Ms. Snowwoman?)

"So why did you split up the couples?" Jennifer asks.

"Because the Clauses have been in a box together all year and so have the Snow couple and they're sick to death of each other!" I explain.

"I knew you had thought that out," says Jennifer, nodding her head.

Christmas Redux

Every year, I plan a great holiday season, probably because I love Christmas. But every year, that season comes faster and lasts a shorter amount of time. As a kid, I remember being shocked when I discovered that Christmas came once a year. In my childhood timeframe, it seemed that it only came every five years, and at random. Now, with my only child grown, the season has this eerie, duplicitous quality of arriving and ending very quickly with its latent, sad spirit hinting that it might never come again.

Jack scrolled through the television onscreen menu the other night and chose the “Frosty the Snowman” cartoon. I have some nostalgia for certain seasonal shows, but this one is a particularly cheesy attempt to add more plot to a basic song, along with a sleazy and completely fabricated magician. Plus the animation is flat and cheap. We sat there and glared at it for about 20 minutes before I asked, “Is there some reason we’re watching this?”

Jack said, “I thought you liked it.”

“Nope.”

“Thank God.”

I guess it might be a sad commentary that the traditional festive movie for my son and I is “The Ref,” with Dennis Leary, so tonight, once again the empty nester and grass widow, I tried to watch “White Christmas.” Suspending disbelief is getting tougher and tougher, I discovered. For example, for years I’ve been trying to convince myself that Rosemary Clooney was attractive enough to land Bing Crosby, only to finally admit that she had a better chance with My Friend Flicka. Then, while Bing croons about counting his blessings, I have to struggle to snuff out visions of him drunkenly beating and berating his kids.

I can’t remember the name of the “sister” in the movie, the one with the incredibly pointy breasts, but when she tells Danny Kaye that he’s witty, handsome, and gay, I have to say, “Well three’s a charm.” I watched a Christmas television movie with Linda Hamilton this weekend that was so astoundingly schmaltzy that I stayed with it just for the shock factor.

Tonight I spent an hour on the phone with my Mom who wants assistance ordering television trays online for my sister. I tell her there are over two million hits for same. As I read her one description that fits her quite distinct specifications, she asks me if there are any other choices. Unfortunately for me, only one million, nine hundred and ninety-nine more options!

It’s the end of the year, and suddenly I’ve got work—lots of it, just as I planned for some official down time. Go figure. Maybe if I get a chance, I’ll do a holiday puzzle. Possibly that will get that old piney smell, pretty lights, magical feeling going. I doubt it.

Okay, so I stopped blathering about this subject long enough to watch (with tears welling) the scene where all the military men gather in Vermont to sing “We’ll follow the old man, wherever he wants to go . . .” to the old defunct general. I guess I feel the same way about Santa.