A Christmas Story

 

I walked into my twelve year daughter’s room; the lights were turned off and a pale, watery moon, plastered on lazy winter sky peeped in through the shades, casting haphazard silver shadows on the wall and on my daughter’s bed.

 

She lay buried somewhere under the covers and her thin frame didn’t stand out in the darkness. I stared deep and hard at her bed while my eyes meekly adjusted to the gloomy ambience that smelt of pain. I wonder where that came from.

 

‘Honey,’ I called out in the darkness and I settled onto the side of her bed. My hand crawling all over the covers to seek out her face and touch its smooth contours.

 

‘Sweetheart,’ I called out again.

 

Suddenly, like ET in a marriage hall, a disheveled head peeps out from under the covers, from the wrong side of the bed. In the darkness, I can hardly make out the shape of her face and she looks almost comical, scarily comical.

 

‘Mama,’ she croaks and digs her head deep into the covers again.

 

I sense there is something wrong but I can’t be sure unless she tells me. And I’m not too sure if my daughter wants to tell me everything that happens in her life, any longer. Admitted, we’re close but these days I see her eyes furtively crawl across the breadth of my face; two judging eyes assessing me, gauging how much they can trust or cannot.

 

I guess the time has come when I need to befriend my child more than mother her. And understand that this is the most difficult time in a mother’s life.

 

And they told me carrying your child inside you was tough! Maybe their kids never grew into teens!

 

 

I run my hand across the breath of her Power Girls cover and tickle her smooth white feet. She shuffles and makes a three sixty degree turn and plunks her head on my lap. She snorts and a pitiful wail escapes her mouth as my fingers knead her back and reach for her face.

 

‘Guy trouble?’ I ask her gently, my fingers making small circles on her taut neck.

She snorts again. Her chest puffs with an unknown rage and then falls again.

 

She begins sobbing.

 

‘And that dork decides me to give me the best Christmas gift ever by dumping me!’ she wails into my lap. He voice coming out into short throaty gasps.

 

I suppress a smile. Twelve and she’s already hitched and dumped!

Sometimes its fun to be a modern mum who’s been there and done that! Wonder what fun my mother missed out on!

 

‘Oh!’ I counter. Perfect!

Now the thin thread of trust oscillates between uncertainty and complete surrender and suddenly the child decides that the mother is a deserving soundboard.

 

And there it comes crashing down, the poison, the vent, the outburst.

 

‘Oh yes! And it wasn’t like it was my idea that I wanted to go out with him in the first place! He suggested it! And when I had told all my friends and counted on becoming famous by being the first girl in seventh grade to get hitched, there I land up being the most infamous ever seventh grader to have gotten dumped three days into ‘relationship’! Mama! I’m ruined!’

 

It’s shameful but I can’t help smiling at the inanity of it all; Twelve year old lips ranting about ‘relationships’ and mourning about being ‘ruined’. I wonder when was it that the extra terrestrials took over this planet and injected our kids with some mutant genome that turned them into tasteless adults as soon as they touched 11!

 

‘Oh!’ I mouth pitifully again. ‘But what bought on this err… sudden change of mind?’

 

Her head suddenly shoots up and two wild eyes stare at me in the dark. What are they thinking, assessing? That do I mock at her? Should I have bitten my tongue and continued kneading her neck?

 

I hastily continue, ‘So, what happened kid?’

 

She shakes her disgruntled head and plunks back on my lap and continues, ‘That jerk! Said his friends started calling him names and said it was uncool to be hitched like when you’re twelve. And wham! He dumps. What else?’

 

I’m surprised. It is that easy there days.

Guess the astonishment writ in bold on my face that she said exasperatedly, ‘What else did you expect Mama? Some complicated pseudo relationship glitches where one partner doesn’t give the other enough space! Shessh! Will you oldsters ever understand! I’m hardly even thirteen!’

 

 

I think a part of me has left this room and flown away to a different time; frozen somewhere under layers of memories that are covered with the grime of time and the vagaries of indifference.

 

My daughter waits for me to respond to her sullen admonishment but I’m not really here. Not now.

 

‘So,’ I say, ‘mussing her tenderly while I my eyes stare deep into the darkened room, ‘so it hurts sweety, doesn’t it?’

 

She doesn’t respond but merely nods her head meekly in agreement.

 

Suddenly I feel a rush of tenderness fill my chest and I draw my little baby close to me. Suddenly, that day doesn’t seem too far, when she will pack her bags and eagerly wait for me to dump her into the cruel world outside. She will not know how my heart will break each time she will smile and wave me goodbye. She doesn’t know. But then she doesn’t have to.

 

‘It the curse of the heart that loves.’

 

Remember?

 

‘Baby,’ I ask her, ‘do you want me to tell you a story?’

 

She stares at me like I’m ET and she’s the Princess from the bowels of Earth. After all her mom hasn’t ever offered to tell her a story before today!

Her eyes gauge my face for tell tale signs of insanity but finding none she shrugs off and decides to go ahead with the offer.

 

‘What the hell,’ her eyes remark, ‘it can hurt hearing a story from a first timer storyteller Mom! Infact, it might even turn out to be fun!’

 

‘Yea, sure Mom!’ she says and snuggles deeper into my lap, her chin raised and her eyes full of anticipation.

 

‘Okay’ I say and I jump into the torrent of memories threatening to explode behind my eyes.

 

 

Once upon a time, there was a very beautiful girl with lovely grey eyes. She was a golden girl. Well, every one said she was and she believed it! And everyone had a good reason to say so too, for truly, a golden girl she was.

 

This girl was the apple of her daddy’s eye and her mother doted on her like she was her religion. This girl was pretty with auburn hair and sparkling eyes like a playful grey sea. She was chirpy and happy and wherever she used to go people used to call her ‘sunshine’. She had many friends and everyone wanted to stay around her because this girl used to bring life and happiness where ever she used to go. She was a meritorious student and she never had to bother too much about studying because she was naturally gifted.

 

Now let us call this girl Ally, the golden girl.

 

As Ally grew up she realized that she was the most important person wherever she went. She was loved and wanted by everyone and all her friends treated her as a very special princess.

 

However, as Ally grew up, her innocent charm began to turn into something else. It went unnoticed by other for Ally was so genuinely vibrant, but somewhere deep inside her, something began to change in Ally and she started to become vain. But Golden Girls have the right to be vain, don’t they?

 

So along with being beautiful, vibrant and intelligent, Ally also became vain. She started believing that all the love and adoration she received was her right and not her privilege. You see, it wasn’t really her fault. Ally had never known rejection!

 

And like it happens with all the lucky girls out there in the world, even when she was vain and authoritative, Ally was loved, admired and pined for.

 

When Ally was eighteen, every guy in her college was crazy about her. Every day Ally was besieged with proposals from handsome, ruddy, intelligent young men to accompany her to crazy parties; to have fun and to freak out. But Ally never used to care much about them. After all, she knew that she had the power over all of them! And never for a second did she want to give any of them, the power over her!

 

So this chase went on. Ally and her friends used to have wild fun at the expense of lovelorn young boys whole used to chase Ally like love sick puppies while Ally mussed their hair in mock affection and walked on.

 

But till then Ally hadn’t met Gau… err… let’s call him Gary.

 

Gary was the official nerd of the college. He was a slim bespectacled guy with a sharp brain and a dumb, welleverythingelse. There was a rumor that Gary was born out of the mother board of a computer and not a human womb!

 

Yes, thatmuch of a geek.

 

Now it so happened that Gary fell in love with Ally. Nothing surprising there is it? But there was a catch. As much as Gary loved Ally, he never really approached Ally like other guys used to do. In fact, Gary was content with watching Ally from a distance and dropping off anonymous bunch of wild flowers on her door step.

 

But it’s been a wicked world forever. The rumor was rife about Ally’s secret admirer and soon someone spotted Gary at Ally doorstep and the news reached Ally. Now, all of Ally’s girlfriend’s [many of whom were Oh! So very jealous of her] began filling Ally’s head with weird machinating challenges.

 

In fact, they almost made her feel that Gary was the first ever guy who wasn’t going gaga over Ally and was giving her an equal fight! And as vain as Ally was, she fell for the worst trap of her life!

 

It was the season of love and gifts, another Christmas Eve when Ally’s friend challenged her to propose Gary. You see, till then, Ally had never proposed to any guy, rather, she had only been proposed to by guys!

 

As sporty as she was, Ally accepted the challenge. Now how difficult would that be when Gary was already in love with Ally!

 

But unknown to Ally, there was a grave problem awaiting her. One of her wicked friends had let on Gary about the impending wager. And of course, Ally wasn’t aware of this.

 

I… err… Ally could never forget that cool Christmas eve; beneath that giant oak by Church of Our Lady of Eternal Grace, stood Gary and Ally. Ally was done up to her best and looked ravishing. Gary, well, he looked like always did. Uncomfortable.

 

Ally walked closer to Gary with stars shining in her eyes and she stretched her hand to hold Gary’s hand and her mouth opened to say something when Gary said, ‘Ally, I know why you’re doing this. I understand. You don’t love me but I do! So please don’t lie!’

 

Ally froze.

 

‘You see,’ he continued in his tell tale discomfiture, ‘I never wanted you to love me in return. You didn’t have to. You see its Christmas, a season of love and giving. And I want to give you something. I know how much your reputation depends on this one evening and I’m willing to tell to anyone who asks that I said yes to your proposal. No one needs to know what we know. After all, it’s the curse of the heart that loves!’

 

And saying this Gary walked off. Didn’t turn around even once but then he would have never wanted to see his golden girl stand their pale and ashen.

 

 

There are tears in my eyes and my daughter had tears stains all over her face.

He not-so-chubby hands wipe the tears off my face as she said, ‘Mama, Gary isn’t daddy!’

 

‘No sweetheart, Gary isn’t daddy.’

 

‘But you’re the golden girl Mama.’

 

‘Yes,’ I whispered.

 

‘Where is Gau… err…? Gary now Mama?’

 

‘I don’t know sweety.’

 

 

We both held each other as the hallowed night spread around us like heavenly magic. The season of giving was at its best.

 

‘Getting dumped isn’t all that bad Mama.’ my baby said pensively, her eyes deep and glistening.

 

‘Yes it isn’t sweety,’ I replied still trembling.

 

‘That was Gary’s Christmas gift to you mama.’ She said, drawing her body so close to mine.

 

‘Yes,’ I whispered into her hair, ‘the best Christmas gift I ever received sweetheart, Merry Christmas.’