The Raven Lunatic

by Keith Hoffman

There were a lot of secrets in my family.

Most conversations of my childhood started with phrases like, “Now don’t tell your brother this …” or “Grandma doesn’t need to know what just happened…”

In fact we had an entire range of secrets: little secrets like when my mom slipped me an extra $20 in my pocket when I went to the movies; medium secrets usually involving funny smelling smoke that would inevitably waft through the vents into my lonely bedroom from our family room below where my mom and older siblings hung out late at night (was that extra $20 some sort of guilt payoff?); and then the very big secrets like ….well…at least two of them are so big I am not supposed to reveal them while certain parties are still alive. Let’s just say if I can outlive  a couple more relatives there is a whopper of a blog to come.

After I grew up, my boyfriend Steve referred to my family as The Landmines, since he could never keep track of all the things he wasn’t allowed to say in front of whom which inevitably led to family drama every time he opened his mouth.

By that point I was a pro at artfully concealing the truth but in fifth grade I was still learning the ropes.

Luckily I dodged a lot of awkward conversations at school because I was so unpopular no one had the slightest curiosity to ask me any personal questions.

No one except for Miss Axe.

Miss Axe was my sixth-grade teacher. She was a stout woman with very short hair who had never married and most likely had a few secrets of her own.   She had taught my older siblings and often asked about them.  But as my family moved farther away from our Father Knows Best phase and closer to our Mother Smokes Pot period my responses to her queries became increasingly vague.

Yet the family secrets kept piling up and the chasm between me and what I perceived as the “normal” world felt like it was growing impossibly wide. A tiny hope began to grow inside my heart that Miss Axe could somehow build a bridge.

Although I already had a secret crush on her, I discovered just how incredibly kind Miss Axe  was after the “Sister Maura and the Seven Dwarfs” incident.

Of all the bitter and angry nuns who taught me throughout my Catholic school years, Sister Maura—a round, buck-toothed, bespeckled woman—was the bitterest and angriest. Her one redeeming quality was that, on most days, she preferred reminiscing about her childhood to teaching. She seemed to have loved her life before the convent, and I couldn’t understand why she had given it all up. I’m not sure she understood either, but she seemed to work through her confusion with frequent and energetic outbursts of uncontrolled rage aimed squarely at her students.

The only passion that made Sister Maura forget her miserable chaste life was her music.

Each spring, sixth graders from several schools participated in a citywide music concert that was the highlight of Sister Maura’s school year. Somehow I was one of the students that had been selected by the angry old nun to sing in the choir of an operatic version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Nothing like Sister Maura

I was thrilled.

Those of us fortunate enough to be among The Chosen were excused from our regular classes three times a week to practice. I couldn’t help feeling special as part of the elite group that Sister Maura had handpicked to represent St. Jude Elementary School at a big downtown event.

I was hardly a singer but this was another secret that I seemed to be able to keep under wraps. Perhaps as a way of saying “I’m sorry for striking down your father with a heart attack at one of the most crucial periods in your childhood development,” God had miraculously helped me get through my singing audition on key. For once I wasn’t the last to be chosen for a team, and I strongly sensed that this was going to be a major turning point in my life.

A week before the concert, Sister Maura, obsessed with the perfection of her young choir, pretty much yanked us out of every class so she could have us all to herself. She was focused, driven, and perhaps even a wee bit demented.

As we valiantly sang through final rehearsals, I imagined the thrill of being up on stage in front of hundreds of people in the new white shirt and black tie my proud mother had bought for me.

We were in the middle of singing a particularly intricate part of the opera when, without warning, Sister Maura slammed both hands down. “WHO IS SINGING OFF-KEY?” she bellowed.

We sat in bewildered silence, wondering whether or not this question was rhetorical.

Meanwhile, Sister Maura seethed with homicidal rage.

She insisted we individually sing the line from the opera that had so affronted her sensitive ears.

One by one, we went down the row starting with Cindy Wilson.

“Who is coming through the dark night now?”

Cindy looked at Sister Maura anxiously.

“Next!”

“Who is coming through the dark night now?” Mindy Hofzinger belted out confidently.

“Next!”

“Who is coming through the dark night now?”

As my turn came closer, I began sweating profusely and forgetting everything I had never known about singing.

“Who is coming through the dark night now?”

There were only two kids left before me.

“Please, God let one of them sing off-key so we can end this torture. Please, God … ruin their lives instead of mine this time.”

It was around this point that I seemed to completely lose my hearing. As if viewing an eerie silent movie, I watched two classmates mouth the words to the song before they sat down, smiling in relief.

Now it was my turn.

Sister Maura narrowed her eyes and focused on me.

All heads turned expectantly.

Where were my spontaneous vomiting skills when I needed them?

I took a deep breath. “Don’t fail me God. Please?”

“Who is coming through the dark night now?”

I looked at Sister Maura.

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

More silence.

“Get out.”

Those were the first words I could hear again even though she had said them in a whispered hiss.

“Get out of this room. Get out of this choir. GET OUT OF MY SIGHT NOW!”

I wanted to say to that if she gave me another chance … that maybe if she worked with me a little after rehearsal …

She stood with her arm stretched out and her pudgy index finger pointing at the door.

“OUT! NOW!”

Attempting to appear dignified, I quietly placed my music book on my seat, held my chin up high, and began to walk out.

Although God had been kind enough to restore my hearing, He now seemed to have removed my ability to walk. I put one foot shakily in front of the other and tentatively made my way to the outside hall as if walking on narrow plank made of quicksand. I focused all my concentration on trying to remain upright until I began to wonder if I could speed up this painful process by getting on my hands and knees and crawling to the door.

Finally I made it to the hallway.

The metal door slammed behind me as I heard the muffled sounds of the piano starting up again.

“Who is coming through the dark night now?”

********

I arrived at the classroom full of noisy non-singing losers and slunk back to my desk. As I sat silently among my happily chattering classmates, I thought about the moment when poor Sister Maura would find out that I had taken my own life by swallowing barbiturates, booze, and absinthe.

I knew I could rummage up the barbiturates and booze from my house but where exactly did one obtain absinthe?

Before I had a chance to map out my tragic plan in my head, the nun at the front of my classroom loudly declared she was sick and tired of all the talking and that perhaps if we wrote SILENCE IS GOLDEN five hundred times on a sheet of paper with No. 2 lead pencils we’d learn to keep our mouths shut.

As I wearily rummaged through my book bag and pulled out a chewed-up pencil, I decided then and there that I hated nuns and I definitely detested dwarves.

I mean really…what’s to love?

********

When Miss Axe heard about my unfortunate misadventures in choir, she offered to take me to the concert as her guest.

I was conflicted. I wanted to move on with my life and put Snow White and those creepy little people behind me, but no teacher had ever shown any interest in getting to know me outside the classroom. I was starved for attention and willing to attend the stupid opera to get it.

On the day of the concert, Miss Axe asked for my address and informed me she would pick me up at my house. After school, I impatiently waited for her on the front steps of my porch feeling excited and scared.

I was excited because a real-life teacher was actually coming to my home.

I was scared because a real-life teacher was actually coming to my home.

My first hurdle of the evening was to keep her from actually walking through the front door. No matter what, I told myself, she was to get no further than my driveway. If she wanted to use the bathroom, I would inform her we had lost it in the tornado a few years back.

Secrets were hard to keep if you let somebody in.

I sat on those front porch steps diligently keeping watch.

When she finally pulled into the driveway, I urgently screamed a goodbye through the screen door from over my shoulder, raced down the stairs, and nimbly leapt into her front seat.

Miss Axe seemed surprised at first but recovered with a friendly “Well, you look all dressed up!”

“Drive! Drive!” I wanted to scream. I already knew my new clip-on tie looked dashing and had no time for pleasantries.

“We have some time. I thought I’d say …”

“Nobody’s home” I firmly explained cutting her off at the pass.

Miss Axe peered up at my front windows where the sounds of Neil Young blared out. Someone started singing along to “Southern Man.”

“Oh for God’s sake, woman! Step on the accelerator!”

I couldn’t actually say that so instead I muttered something about hoping we’d get a good seat at the concert. Miss Axe finally took the hint and reluctantly backed out of the driveway.

As we drove further from my family, I began to relax. Miss Axe and I talked about movies,  TV shows,  animals and my favorite subjects at school and she and actually seemed interested in what I had to say. A grownup that was not too wrapped up in grief, guilt, a pot fog, or a nun’s habit had finally found time to notice me. I felt interesting and important.

At the concert, I tried not to cringe—or heave—when I heard the curious dwarves operatically wonder, Who is coming through the dark night now? I wanted to heckle, “It’s Snow White, you goddamned morons!” but demonstrated maturity and restraint since I wasn’t sure if one could go to jail for heckling 5^th graders.

 

If you think about it, the whole story is just creepy

On the way home, we stopped at White Castle and I could barely cease talking long enough to swallow down my five cheeseburgers. I had so many opinions about life that no one had heard since my preschool days when I shadowed my mother around as she did housework, and I was not going to let Miss Axe slip away without subjecting her to each and every one of them.

As we walked back to the car in the White Castle parking lot, Miss Axe placed her arm around my shoulder.

I wanted so desperately to hold her hand but feared that I was too old for such a childish action.

We headed toward home and I fell into an easy, exhausted quiet while listening to the hum of car engine. I had made it through the concert debacle and had come out with something much better than Sister’s Maura’s approval.

I was about to doze off when Miss Axe jarred my serenity with a seemingly innocent question.

“So, how are things at home?

I shifted into high alert. Up until this point I had kept things at surface level but now she was trying to slip past the perimeter.

“Great. Everything’s great!!” I said a little too enthusiastically.

“Has your family  been doing okay since your dad died?”

“I think so,” I replied lamely.

Had this woman learned her questioning techniques from the Spanish Inquisitors?

“Well, if you ever want to talk …”

I wanted to talk. I wanted blab everything. I wanted to ask her how to keep up with everything changing around me too  fast for me to keep up with. I wanted to know if she could help me know to not be an outsider in my own home. I wanted to tell Miss Axe about my feelings. More than anything, I wanted to ask her how I should feel. I’d had so many mixed-up emotions jumbled inside me pounding at my chest and stomach desperate to finally get out….

But I couldn’t.

I would be betraying my family.

And they were all I had.

“Okay,” I finally mumbled as I focused intently out the window.

We rode for the rest of the trip in a new kind of silence.

All my secrets were wrapped up tightly and safe.

And I felt more alone than I ever had in my entire.

 

NEXT: A secret revealed.

 

by Keith Hoffman

THE MOMENT I WAKE UP

I loved watching her put on make-up.

I would sit in the bathroom and jammer away while she stood in front of the mirror.   My mother was not one of those women who just threw on eyeliner and concealer and whisked out the door.  Her morning routine was a serious time commitment,  and to my young eyes the transformation was magical.

I don’t know how my mom even got out of bed after losing her husband at 43-years-old but she had five kids to raise from the ages of 17 to 7 (me) so I guess she didn’t have much of a choice.

The word people usually used  to describe my mother was “survivor” but she was more than that.   My mom was beautiful and strong and glamorous.  Men fell all over themselves to try to get her attention but she wanted no part of them.  Her volatile and passionate marriage to my father apparently had been enough.

“Men only want one thing,” she would often say to me.

I wasn’t sure what the one thing was but from the look on her face I could tell it was not good.  And I was determined I was never going to be like those men who wanted that one thing from women.

Make-up was a huge part of my mother’s life.    She became a top selling Avon lady to support her family (this was the early 70’s and widowed housewives were not exactly sought after in the work place.)  And by the time I was a teenager she was the top salesperson at the McAlpins Department Store make-up counter in downtown Cincinnati.

I loved visiting her on my lunch breaks from my summer job as the roast beef slicer at Roy Rogers.

She would paint the faces of frumpy insecure ladies making them look beautiful.

But none of them were as beautiful as my mother.

My made up Mother–Mcalpins Department Store in the early 80’s

 THE PHANTOM WITCH OF THE OPERA

But that make up was concealing a few things….

My widowed hardworking mom had her bad days too.

We kids were a messy lot and somewhat out of control.

It wasn’t the big things about her children like drugs or drinking or homosexuality that threw her over the brink.  She handled those issues with aplomb.

She hated the mess.   She would leave anonymous notes around under a threatening nom de plume to try to get us to stop making the mess.

Put your dirty clothes in the hamper!!

The Phantom Witch

 And then there were the dirty dishes.

She hated the dirty dishes.

They were the tipping point.

They undid her every time.

One Saturday morning when I heard her slamming things around the kitchen and cursing angrily I knew we were in for a bad day.

The rest of my siblings knew it too.   And luckily some of them also knew how to drive.  We hightailed it out of the house before she had the chance to corner us and  we escaped to local park.

We had no concrete plan except to avoid our mother’s dark angry unreachable mood so we hiked aimlessly until the sun went down.

As we pulled into the driveway  worn out and exhausted, we heard music from my brother’s organ loudly playing from every door and window of the house.  I had seen enough scary movies to know organ music could only portend certain danger.

We climbed out of the car with trepidation and crept into the pitch-dark house.

In the shadows we saw our mother playing The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down in an almost trance-like state with her back to us.

That was weird enough but nothing could prepare us for what we saw when our eyes adjusted to the dark.   Our shag carpet was covered in what looked like thousands of pieces of multi-colored plastic shards.

Apparently she had smashed every plate and cup we owned.

That was certainly one way to solve the dirty-dishes-in–the-sink problem.

The Phantom Witch at Christmas

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO

In my early 20’s I lived in New York City.

My mother knew I was gay but we didn’t really talk about it  much.

When I had finally sprung the news when I was in college her reply was,   “I suspected but hoped it wasn’t true.”

First of all, I wasn’t surprised she had suspected.

If my love for Julie Andrews and Beatrice Arthur wasn’t enough  of a clue then maybe the Playgirl she found under my mattress that I insisted had been left by my sister was.   (My sister had moved out a year earlier).

But the second part of her response was more problematic.   Why did she hope it wasn’t true I was gay?

“Because I don’t want your life to be harder”

Okay, that was an acceptable response although I  could have pointed out that she was straight and her life was no bed of roses.

But after I had moved away we kind of avoided the topic.   I hadn’t told her I had fallen madly in love with a playwright since I wanted to avoid any  awkward conversations until after I was living with him for several years.   The first she heard about him was when I called her crying inconsolably after our  painful break up on the streets of the East Village.   I could barely speak through my pain-wracked sobs but my mom comforted me anyway  just as she had done when I fell off my bike as a little boy.

As much as I I had fought  to forge my independant life out of my mother’s purview, the truth was she knew me to the core.   And for that afternoon at least I was glad of it.

I don’t know if she was shocked or surprised by the  call but she nevertheless rose to the occasion and stayed on and comforted me for over an hour assuring me I would live to love again.

Like I said it was the big things she didn’t sweat.

And at least now we could both bond over those damn men who only wanted one thing.

A CALL A DAY KEEP THE MORTICIAN AWAY

My strong mother’s body began to betray her later in life and this spirited woman began to become more and more housebound.   My sister who lived down the block became her caretaker—a role she both protected fiercely and resentfully lorded over her brothers.

To ease my sister load along with my own guilt I began calling my mom every day on my long commute to work.

Some days went pretty well and we continued our mother/son relationship that started those many mornings I watched her put her face on in the bathroom mirror.

Some made me want to cross the yellow divider line on the highway to end the phone call and my life.

Those calls went something like this:

 “Do you know what movie I saw last night?”

“Um, no Mother.”

“The one with that actor I like.”

“Yea…I’ll need more information….”

“The one who is always in the movies with that actress.”

“Still need more info.”

“The actress with the eyes!  You know who I’m talking about!”

 She began to depend on these calls.   I couldn’t miss them even when I was traveling and running from one plane to another in the airport.

“Hi, I have to make my connect and can’t talk long.”

“Okay honey.  How is Houston?”

“I don’t know, Mother.  I’m in the airport for about 15 minutes.”

‘Oh okay. How was the food on the plane?”

“I’ve told you they don’t feed people on planes anymore.  Food on a plane is now potato chips.”

“Mmmm…those sound good.”

“I have to go now..”

“Okay, take some pictures of Houston while you’re there!”

“Mother is making me crazy!!” I would text my sister as I settled into my seat.    “Welcome to my life,” she’d inevitable reply.

But still I called her every day.

Somewhere along the line in our relationship I had gone from the protected to the protector.

She loved that actress with the eyes

RHYMES WITH PHANTOM WITCH

 My sister was in a coma in a hospital room down the hall.

My family was in agony.

My brother and I were sent to get food, which we discovered was not an easy feat in the middle of the night in Cincinnati.   I had been home a week and this coma thing just wouldn’t let up.    It was getting on my nerves.

My mom had been a trooper heroically getting to the hospital every morning  even though she could barely get around her apartment on her good days.   She complained about her tongue hurting a lot though.   This was just the latest in what was now a long line of awful ailments that had befallen her.

Finally my brother and I found Skyline Chili, a Cincinnati staple, open in the middle of the night and were on our way back to that horrible hospital with food in tow.

When we arrived I walked up to my mom and gently unwrapped her chili dog as she sat watching from her wheelchair.   “Need anything else?” I sweetly asked with the utmost compassion.

She summoned the most martyred look ever undertaken by any human being in history.

“Not that I have to eat,” she replied “but it would have been nice if you had brought something that didn’t burn my tongue.”

I looked at her in shock.

And I responded with the only thing one could say in such a situation.

“Bitch!”

And with that I stormed down the hall and out of the hospital.

Yes, that’s right.

I called my ailing mother whose daughter was down the hall deep in a coma a bitch.

And yes, I realize no matter how many soup kitchens I volunteer at  I will go to hell for this.

I paced outside upset with my mother, upset about my sister, guilty and ashamed and hungry for that Skyline Chili I had left behind.  My only solace was that if my sister woke up she would definitely understand  the whole “bitch” thing although she would also remind me to be nicer to our aging mother.

Finally an hour and a half later I went back inside and walked sheepishly up to her.

“You didn’t have to call me a bitch.”

“Maybe not.” I replied begrudgingly.

And we forgave each other.

Because we had known each other an awful long time.

And because that is what families do.

My long time companion

I DON’T WANT NO HUGS

 It was the day of my sister’s funeral.

We had all somehow managed to get through the unthinkable.  We had watched our adored sister, daughter and friend die right in front of us.  Not only had we let it happen but had somehow accepted it—at least in that moment.   We had let go of her because she seemed determined to move on without us but we were beat up and bruised  from the surrender.

And now we had to memorialize her.   It was all so surreal.

My mom, still the survivor, silently put on her make up.  But now instead of standing proudly in front of  her bathroom mirror she sat hunched in a chair peering into a magnified one.

Later my brother Paul drove us to the cemetery as  I sat in the back seat behind my mom with my ex-boyfriend Steve.  Steve and I remained good friends   and he  adored my mom even though she never forgave him for me breaking up with him.

Suddenly my mom  broke the weighted silence in the car.

“I want no one to hug me at the memorial,” she announced with grim determination.

I wanted to reach up and throttle her.

Now not only did I have to get through this memorial  in one piece but had to announce to everyone withn earshot that the lady in the wheelchair was not accepting hugs.  I was furious with her and I was furious with my sister for leaving me with this to deal with on my own.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Steve assured her.    “I’ll run interference for you.  I’ll tackle them if they get to close.

God bless him.

Neither my mom nor I  comfort nor be comforted by each other.  This was just too awful.   We could get through it together but that was about it.   We needed other people’s help.  We needed Steve to appease her and prevent me from committing matricide.

And by the way she let a lot of  people hug her that day.

Mother and Steve during the period she accepted hugs

A VERY MERYL CHRISTMAS

 What bothered me most about my mom was how smug she was about hating Meryl Streep.

Our phone conversations would go something like this….

“I saw Bridges of Madison County last night and Meryl Streep was great. ”“Oh!?  Did she take acting lessons??”

At some point I believe she started hating her just to drive her youngest son to madness.

I came home for Christmas, four months after Julie died to endure  the holiday together.  I had gotten “screeners’ from a friend–movies that were up for awards that were sent out to voters.  We both decided we detested  Anne Hathaway which can be quite a strong bond between any  mother and gay son.

In fact we were having a nice holiday together with just me and her and my brother Paul.   We didn’t have to pretend we were doing better than we were.  We could be sad and kind and try to hold each other together even though we were all in jagged broken pieces like those plates my mom had crushed so many years ago.

It seemed like the perfect opportunity to prove once and for all that Meryl Streep was the most amazing actress in the world.

Right?

So I went to Target and bought Devil Wears Prada.

Everyone loves Devil Wears Prada.

Right?

I could tell early on Mother was not going to cooperate.

She didn’t laugh at the right moments and her silence unnerved me.

The movie seemed endless.

I wanted to tell Meryl to step up her performance—land the jokes better.

By the closing credits I was soaked in flop sweat.

I nervously pressed “eject”.

Silence.

“I’m sorry but I just didn’t see any acting,” she finally said not sorry at all.

I had a fantasy of buying  the hottest Skyline Chili possible and surprising her with it like  Joan Crawford surprised Bette Davis with a rat  for dinner in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. 

But I didn’t.

I let her have this victory.

No matter how  mistaken  it was.

A young Streepaphobe

IN KEITH I TRUST

She had survived a messed up childhood, a bad divorce, a husband dying and horrendous health later in life and she had done it with a strong  stubborn loving soul.

But she really wasn’t very interested in surviving her daughter’s death.

I knew she wasn’t getting better so what was I supposed to hope for?

It was the end of my Christmas visit.   Paul and I had done our best but our Mother could barely get off the couch, open a can of food by herself or make it to the bathroom in time.  She loved her tiny apartment and her fiercely devoted cat and she was determined not to leave.

But she had too.   I couldn’t leave her here.  It wasn’t right.

“Mother, you can’t stay here.  You need to go to the hospital.”

This was her biggest fear in the world after one of her children dying.  She had always made each one of us promise  repeatedly that she would not  end up in  a nursing home.    And a hospital was just one step closer.

But I looked her in the eye and I said it.

And my stubborn, determined Meryl-hating mother looked back at me almost meekly.

And it punched me in the heart.

“Okay,” she replied without a hint of fight.

She trusted me.  I was her youngest son.  We had gone through so much together and she trusted that I was right.

If only I knew that I was.

Later as she was being carried out on a stretcher from her beloved home,  my brother accused me of flirting with the cute paramedic.

We cope with awful moments the best way we know how.

ASHES ASHES WE ALL FALL DOWN

“I want my ashes scattered in my ocean!”

None of us kids ever knew when our Mother came into ownership of the Pacific.

Paul, Steve and I went to Santa Barbara on a late September day to perform the final act of love for her.

I waited for my brother to visit me in LA as I was sure I would drown in a tragic water accident doing it myself.

She had died a month after Christmas in the hospital.  She had always hated February and died on the last day of January. She at least had the dignity of going  out on her own time.

We found a remote area and climbed out on  the rocks.

As Steve watched from the beach we grabbed handfuls of ashes from plastic bags and flung them into  the air.  A wind gust scooped them up and they  swirled like a tornado up to the sky.

We laughed delightedly.

Our mother was free of her failing body.    Her spirit could dance again.

“How is heaven?” I wanted to yell up to her.   How was the food on the plane ride there??”

SHE’S BAAACK

 My mom has been gone almost five years but there are times I still miss her.

Like now for instance when I get  a  really huge splinter in my finger that I can’t seem to get out and I want to call her to ask what I should do.

I remember that she used to use a sterilized needle to get them out when I was a kid  but I can’t find one in my disorganized apartment that I’m currently turning upside down.

I come across the box of her ashes that I had not tossed in her ocean  kept for myself.  Desperate, I place my profusely bleeding hand on it.

“Please Mother…help me.”

A few minutes later I am rummaging  one more time through my sock drawer and find one of those metal buttons you pin on your shirt  hidden in the corner.   With a little sterilization that needle on the back will work just fine.  I pick up the button and turn it over.

It is a button that belonged to my Mother.

Even with a splinter in my finger and my life’s blood draining out of me I have to laugh.

 

 

by Keith Hoffman

I don’t have much of a problem going outside my comfort zone–probably because I spent most of my childhood outside my comfort zone.

So when my friend Nelson invited me to visit him in Peru it didn’t take me long to take him up on this offer.

Getting out of my comfort zone is not the issue—it’s everything that transpires before.

My pre-travel anxiety is a lot like my birthday anxiety—especially in that most people simply tell me the solution is to “just relax and have fun!!”

To me this is like telling a passenger on the Titanic to enjoy viewing the wonderful variety of fish in the ocean while they are plummeting to their watery graves.

It’s just not that easy.

Doris Day in a little known movie about Pre-Travel Anxiety

Every time I plan a trip I decide there is a lot to get done before I get on that plane.   I’m not talking about updating my passport and buying a new carry on bag.   I suddenly feel the compulsion to accomplish everything I have not accomplished in my lifetime in that week before travel.

 KEITH’S TYPICAL PRE-TRAVEL TO DO LIST

• Paint the bedroom a seductive color
• Get checked for melanoma
• Go to the dentist for that slight ache that is probably tooth cancer
• Read Proust
• Settle down into a long term committed relationship.

The small details such as packing get pushed into the background until a half hour before my taxi arrives.

Pre-Travel Anxiety is one of the few things Judy Garland did not suffer from.

And on top of that there is just so much that can go wrong between now  and getting on that plane.

THINGS THAT CAN GO WRONG

• Tooth Cancer (with no time for chemo before boarding)
• Melanoma (see above)
• A pet could die
• My place could burn down
• A pet could die while my place is burning down
• Lose my passport
• Credit cards stolen (that happened the day before a trip)
• Show up to the airport on the wrong day (happened)
• Miss the plane because I have to use the bathroom just as they make the boarding call  (happened—sorry again Steve)
• Arrested by security for unknowingly smuggling drugs that someone slipped into my backpack or orifice

Like Dean Martin I am a wreck by the time I get on that plane

Oh!  And my flight could get cancelled at 11pm the night before the morning I am leaving.

That happened just this week…..

TUESDAY April 15, 2014—11:05 PM

I receive an email with a “Very Important Message” from Jet Blue informing me me my flight is cancelled.   They aren’t exaggerating.  This is certainly a very important message.

Oddly when things do go wrong I become very Zen (aka numb).   The email says to call Jet Blue to reschedule so I do as I am told.  The recording tells me the hold time is longer than usual and to please be patient.

WEDNESDAY April 16, 2014 12:10 AM

Again, they aren’t exaggerating.

Over an hour later I am still listening to the hold music which I can only assume is the same mix of easy listening Bryan Adams/Céline Dion songs that is played in hell.   Does anyone really need to hear Everything I Do I Do it For You again?  In this day and age why can’t I program the hold music to what I want to hear?  Maybe I could choose a little NPR to learn something while I wait?   I can’t even play Candy Crush for fear I will accidentally hit the wrong button and disconnect sending me to the back of the interminable hold line.

So I keep waiting.

WEDNESDAY April 16, 2014 12:50 AM

It begins to snow outside even though it is April and I’ve already moved all my plants outside to the back yard.

Mother Nature doesn’t give a s#*t.

I race outside in my long johns rescuing my potted plants with one hand while clutching my phone listening to Rod Stewart wonder if I think he’s sexy with the other.

Not tonight, Rod.  I’m in no mood.

WEDNESDAY April 16, 2014 1:20 AM

I am dozing next to my phone and hear a real live voice.

“Jet Blue may I help you?”

“Yes, yes, please don’t hang up!!” I yell frantically as I sit up and fumble to take the phone off speaker without accidentally hanging up.  I feel like a man on a dessert island who has spotted a rescue plane and desperately fears it will fly past him leaving him to die.

“Hi,” I say trying to be cheerful reminding myself that this man was most likely busy with other customers while making me wait so long– and not playing Words With Friends as I have been angrily fantasizing.

“My flight was cancelled and I’d like to get on a new one.”

“Great,” he answers equally cheerfully.   “I can get you on a flight on Friday.”

Friday???  But this is Tuesday….or rather Wednesday now…a new day has begun since I first got on this call.

“Um…it’s my vacation,” I tell him certain he will see the error of his ways.

Oh your vacation!  I didn’t realize.  We’ll get an extra plane up and running right away!

 But it doesn’t happen that way.  For the next ten minutes I try everything.  I flirt, cajole, mildly threat, and play the victim.     I stop short of asking, “Do you know who I am?” since unless he is a devoted fan of Bigfoot he probably doesn’t.

And just like that my long planned trip to Peru is  shifted by two days.

And most remarkably even though something went wrong pre-trip –I have lived though it basically unscathed.

And I am absolutely certain there is some great spiritual lesson in this.

If only I didn’t have so much to get done before I fly in two days.

And there is so much that could go wrong….

Once that flight takes off the fun can begin

NEXT UP:   THE MOMENT I REALIZED IN THE AIRPORT PERU SPEAKS A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE I FORGOT TO LEARN.

 

(Everything You Wanted To Know About Keith But Were Afraid to Ask)

by Keith Hoffman

Author’s Note:  Some names have been changed in order to protect those who hath not sinned

My mother must have sensed something was different about me.

Let’s just say I remember exactly where I was when I heard Judy Garland died.

I was watching an episode of Batman with my favorite villain Catwoman  (played by Julie Newmar not those cheap imitators Lee Meriwether or Eartha Kitt).

 

       Yes

     No

Progressive and daring casting choice but no

I immediately leapt up from in front of our new color TV and ran out to the front yard where my mother was weeding in her two-piece bathing suit.

“Mother! Mother!  Judy Garland!  She’s dead!” I screamed as I ran into her arms and wept.

“Oh, Mother,” I blurted between sobs. “If only I had met her, I could have helped her be happy!”

At the age of eight I was a child prodigy at being codependent.

Perhaps my mom hadn’t quite figured it out.   Maybe she told herself that lots of little boys loved Judy Garland.  She was in The Wizard of Oz for Pete’s sake–nothing alternative life-stylish about that.

But that evening when I belted “Smile, Though Your Heart is Aching” using my sister’s curling iron as a microphone, she must have deep down suspected I was a member of a brotherhood of men that I didn’t even yet know existed–the same brothers who would historically rebel at The Stonewall Inn in New York City only six days later changing the course of my life.

It’s not like she didn’t have other clues:

• While other boys my age followed the careers of Johnny Bench and Pete Rose from my city’s beloved Reds team, I pretended our mop was Cher doing one of her solo numbers wearing a stunning Bob Mackie gown.

I could never get my mop’s  hair this straight

  Move over Sonny and Cher

• I once stood up and screamed “YES!” accompanied by a fist pump when Mitzi Gaynor, the actress/singer/dancer from the movies South Pacific and White Christmas executed an impossibly high kick while over the age of 50 on her annual variety special.

My role model on how to age with pizazz

• I often twirled around our back yard for hours playing Maria from Sound of Music singing that the hills were alive for all our neighbors to see from behind their curtains.

• And finally this question during my pre-pubescence:  “Mother, do you ever worry  Liza will follow the same tragic path as Judy?”

Maybe my mom was so preoccupied with supporting and raising her entire brood of five kids by herself—the majority of whom were in their turbulent teenage years—that she found it difficult to focus on any one of our specific issues.

Plus she no clue about Bobby Summers.

Bobby Summers was one of the coolest kids in my 8^th Grade class.

Bobby Summers was so cool he got to play Jesus in our Catholic school’s Passion Play.

That’s how cool Bobby Summers was.

I was jealous of Bobby Summers at first. I was sure I would be a better Jesus than he could ever be.  But instead I was cast as the Good Thief.

The Good Thief hung on the cross to Jesus’ left and defended him from the Bad Thief hanging to his right.   I was Jesus’ second banana— the Ethel to his Lucy; the Rhoda to his Mary; the Louise to his Thelma.

I got to know Bobby Summers as we rehearsed carrying our heavy wooden crosses up the school auditorium aisle while classmates playing the angry crowd jeered and taunted us (personally this was not very different from my daily experience on the playground so I felt right at home). I couldn’t ignore how cute Bobby Summers looked in his crown of thorns—and when I defended him as we hung from our crosses—deep in my soul I really, really meant it.

“Leave him alone. Can’t you see he’s in pain?” I bellowed with dramatic intensity as if I were Meryl Streep proclaiming I was the French Lieutenant’s whore.

I was Jesus’ savior and I would have been Bobby Summers guy forever if he had only asked me.

A fellow thespian

Yet I still somehow didn’t associate these feelings with sex.

I had read about the homosexual lifestyle and wanted no part of it.

One night I had crept downstairs and snuck my mother’s copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) from the back of her bookcase up to my bedroom since there was a lot I wanted to know about sex but was afraid to ask.

And I paid close attention to the chapter on homosexuality.

According to the book, miserable men picked up other miserable men in bowling alley restrooms when they weren’t busy living sad pathetic lonely frustrated lives.

My heart sank and my stomach twisted and knotted.

This was horrible news.

This was not what I wanted for myself at all.

The original copy stolen from the bookcase–and what did my mom want to know about sex anyway?

 This explains why it’s so  hard to keep the weight off.  

We’re here!  We’re clubfooted!  Get used to it!

Will I  have to rent the tacky shoes?

I told myself these feelings for Bobby Summers were just a phase like when I used to sit in the big green chair in our living and hit the back of my head repeatedly against the cushion for hours at time (medicating children was not in vogue yet).

I was going marry Cindy Hall and have four kids.

And we would only go to bowling alleys to bowl.

I was going to be normal just like everyone else.

Nothing abnormal happening here!

And yet …

…it was hard to forget how cute Bobby Summers looked as he hung from the cross dying for my sins.

 

 

Keith Hoffman will be performing his pieces at Western Bowl every Thursday at 8pm in August.

by Keith Hoffman

I am a likable guy 364 days of the year.

But something happens on my birthday that even I don’t understand.

Some passive aggressive monster emerges from within that simultaneously demands yet repels attention confusing my friends and torturing loved ones.   I sometimes wish others could feel how painfully uncomfortable it is when someone wishes me Happy Birthday so they could understand why I have to resist lunging at their throats instead of saying thank you.

It’s not because of my age.

For you millennials terrified of getting older, it can be really cool if you spend thousands of dollars on therapy along the way.  You can actually get to a place where you don’t give a f$&k what others think about you and become fond of and amused by your physical and mental defects.

I mean, yes…I sometimes feel like a total fraud at work convinced my ruse of being “creative” will be found out… and yeah…sometimes I wonder why I am literally climbing walls to find a soul mate (see previous blog)—but every once in awhile without the help of medication I am just messed up enough to have a joyful curiosity about it all.

There are sobering moments:  When that young guy you think is flirting with you calls you “sir” and you realize he is simply being respectful to his elders….

But there is also a lot to be grateful for:

•  My fear of being the world’s oldest temp almost came true but didn’t.
• I’m not yet at the age where taking the lid off a coffee cup is an ordeal (although I hope when I am I can be joyfully curious).
• I’ve outlived my father’s age by over 10 years and now my sister’s by a month.  My family is quite competitive so that’s something.

So why are my birthdays such a challenge?

I’ll admit I had some pretty weird ones as a child—as the youngest member of my family, I was clueless as to why everyone seemed to get a bit out of control during what I thought were innocent celebrations.    When I later heard my sister affectionately reminisce with my mom telling her,  “you were always so good at talking my friends down from bad LSD trips”, a piece of my Innocence Lost Puzzle was snapped snugly into place

60’s Drug Party

Maybe I hate the enforced attention.  (I am overwhelmed by all those Facebook Birthday greetings but would be horrified if no one wrote anything.)

I love attention mind you.   Some of you Facebook friends might have guessed that.  But I want to earn it.  I want people to want to pay attention not feel like they have to.  I loathe being tolerated.

The hardest part is these birthdays only come around once a year so I can’t even practice  getting better at it.

My 30th birthday–being tolerated by dear friends.

My cousin not realizing how vulnerable her jugular is at this moment.

Why must they viscously torture me?

But finally I have learned the obvious.  Be true to myself.  I’m an introvert.  I love people but get my energy by being alone.  So no matter how much I think I should be out and about—I prefer tending to my home and writing and reflecting on this day.   And by doing that I am no so intolerable except perhaps to my pets.

And since I’m reflecting–I’l end with a few tips I’ve found has made the journey more relaxing:

• Whatever age you are be curious about it.  You will never be 27 or 32 or 45 again.  This is your shot.
• If you’re worried about getting older in your 20’s or 30’s stop it.    That won’t improve in your 40’s and 50’s.
• Make friends with younger people so they visit you in the nursing home (although my friend Sara insists she is off the hook once I stop recognizing her).
• Be brave – say yes especially when it scares you-unless you are saying yes to a stranger inviting you into the back of a van.
• Don’t plan—explore.
• Be eccentric.   You are not in high school and don’t have to fit in.
• Volunteer
• Flirt with the elderly
• Feed the birds

“When Upper Body Strength Just Isn’t Enough”

by Keith Hoffman

I’m an idiot and a loser.

These are the chipper thoughts dancing in my head as I walk through a desolate part of Brooklyn on a Friday evening.

It’s Beginner’s Night for the Gay Rock Climbing Club and I have come to a gym to discover my one true love perched on a wall like he was Spider Man and I was his Mary Jane Watson.

“I’m here with the gay rock climbers,” I whisper to the front desk in case they don’t know a group of homosexuals is meeting right under their noses.

Immediately they have me sign a waiver acknowledging the gym is not responsible for my death. I am a believer in signs and this does not seem like a good one.

I look around at the room full of aggressive macho energy. Who am I kidding? I don’t belong here.

I am about to slink back out to the street when a handsome man who looks as if he’s been carved from cream cheese strides past me and smiles his most charming smile.

Clearly he loves me.

Clearly I can’t leave and break his heart and have him searching for me the rest of his life.

Clearly I should stay.

The man carved from cream cheese

The gay rock climbers are split into two groups: the Ridiculously Hot Guys and the Ultra-Serious Lesbians.

Somehow I end up with the lesbians.

Maybe its because I am not dressed properly. I didn’t know what one wears to climb walls so while the Ridiculously Hot Guys are donned in colored-coordinated gym outfits, I am clad in sensible khakis and a bulky sweater. Naturally the lesbians think of me as one of their own. The only problem is these women aren’t here to flirt. They actually want to climb.

A serious lesbian climber

Before I know it I am ˘staring up at a wall peppered with protruding colored rocks. A harness is positioned on my crotch in the most unflattering angle possible attached by a rope to one of my Sapphic spotters

I begin my ascent into hell.

Right hand…blue rock….right foot…blue rock…wait…where does my left foot go??

It is like a game of sideways Twister.

Then I slip.

And I free-fall.

And I am dangling sideways by my crotch twisting in midair.

TURN AWAY!! I want to yell at the Ridiculously Hot Guys who have stopped their frolicking long enough to stare at me in mute pity.

This is not going well at all.

********

It’s a half hour later and I am making my third attempt at the Boulder Wall.

This wall entails no rope or crotch harness and is built on a cushioned floor.

This should have been easy. I climbed trees like a monkey ever since I was a tyke who needed alone time away from my dysfunctional family. But already I have gotten to know this cushioned floor quite intimately each time I landed on top of it in a contorted heap.

The Ridiculously Hot Guys have wandered off to bond somewhere else and the lesbians have realized no matter how sensibly I’m dressed I will never take life as seriously as they do.

Ridiculously Hot Bonding Guys

It is only me.

I am alone.

I am  not going to meet anyone.

I am too old and uncoordinated to find love.

No one cares.

This experiment is a dismal defeat.

I look at the exit so tantalizingly close.

I looked back at that wall and sigh.

Damn it.

I peer up at the rocks and trace my path.

Slowly….breathing…right foot blue rock…right hand blue rock…

Halfway up I waiver. The only one left to encourage me is me.

But I am tenacious. I have made it through much worse in life. I have survived loss and victory and disappointment and success. I can’t let this damn little wall be my defeat

So I cling tenaciously, get oriented and keep climbing

I follow the rocky path to the top.

And right there high above the frenetic energy, I find who I had come there looking for…

…ungracefully graceful me.

And tonight that is good enough.

“The Miss Lonely-Hearts Rock Climbing Club”

At least once a month someone says to me,  “I have no idea why you’re single.”

I suppose this is better than someone saying,  “Oh…I get why you ‘re single.”

 The truth really isn’t some big mystery.  I was in a relationship when most my friends were sowing their wild oats, then I had a dark period of oh about 10 years, then I went trough a few tragedies, a big move and now here I am–finally the guy that I would want to date but teetering on the age when no one may care anymore.

I actually don’t mind being single but think I may possibly have a few more shots at coupledom before I have to rely on the lustful desires of men with nursing home fetishes.

So I’m giving dating another go.

I’ve gone on several computer dates and even done speed dating where you rotate from table to table meeting guys at five-minute intervals.  Some of those dates fly by quickly.  Others are so awkward you thoroughly convince yourself the timer is broken and want to scream,  “RING!  RING!   FOR LOVE OF GOD RING!!”

This week I went Rock Climbing for Love.

It all began at an event called Jock-A-Thon.    Jock-a-Thon is not as illicit as one might imagine.   A Jock-a-Thon is a mixer held at a bar—this time in the heart of Times Square–with several booths for different gay sports teams you can join.

Just to make this mixer more interesting, you are required to wear tags that list your profession instead of your name.    This is an opportunity to market yourself so you must choose wisely.    PROFESSIONAL BIGFOOT HUNTER is a conversation starter but does it sound like husband material?      WRITER FOR THE NICKLEODEON CARTOON “DOUG” certainly impresses the 20-somethings but that’s like putting a job from over 15 years ago on the top of your resume.     I decided to go with the somewhat vague title EXECUTIVE PRODUCER.

I had attended one of these a few months earlier where I met a real life firefighter—I mean he actually told me he stopped by for a drink after putting out a fire on the Upper West Side.  For a second I thought I might have a chance until I found myself competing with guys wearing tags that read DOCTOR, NUCLEAR PHYSICIST and PERSONAL TRAINER.  Finally I gave up but only after I considered igniting myself on fire in the middle of the bar to get his attention.

“Ummm…Is that a traffic cone you’re holding or are you excited to see me?”

My friend Will is a good wingman for these types of events.  He is younger and attracts a different crowd so we are not in direct competition.   His suitors are up-and-coming paralegals or young government visionaries.  I on the other hand, tend to attract guys with name tags scrawled with the words, UNEMPLOYABLE or DRUG MULE.

But I couldn’t let that get me down.   After all, I was here to join a sports team.

I didn’t even consider signing up for football or baseball as I’d be fated to relive my high school years when team captains hesitated choosing me even when I was the last man standing.

The masculine Rugby players with their orange outfits attracted my attention until Will convinced me that while I was trying to flirt during Rugby rehearsal they could accidentally kill  or maim me

“Hi!  What’s your sign?”

O “Come here often?”

Wrestling is intriguing but too gay even when not actually labeled as gay.

Need I say more?

I thought this was still illegal

Finally a persuasive lesbian convinced me to join the Rock Climbing Club.  I mean how hard could that be?

And if I fell off a rock at least I’d fall into some handsome man’s arms where we would realize we were soul mates.     Right?  So the decision was made.   Two days later my remarkably romantic life of rock climbing was about to begin!

TO BE CONTINUED…..

COMING UP:  Quick and Easy Tips on How to Flirt Wearing an Uncomfortable Harness and Hanging by a Rope Attached to a Lesbian.

by Keith Hoffman

One of the perks of being the last-born of five kids was that I got to stay home while the others had to go to school.

Every Monday morning, even though I was sad my beloved dad headed back on the road to sell pharmaceuticals, I had the great consolation prize of having my mother all to myself. Her undivided attention for those precious hours each day was a dream come true, although I’m not quite sure how she actually felt about spending the majority of her middle-aged life with an overly dramatic, talkative five-year-old.

Every weekday as she did her housewifely duties of washing, cooking, and cleaning, I doggedly shadowed her every step. Anything and everything that popped into my head popped out of my mouth.

 

“How does the Wicked Witch shower if water melts her?  Does she smell bad?”

“Where do squirrels go when they die?”

“Wouldn’t it be fun to have antlers?”

In later years, my mother confessed that she would often tune out my mind-numbing preschool chatter in order to keep a grasp on her sanity. Every so often she would realize I had asked her a question but would have no idea what it was. Instead of hurting my feelings, she would just guess her answer.

“Yes!”

 “No!”

“Blue?”

“Parakeet??”

I have occasionally wondered if a thoughtless answer to the question “Should I like boys or girls?” set me down a nontraditional path.

Always lurking near

When I was six, my mom began cleaning less and less and napping more and more. I was squarely against naps since they came with an irksome “NO TALKING” rule, and my mother counted “whispering in her ear” as talking.

This woman was not really the nap-taking sort.  She was vital and fiery—the type that weeded the yard in her bikini (a decision she deeply regretted when she realized those weeds were actually poison ivy).  She was the neighbor who the randy husbands would constantly come visit and hit on.  When I asked her about this later as an adult she shrugged it off with, “I can’t help it if I have an excess of pheromones.”

A Plethora of Phermones

 

And she was the wife who got in passionate fights with my father often storming out of the house while he piled his kids in our blue Buick and shadowed her down the block as we all yelled,  “get in the car tubby!” out of the four windows.   My vain non-tubby mother would finally give in and angrily get in the car where my rascal of a father would seductively charm her back into his good graces.

But now her passion and her pheromones seemed to be ebbing.

She began dragging me along as she went to several different doctors and made me sit in the waiting room reading Goofus and Gallant in old issues of Highlights magazine. I wasn’t worried about these doctor’s visits. Why should I be? Mothers don’t really get sick. If she wanted to submit herself to some guy who stuck things in her ear, poked her with needles, and asked a lot of questions, who was I to judge? My bigger concern was Goofus: He was bad news and I hated him, but was also strangely drawn to his anger and emotional unavailability.

My mother was finally told by one doctor to get a hobby because she was bored and suffering from “Housewife’s Syndrome.”

Although she was feeling weak and tired, she wasn’t about to accept some smug doctor’s patronizing diagnosis. I was dragged to even more doctors and waited in even more doctors’ lobbies until I had soon found every object hidden in every picture of every 1967 issue of Highlights.

Unbeknownst to me, behind one of those doors, on the other side of the waiting room, my mother, who thought she feared the worst, was being told something worse than she feared.

She had cervical cancer.

The survival rate was extremely low.

She needed to go home, pack her things and get to the hospital immediately to begin radiation treatment.

I personally would rather have my mom suffer from Housewife’s Syndrome but nobody asked me. I couldn’t quite grasp why she was leaving me. I knew she was sick but hospitalization seemed like an overreaction.

All I knew was that she wasn’t around to wake me up in the morning and make me Cream of Wheat while the familiar sound of the kitchen radio played in the background. She wasn’t around to gently steer me through the several hundred traumas, victories, and discoveries of each day of my young and curiosity filled life.

Now she was in a place where kids were not allowed.

*****

 My father had to keep making a living on the road, so he hired someone to take care of us while he was away during the week.

Alma was the first black woman I had ever come in close contact with in my middle-class Catholic life. She was tiny with deep crevices in her face and gray hair pulled tight into a bun.  She seemed exotic, ancient, and mysterious to my young eyes. I had never come across a human being like her before. And for the first time in my life I became a quiet child.

I hated Alma.

When my brothers and sisters went to school every day, I was left alone with this weird and alien interloper.

I might have given kind-hearted Alma a break except for the THREE MAJOR OFFENSES she committed.

MAJOR OFFENSE NUMBER ONE: I was blissfully soaking in a bubble bath using soapsuds to style a sophisticated hairdo when Alma boldly swung open the door.

“How ya doin’, sweetie pie?” she queried.

I sat in the water mortified.

“Okay,” I mumbled, hoping this answer would satisfy her without encouraging her to jump in with me.

She eyed me suspiciously, zeroing in on my Mr. Bubble feathered bob as I stared back in stunned soapy silence for what felt like the remainder of my childhood. I didn’t know about her family or if she even had one, but my family certainly did not walk in on each other in the bathroom.

Finally, Alma smiled awkwardly and left with a “don’t ya stay in there too long! You’ll turn into a prune!” before shutting the bathroom door behind her.

She needn’t have worried. I wasn’t going to give her another chance to crash my hairdo party. I put on my pajamas, wrapped my head in a turban, and marched to my bedroom with as much grace and dignity as I could possibly muster.

MAJOR OFFENSE NUMBER TWO: As I trudged down the stairs for breakfast one morning and curtly ordered my Quisp cereal with strawberry milk, Alma loomed over me with something obviously on her mind. Just as I was about to scream “What?! Out with it old woman!” she purposefully sat down next to me.

“Honey, have you been changing your underpants every day?”

I couldn’t believe these words had just tumbled out of her mouth.

“I’ve been counting the underpants when I do the laundry and I don’t think you’re changing yours every day.”

This woman was sick. Who counts dirty underpants in the laundry? So what if I kept mine on three, four, maybe five days a week? Didn’t I still live in a free America? I was very busy with a lot on my mind and just couldn’t be bothered with the daily underpants changing that so obviously obsessed this woman.

I calmly put a spoonful of cereal in my mouth and coldly replied, “I’ll make a note of that. Thank you for your concern.”

Alma’s eyes narrowed as she tried to figure me out. Was I bluffing? Would the underpants count spike after our little talk? I glared slowly and deliberately, chewing my cereal but saying nothing.

Finally, she got up and walked over to the stove muttering to herself. “That child’s an odd one.”

MAJOR OFFENSE NUMBER THREE: Alma was not my mother.

Since I spent the major part of my everyday life with my mother, the sudden loss and loneliness confused and devastated me.

My only reprieve would be when my father would arrive home and load us into the Buick and drive us over to the hospital. Since the younger kids weren’t allowed inside the giant building, he’d drive us to the parking lot outside. Although there were what seemed like millions of windows, by my second visit I could spot her room instantly.

Far above me in the sky, I would see my mother’s face looking down as she smiled and waved. She didn’t look sick. She looked wonderful to my hungry eyes as I gazed upwards. I wanted to scream “get in the car, Tubby!” with all the might my five-year-old lungs could muster. Instead I looked up at the magic window and waved frantically.

My dad would eventually gather us back in the car and we’d start the sad drive home without her. I would stare out the back of the car still waving until that NO KIDS ALLOWED building my mother was trapped in got smaller and smaller.

******

The upside of my mother’s cervical cancer was that I loved making her homemade cards, and now I didn’t have to wait until her birthday.

I made several cards a day and spent hours on them—each one being a variation on the theme of me and my dog Tiger, drawn on folded construction paper, with little balloon dialogue bubble saying “Get Well!” or “Come Home Soon!”

Each day I focused my energy on making more and more “Come Home Soon!” cards until finally my mother took my suggestion and was coming home soon.

She had been away for such a long time but I still had no clue that some people thought this day might never happen.

When Alma told me she was leaving our house for good, I was so overjoyed I wanted to invite her to hop in the bathtub with me and count underpants.

My arts and crafts skills with construction paper and magic markers were put to the test as I filled our house with “Welcome Home” signs. My sister stopped by as I worked diligently amidst the cornucopia of construction paper and magic markers and informed me that I had spelled beautiful twelve different ways and none of them were right. Since I had a beautiful theme running through each card, this was definitely a setback. But I was not to be deterred. Soon every inch of wall space was covered with colored paper and stick figures. And when the big day finally arrived, I waited for my mother to burst into the door and scoop me into her arms.

It was the slowest morning of my life as all of us kids waited impatiently.

I heard the familiar sound of our Buick’s motor in the driveway. I ran to the window and peeked out to see my father picking my mother up from the passenger side of the car.

As I watched her approach in his arms, she looked weak and small.

My brain took a moment to absorb this image, as if it were flipping through pages of a dictionary looking for this new definition of Mother.

They walked the door and everyone cheered.

I hung back shyly near the corner, uncertain if this new frail mother in his arms would still want to be bothered with me.

After hugs and tears from the rest of the family, my mother, still in my father’s arms, surveyed the bountiful decorations, paused for a moment, and looked into my eyes.

“Keith!” she exclaimed. “These are beautiful!”

Beautiful! B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. Beautiful.

The sentence wasn’t out of her mouth before I buried myself in the familiar comfort of her touch, smell, and voice.

********

As I spent the next weeks taking care of her, I pretended to be a feisty English scullery maid who lived off the kitchen and brought tea and crumpets—otherwise known as Tab and ice cream—to the bed of the sickly lady of the house. My mom didn’t seem to mind and even weakly smiled as I banged into the bedroom shouting, “Here ya go, m’lady!” or “Careful, deary, it’s ’ot!” in a bad Cockney accent.

My mother was back and I was blissfully and naively unaware of the bullet I had dodged.

Me Mum and some of ‘er kids.

by Keith Hoffman

February 2nd 2014

I’m not conceited enough to think I know the answers to the big spiritual questions.

I do not pretend to know exactly what happens when we die or exactly who what or where God is. I guess I should admire those who do have utmost certainty, but I believe there is supposed to be an element of magic and mystery and surprise to it all. The one and only time I went scuba diving I was immediately in awe of how many shapes and sizes and colors there were of just fish alone. Whoever or Whatever made those fish must truly love to create. He or She doesn’t seem to be very much of a black and white thinker (except for zebras and pandas and penguins but, c’mon, those are amazing takes on that color scheme). So my personal God is a mysterious and creative God. And I will someday forgive Him or Her for the fact that I nearly drowned on that very same scuba dive.

I do wish He/She would at least tell us if He/She is a man or woman so my sentences could have a little more fluidity when writing about Him/Her.

What I understand is that if I try to be authentic and kind and forgive everybody and give myself even a little quiet time each day to listen to something besides my own neurotic brain, my life seems to have some purpose and direction. I have many friends who disagree that all the scoundrels out there should be forgiven but to borrow a phrase that is not my own: resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to get sick.

So I try to forgive everybody except litterbugs. I think litterbugs should go to a hell that is piled up with trash.

Anyway this is a big subject and people will start yelling about Hitler, and I really don’t want to start a big debate.

I just want to tell the story of how a homely gargoyle has proven beyond a doubt that life is bigger than me.

********
Unfortunately this is another story that begins with death.

I’m sorry. I can’t help it.

Ever since my father dropped dead when I was seven, death has been a running theme in my life. I’m not afraid of it. I’m actually kind of fascinated by it (but to be clear not in a serial-killer kind of way.) Which reminds me—do not list all the people who have died in your life on a first coffee date. It is the direct opposite of hot.

So since I was seven I understood we don’t live forever and was very curious exactly what happens after we die.

(Don’t worry we’ll get to the gargoyle. I’m building up suspense)

********

After my sister Julie died a couple years ago I started seeing orange butterflies.

I noticed them everywhere only a few weeks after her memorial. They would land next to me on the grass or fly in their frantic ragtag way around my head. One day a particularly bold one was hanging around me in the front yard as I talked to my Aunt Jody. “I swear to God there is one that is stalking me right now!” I said in amazement into the phone. When I went inside to get a Diet Coke I happened to glance out the window into the very narrow dark alleyway at the side of my house. And there it was—the same butterfly had flown over the roof and was fluttering on the other side of the pane.

Really, I swear.

Another time three of them flew next to my car on the busy 405 in LA dancing around each other while I was stuck in a traffic jam. Finally I whispered nervously to my sister, “Are you sure you are allowed to send such obvious signs??” I didn’t want her getting in trouble because of me.

Only after these incidents kept happening at a rate that defied logic did I start to read up and find that for centuries butterfly signs came to people after they lost someone they loved. I even happened to come across an old illustration from the New Yorker by Saul Stenberg where he talked about being followed on his bike by an orange butterfly after the death of his good friend Nabokov.

http://www.theparisreview.org/art-photography/6068/portraits-and-landscapes-saul-steinberg

A few years later I was followed on my own bike in New York City by an entire herd (or the more correct term—“rabble”) of butterflies on the anniversary of my sister’s death.

Oh, and also the butterflies were always orange. Soon after they started pushily fluttering into my life, Julie’s husband called to tell me he had a random dream where Julie came to him and announced, “Keith’s favorite color is orange.”

Which by the way it is.

(Orange butterfly in my front yard)

All right, so lets say I kept noticing these orange butterflies in a desperate effort to convince myself that my sister wasn’t really gone. I mean seeing butterflies isn’t as uncommon as seeing condors or giraffes hanging out in my back alleyway right?

But then there were the crows….

My mom died shortly after my sister. It was a fucked-up year. A few weeks after her memorial as I was sitting in my front yard on a February morning in LA, a very straight line of those very large black birds dramatically flew directly in front of me right in my line of vision maybe five feet away. It was something one couldn’t miss. It was like the energy around me shifted as it happened.

I started counting: 1…2…3…4…

There were 13 crows in all.

Some would have taken this as an unlucky omen but after losing two members of my immediate family in four months, I didn’t really worry that my wonderful life might go tragically awry. What I did remember is that 13 was my mom’s lucky number. She actually called Friday the 13th her lucky day. She was contrary like that and if you reviewed the hardship of her life you may think she might have eventually chosen another “lucky” number but she was also very stubborn….kind of like a crow.

And I mean that in the most loving sense.

After that strange morning where I saw the straight line of crows I started to see them everywhere.

Seriously.

It got to the point where I would be with people who knew nothing about my weird “signs” and they would casually mention how odd it was that a crow was swooping so close to us.

One afternoon I was sitting in my office when a coworker began to look a bit frightened.

“What’s wrong?” I asked worriedly.

“There is a huge crow sitting on the window sill right behind you…” he said with alarm. “It’s looking right at us.”

I turned around nonchalantly and refrained from greeting it with a “hello mother” since I decided that may alarm my colleague even more.

Once again I got on the Internet and started reading about crows.

I found out the poor things are horribly misunderstood and maligned. Edgar Allen Poe did them and their relatives no favors and whoever decided a flock of crows should be known as a murder of crows was simply encumbering them with a PR nightmare.

Crows and ravens are revered by Native Americans and thought of as sacred messengers from the spirit world—the link between our ancestors and us. They are a symbol of the idea that from darkness comes light and rebirth. They signify change. And if you know my mom who I can only describe as the love child Dinah Shore and Beatrice Arthur would have had if they hooked up, you’d understand that unlike my gentle sister, this ballsy opinionated woman would have definitely picked a crow when God asked her to choose a sign to send her youngest child.

Let’s just ignore for now that they often eat road kill.

Oh here’s another little tip: Do NOT talk about seeing butterflies and crows everywhere and how they are signs from your dead mother and sister on a first date.

And probably not a second one either.

Trust me on this.

I was so inspired by these signs that I decided to get a tattoo of an orange butterfly on the underside of my right forearm right below my elbow. I figured at the very least when I was on my death bed I could look at my arm and be reminded that if my sister was indeed hanging out in the afterlife, she would be the first one to show me the papers I had to sign and the lines I had to wait in to register for heaven.

When I told the tattoo artist what this butterfly represented he responded quietly, “My sister died too. There is a reason you came to me.”

********
The crow tattoo was a lot bigger.

It took over my entire upper left arm– its claws perched on a branch near my elbow and its beak and attentive eyes on my shoulder keeping a constant watch on me. This was not a light undertaking as it took about six long sessions over several months to fill in the black of the feathers, but surprisingly this ritual of physical pain seemed to heal my soul. In the process I bonded with the most unlikely companion in my sad stoner amazingly talented and deep tattoo artist.

(with my dear friend Scottie–NOT my sad, stoner tattoo artist)

But this wasn’t the last of the grief tattoos. Just as the crow was getting his finishing touches, Julie’s husband found a colorful old expensive looking notebook in a box in his basement in Ohio. For some reason we will never know, my perfectly healthy sister had copied a poem down inside.

10/7/94
miss me and let me go – when
I come to the end of the road and
the sun has set for me – I want no
rights in a gloom filled room, why
cry for a soul set free – miss me
a little but not too long – and not
with your head bowed low – remember
the love that we once shared – miss
me but let me go and when your are
lonely and sick at heart go to the
friends we know and bury your sorrows
in doing good deeds – miss me but
let me go

Seesh. Talk about your messages from the grave.

He sent me the notebook and I brought it into the tattoo parlor with the idea that maybe we would burn a corner of the page that Julie had written on to mix in with the ink. That way her “essence” would be permanently embedded in my skin.

Hey, mourning makes you do some crazy shit.

But my tattoo artist had other ideas. He made a thermal copy of the diary page and traced it on my right shoulder blade so I had the poem on my back in my sister’s own handwriting.

The process was quick but insanely intense. It was a satisfying conclusion to this healing process and I have zero regrets about any of these tattoos.

Okay…I will admit that sometimes when I’m on vacation and lounging by the pool I’m a bit startled when someone asks me what my “back says”.

Inwardly I cringe. This poem is not exactly light summer reading. Explaining its history throws some people into apoplectic apologies. “Oh my god! I’m sorry!” they say recoiling in horror as if my mom and sister had actually been eradicated right then and there at the pool.

I am also forced into an inevitable and uncomfortable conversation any time I flirtatiously ask someone to slather sunscreen on my back.

“What is this word??”
“Lonely!”
“And this one?”
“Gloom!”

On the positive side, the tragic tattoo poem makes me sound awfully deep and wounded, which some people find kind of sexy.

But I’m rambling

Now to the gargoyle…

I bought the gargoyle somewhere in Central California a few hours from my LA home not far from the famous Hearst Castle. I was on a short vacation staying at a motel near the ocean where there were some booths set up in the empty lot next door. Vendors were selling all kinds of unusual and original things and it was close to my mother’s birthday so I had to check it out. I never liked buying my mom traditional gifts. I liked getting her something that was clearly and uniquely from me so that she never forgot who it came from. Instead of a nice sweater or scarf I would buy her lopsided rusty antique-looking chimes that I’d found in the back of some tiny decrepit shop. Once when I was going through my Barbra Streisand phase (from 1977 to the late 90’s) I gave her a Yentl poster with the words “Nothing’s Impossible” written on the bottom that she proudly hung in her bedroom. One day during the last months of her hard life she looked over at the poster with Barbra dressed as a Yeshiva boy and read the optimistic phrase on the bottom musing, “I’m not sure that’s really true…”

So when I saw this odd shaped winged fellow with an angular face, sharp nose, and somewhat wickedly gleeful smile perched on the edge of an old card table with his legs crossed at his ankles, I instantly knew I had found the perfect gift.

To be honest I don’t know how I got it to Cincinnati. I’m not very good at shipping things so at some point I must have lugged it home. What I know for sure is that for years after it proudly sat on my mother’s bookshelf gazing intently at Yentl across the room.

********

After my mother’s death, my big brother Paul and I had exactly one day to clean out her entire 84 years of accumulated life.

Four months earlier we had spent several weeks in Cincinnati dealing with my sister’s death so now neither of us could take more than a few days off from work. Other family members were busy with their own lives so my brother, his girlfriend, daughter and I volunteered for the task of sorting through her lifetime of things into KEEP, DONATE and TRASH piles.

This was an exhausting and soul-grinding task.

When you discover journals where your mom is writing about her insecurities and low self-esteem do you drag them home with you? Do you trash them? Certainly you don’t donate them. What about those stupid baskets she loved to collect? Sure they were stupid but if they had value to her….

The one bright spot of looking through her old cards was my own humor. Even in my tired grief I was amused every time I found a card with one of my handwritten notes:

“Happy Birthday! Maybe Next Year Will Work Out For You.”
“Get Well Soon But if You Don’t Can I Have Your Cat?”
“Happy Mother’s Day! I’m Sure You Did Your Best.”

“I’m funny!” I affirmed to myself chuckling until Paul walked past and barked me out of my reverie like a deranged drill sergeant. “WE’VE GOT ONE DAY TO DO THIS! KEEP SORTING!”

I read through endless piles of saved cards including one from my now deceased sister.

“Mom, I know I wasn’t the perfect child
But I sure came closer than those other misfits I call siblings”.

I smiled at her brattiness. She didn’t think one of the misfits would ever see this.

“Well at least we’re still alive.” I thought to myself smugly.

Finally we had things in some sort of loose order just as the sun began to set. My brother and the rest were driving home to Indiana that night but my plane wasn’t leaving until morning.

I stayed all night in the apartment that had once been my mother’s home but was now just 4 very empty rooms strewn with piles of stuff. It killed something in me to endure that emptiness all by myself but eventually the sun impossibly came back up again.

I looked around at the piles that were left for Paul and the rest of my family to haul out of the house the following weekend.

The poor gargoyle was sitting crookedly on the DONATE pile—his smile seeming a little less enthusiastic as he wondered what his future would hold.

I finished packing and began to lug my suitcase to the door before I took one more glance back.

He looked so abandoned.

Finally I scooped him up and jammed him in my suitcase.

********

I regretted this impulsive act only a few hours later as the woman at the check in counter at the airport told me my luggage was over the allowed limit. I had to frantically redistribute the weight of my bags feeling vulnerable and ashamed as my shoes; underwear and toothpaste were exposed to world of people in the line behind me.

My regret was gone by the time I got to Los Angeles where the weird little guy sat peacefully in my front yard for the next several months. Out of all those piles in her apartment this was all I really needed to remember us by.

When I got an offer I couldn’t refuse to move to New York, Paul flew out to help me load the huge moving van that was going out ahead of me. (We were getting quite proficient at these big life transitions.). Some special things I held back to bring with me on my drive across country. I was taking a week just for myself—a week of freedom where I belonged nowhere and had to answer to no one. I needed a few magical things for this mystical journey including my nativity scene (see my JESUS, MARY AND GLORIA blog), my lumpy old pit bull Sasha and my mother’s old gargoyle. I kept the gargoyle sitting between Sasha and me in my Mini Cooper as a sort of Good Luck Talisman.

We made the trip pretty much unscathed until somewhere in the flat lands of Kansas when Sasha dived after an errant McDonalds French fry I was devouring and knocked the gargoyle into my gear shift throwing us into neutral on the interstate. We all survived but the gargoyle lost a foot in the process that still sits in the cup holder of my car to this very day. Sasha was mostly a good companion during these trips—quiet unless she spotted a dog in another car, which would send her into an apoplectic frenzy while I tried desperately not to drive to my death in a ravine. More than one trucker yelled,  “Nice Pit!” to me at rest stops that for some reason turned me into a southern coquette. “Why thank ya sir!” I would reply like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind or more likely the tragic aging Blanche Dubois in Streetcar Named Desire.

********

I had been in New York a week and a half when the real estate woman brought me to the apartment in Brooklyn. Her name was Janet, which I quietly noted was also my mother’s name. She was brash and opinionated just like my mother too. The very first place she showed me was the ground floor of a brownstone that had a fantastic backyard but a very small bathroom. I didn’t realize at the time that no place in New York on my non-millionaire budget was going to have unlimited space and that any apartment with a backyard was a huge find. We went to other apartments but one seemed to be worse than the other until we finally were afraid to knock on the nicked and chipped door at one location because its dingy and dangerous hallway served as a fair warning of what might lie on the other side.

Discouraged, I asked Janet if she would take me back to the first place one more time.

I stepped into the empty apartment and looked around with a new point of view.

The kitchen was huge which maybe would perhaps make up for the tiny bathroom. I mean this bathroom was tiny—you could use the toilet, brush your teeth and shower pretty much without moving. The living room and bedroom were nice but really what made this place so special was that backyard off the kitchen. It was long and rectangular shaped with a huge tree in the back and a stone walkway on the side. Outside the kitchen door was a patio followed by a lawn and garden all surrounded by a tall wooden fence.

And that is where I finally saw it.

I walked closer to the fence to see if it was really what I thought it was and a jolt of electricity made the hair rise on arms and neck.

It was a gargoyle with a pointed nose and its legs crossed at the ankles.

It was exactly the same gargoyle as the one I drove across country.

Nothing else had been left in this apartment.

No furniture.

No pictures.

No knickknacks.

They only thing left behind was this single gargoyle sitting expectantly on the fence.

I caught my breath as I processed this.

And then I noticed something else.

His left foot was broken.

The two gargoyles were an exact match.

********
“I guess I need to move here.”

“Well, I don’t know about you but I believe in signs.” Janet said after I told her the backstory.

I looked down at the butterfly on my forearm.

Did I believe in signs?

********

“She was a bossy old woman when she was alive and she’s a bossy old woman still,” Paul said as I sat on the phone with him in my new kitchen in the apartment I already adored.

I laughed as I looked out at my two gargoyles hanging out together on the fence.

My friend Mark suggested I was going to meet my soul mate in New York and that he would have a hooknose, pale complexion and a slight limp.

When I told my therapist about them he said simply, “Wow, there really is no such thing as time.”

And I knew what he meant.

The insane ‘coincidence’ of me being in Central California on the day that gargoyle was being sold, deciding on the last minute to take it from my mother’s house and then bringing it–not in a box–but in the front seat of my car next to me on my trip across country (breaking his foot along the way)…and then…whoever lived in this apartment before me not only buying the exact same gargoyle at some point in their lives but then breaking its foot and deciding to leave it—and only it—behind when they moved out that day…

Well, it staggers the mind.

So that’s what I think about when I feel like my life has strayed totally off course or I wonder how something could ever possibly work out. I think about those gargoyles and how these two unique, slightly wounded whimsical creatures somehow found each other from opposite sides of the country at the exact right moment in time.

And that is why I believe there is something greater than me moving things along and that I just have to do my part and let go and get in the flow.

I know that’s a very long story to get to what sounds like a cliché.

But that is the absolutely true story of the gargoyle that became the gargoyles.

 

by Keith Hoffman

December 24th, 2013

I should have felt guilty as I stood in that damp November night air in the parking lot of a seedy motel on the Ohio/Indiana border hunched over an 80-year-old nativity scene in an old cardboard box.

But I didn’t.

Instead I felt victorious as I savored the memory my big sister’s untimely death.

And to think the journey that lead up to this moment began so innocently.

********

“Your father had nothing to do with the building that nativity scene,” my mother would repeat once again in an exhausted, exasperated tone.

But I still didn’t believe her.

This was the routine we had every single December of my childhood when I asked if I could haul the nativity scene out of the attic and place it inside our faux plaster fireplace.

“Your father couldn’t put together your plastic Hot Wheels track. Why do you think he could ever build something like this?”

She had a point. But ever since my father’s death when I was seven, the legend of him building this crèche had only grown in my mind.

“He said he helped Grandpa,” I would remind her stubbornly.

“If he helped your grandpa, he helped him by not helping him which, by the way, he was an expert at.”

My mom had a passionate and volatile relationship with my father that continued long after his death.

But none of that mattered as I pulled the nativity scene out of the old beat-up cardboard box and placed it on a piece of worn green felt before unwrapping each figurine from yellowed pieces of newspaper filled with old-fashioned ads and long-forgotten news stories from before I was born.

The wooden manger was about the size of a portable TV and shaped like a log cabin with a pointed roof. The weathered plywood was covered in twigs that were nailed to it and that I was sure my father gathered tirelessly in the woods.

The inside walls were decorated with shiny gold foil and the top back wall contained a spare light bulb in a socket that sent a warm glow over the entire scene.

The cast of characters consisted of the usual suspects: Mary, Joseph, a mule, a cow (the apparent owner of the manger), a shepherd, two sheep, three wise men and a camel (no matter that the wise men didn’t arrive until a year later—who minds a little artistic license now and then?). Finally there was an angel that I attached to a little hook at the top of the pointed roof. The figures were painted in bright colors of blue, purple orange, green and gold. I loved examining the details of each fold of their robes, and the blue of their expressive eyes and red of their tiny lips. Many, like the shepherd, had exotic locations like Italy where they were made stenciled surreptitiously on their base. Others had less glamorous secrets on their undersides such as poor hapless Joseph with a sticker that read 89 cents.

Some of the ceramic statues were extremely old– most likely from the day the crèche was built. But over the years of small energetic children and big clumsy pets, many had been broken and replaced. The result was that new Joseph was a giant next to old Mary (a fact in which he politely made less obvious by continually kneeling). The wise men were also not proportionate to each other and brought two Frankincenses and one Gold apparently getting their wires crossed about who was supposed to bring the Myrrh.

 

Gloria was my favorite. She was the angel on top. For many Christmases she flew under a big tin foil gold star until an atheist cat ate it during my teenage years. I didn’t realize until much later that the angel’s name wasn’t really Gloria. That was simply a banner she held. I assumed throughout my childhood that the banner was like a nametag angels carried around so that God in heaven could remember who they were at celestial gatherings without some saint behind him whispering, “This is Gabriel, he told Mary she was pregnant and smote those Egyptians when he was younger.”

At some point Baby Jesus went from a tiny cracked ceramic babe wrapped in swaddling clothes to a large plastic seeming one-year-old with a full head of hair and weirdly…six-pack abs.

Mary was doing amazingly well after giving birth to that one.

Baby Jesus was the whole point of the scene of course and he didn’t make his arrival until midnight on Christmas Eve (no dramatic license allowed when it comes to Jesus). For as long as I can remember my job was to put Baby Jesus in the crib at exactly midnight. During the early years it was quite a feat staying awake to perform this ceremony, but I knew it was important and eyed the second hand of the clock like a hawk so I could perform this sacred task at the exact right moment.

It wasn’t like the rest of the family stood around and observed me with reverence—that was not my family’s style. We were more of a “eat too much White Castles and cookies and get really drunk and play games and fight” type family. So while everyone else got in “loud discussions” in the other rooms—I lay on the floor in my green and white striped footie pajamas and stared rapturously at the freakishly large plastic newborn.

No matter what was going on in my life each year, inside this crèche was peace and familial love and magic.

********

The nativity scene got left home during college. My freshman dorm roommates were already wary of my extensive Barbra Streisand vinyl collection without me bringing Gloria and company into the mix. Still, I made it home for Christmas and performed my duties even if I was often drunk and high while doing it.

When I moved to New York City in my twenties, I couldn’t afford to fly home and I fiercely missed the Nativity scene that my father allegedly didn’t help build. I begged my mother for it each year but my big sister Julie put her foot down every time. Julie was the only sister of five children and she was right smack in the middle age-wise. I loved Julie and she loved me but on this topic we vehemently disagreed.

Julie was the self-assigned keeper of the Hoffman heirlooms. We were not a wealthy family so this mainly consisted of items such as chipped ashtrays, cracked coffee tables and a cast iron skillet. With a list like that you can see why this nativity scene was coveted. It wasn’t even like she wanted it for herself. She was just certain her scattered-brained little brother would lose it somewhere in the big city and it would be gone from the family forever.

I was the youngest though and I could still wrap my mother around my little finger.

One day in November in the early 80’s she secretly mailed the crèche to me. When I received it, I quickly hid it in the back of my closet as if the nativity figures where the Frank family and my sister was a blood thirsty Nazi.

And when Julie did discover them missing that Christmas you would have thought the Von Trapps had escaped from the Austrian Music Festival right under her nose.

“You are not keeping that,” she said with menace into the phone.

“Mother said I could!” I retorted using an old standby that had worked for the last twentysomething years.

“We’ll see,” concluded Julie in a tone that made me fear for our mom’s life.

********

But I did manage to keep it, and over the years never once missed putting Baby Jesus in the crib. Even if I wasn’t home I would bring it with me wherever I was visiting and make everyone be quiet while I played Stevie Nick’s version of Silent Night featuring Robbie Neville and placed Baby Jesus in the crib. (Stevie was a tradition started in the late 80’s and is not a Bible-approved addition to the ceremony).

Putting Baby Jesus in the crib was still every bit as magic.

Putting Baby Jesus in the crib even started a seven-and-a-half year relationship…but that’s a whole other story for another time.

The crèche went through some rough years when my cat Binky was alive. He would repeatedly crawl inside for the warmth of the light bulb causing massive destruction in his wake. My boyfriend gave me a card one Christmas with a beautiful sentiment:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people…and then a giant black and white cat laid down on top of them and crushed them all.

But Julie was not amused. It was the one topic she found no humor in.

“My nativity scene looks great in its new LA home!” I would say teasingly on the phone.

“Not funny,” my sister who found everything funny would reply tersely. She was determined to get that nativity scene back in Cincinnati where it belonged and me moving it further away from that destination only strengthened her resolve.

When she came to visit, I was always a polite host but made damn sure I never let her out of my sight in my home even in the middle of summer when the object of our seemingly endless custody battle was securely packed away.

********

But finally our endless custody battle did end.

My sister pulled a fast one on our family and died suddenly on a horrendous and long September day.

Losing her turned my world upside down. Even with this crèche thing sticking in our collective craw, she and I could not have adored each other more.

The loss was only made more raw by my mother dying four months later so I was more than happy at the end of that terrible year when I had a chance to move back to New York from Los Angeles and start life fresh with a new job.

Movers took most of my stuff ahead, but the crèche was coming with me and my dog in the Mini Cooper. I trusted no one with it—especially since I wasn’t convinced my sister’s spirit wouldn’t somehow destroy it out of spite.

Every night of my trip across country I unpacked the crèche in the same box my mom mailed it in with my address written in her handwriting on the top, and brought it inside safe and sound from thieves and vengeful ghosts.

I loved that crèche and felt comfort and joy every time I pulled it out of the car. I would think about those objects inside—even though they were lifeless they had life for me—joyful, vibrant and nostalgic energy of Christmas’ past. They had brought a consistency to what was too often my tumultuous life. They were silent witnesses of where I was–for better or worse–every Christmas season when I let them out of the box. Sometimes during my particularly bad times I was embarrassed for them to see me. “Haven’t you improved at all this year??” Mary’s self-righteous face would seem to say. It was particularly hard living up to her standards. I always felt the swarthy, sultry shepherd understood me and my foibles much better.

And that was what I was doing in that motel in Indiana when that feeling struck me.

I was pulling the Nativity scene that I loved for over fifty years—that was old already when I started loving it—out of the back of my car. My trip had been nostalgic and melancholy especially as I approached Cincinnati—the place where I grew up with it and the place where lost my sister. But that night as I lugged out the box out I suddenly smiled.

“I won,” I thought to myself with a slight chuckle. “Now you can never make me return this to Mother,” I whispered tauntingly to the heavens.

It was a small victory—and possibly looked at as insensitive by others—but to me, finding a silver lining after that mess of a year was a true Christmas Miracle.

********

So tonight when place baby Jesus in the manger at exactly midnight once again I will wonder if my stubborn sister has forgiven my mother and me.

And I will think to myself, “Has she finally stopped being angry that I have it?”

But I’m already pretty sure I know the answer.