Sunday, April 17, 2011
I wanna hold your hand. @ 8:09 PM
I never believed in Santa Claus.
None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford expensive presents, and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus. So they told us all about how other kids were deceived by their parents, how all the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by little elves wearing bell caps in their workshop at the North Pole actually had labels on them saying made in Japan.
"Try not to look down on these children." Mom said. "It's not their fault that they've been brainwashed into believing silly myths."
We celebrated Christmas, but usually about a week after December 25, when you could find perfectly good bows and wrapping paper that people had thrown away and Christmas trees discarded on the roadside that still had most of their needles and even some silver tinsel hanging on them. Mom and Dad would give us a bag of marbles or a doll or a slingshot that had been marked way down in an after-Christmas sale.
Dad lost his job at the gypsum mine after getting in an arguement with the foreman, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each of us kids out to the desert night one by one. I had a blanket wrapped around me, and when it was my turn, I offered to share it with Dad, but he said no thanks. The cold never bothered him. I was five that year and I sat next to dad and we looked up at the sky. Dad loved to talk about the stars. He explained to us how they rotated through the night sky as the earth turned. He taught us to identify the constellations and how to navigate by the North Star. Those shining stars he liked to point out, were on of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks he's say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air were so polluted, they couldn't even see the stars. We'd have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.
"Pick out your favourite star," Dad said that night. He told me I could have it for keeps. He said it was my Christmas present.
"You can't give me a star!" I said. "No one owns the stars"
"Thats right," Dad said. "No one else owns them, you just have to claim it before anyone else does. Just like that dago fellow Columbus claimed America for Queen Isabella. Claiming a star as your own has ever bit as much logic to it."
I thought about it and realized Dad was right. He was always figuring out things like that.
I could have any star I wanted, Dad said, except Betelgeuse and Rigel, because Lori and Brain had already laid claim to them.
I looked up at the stars and tried to figure out which one was the best one. You could see hundreds, maybe thousands or even millions, twinkling in the clear desert sky. The longer you looked, the more your eyes adjusted to the dark, the more stars you'd see, layer after layer of them gradually becoming visible. There was one in particular, in the west above the mountains but low in the sky, that shone more brightly than all the rest.
"I want that one," I said.
Dad Grinned. "That's Venus," he said. Venus was only a planet, he went on, and pretty dinky compared to real stars. She looked bigger and brighter because she was much closer than the stars. Poor old Venus didn't even make her own light, Dad said. She shone only from reflected light. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant, and stars twinkled because their light pulsed.
"I like it anyway," I said. I had admired Venus even before Christmas. You could see it in the early evening, glowing on the western horizon, and if you got up early, you could even see it in the morning, after all the stars had disappeared.
"What the hell," Dad said. "It's Christmas. You can have a planet if you want."
And he gave me Venus.
This was from a book a read. This book really think a lot. I don't want to make my blog seem like a nerd site, so I'll just write about this passage. Daddies are supposed to make their little girls feel loved. Feel precious. Feel protected. Money isn't everything. Heck, she got fucking Venus. Sometimes it's just proof of what you mean to her. Nope. No little present. He gave her fucking Venus. Call her naive, or anything you want. I'm going to call her loved, I'm going to call her happy. Sometimes our parents forget what are the important things in life when society and money blinds them. They forget all children ever want is love.
By the way, today's blog post title isn't just a random one. Glee fans should know. And damn, I love Kurt. Goodnight readers. My tests are coming up, hope all of you have a good rest tonight :)
