Wise Men and Other Stories

by Mike O'Mary

  Also by Mike O’Mary

  The Note

  A story about the power of appreciation

  Saying Goodbye

  To the people, places, and things in our lives

  Julie Rember, Editor

  Mike O’Mary, Series Editor

  Be There Now

  Travel stories from around the world

  Julie Rand, Editor

  Mike O’Mary, Series Editor

  Wise Men and Other Stories

  Mike O’Mary

  Copyright © 2009 by Mike O’Mary

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Dream of Things

  Downers Grove, Illinois

  dreamofthings.com

  Dedicated, with love, to my mother, Barbara

  Many of these essays were first read on WNIJ - Northern Illinois Public Radio, as part of NPR’s Morning Edition program. Others were published, sometimes in different versions, in the following publications: Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Peoria Journal Star, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Sun Magazine, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine, Louisville Courier Journal, Joliet Herald, and Catholic Digest.

  Contents

  Wise Men

  Snow Ice Cream

  Unwrapping Our Gifts

  The Scariest Costume

  Decorating the House

  John’s Thanksgiving

  The Best Meals

  Christmas at the Carl Sandburg Mall

  The Christmas Program

  Family Men

  Kid Talk

  A Note From My Sister

  The EcoSphere

  Little Arms

  Holiday Parties

  The Difference Between Men and Women

  New Year’s Resolutions

  The Rose Parade

  The Top Ten

  The Scrabble Tournament

  Dog Days

  Lucky Duck

  Heaven

  Wise Men

  When I was in the second grade, I played one of the three wise men in the St. Elizabeth of Hungary Christmas play. I was the second wise man—the one who brought the frankincense.

  I enjoyed being one of the wise men. It was a pretty easy part. The first wise man says, “We are the three wise men. I bring you gold,” and that serves as the cue for the next wise man who says, “and I bring you frankincense,” and so on.

  We also got to wear robes. I brought a bathrobe from home.

  But the main thing was that you were a “wise man.” There were bigger parts—Mary and Joseph had pretty substantial roles, and even the innkeeper and shepherds had more lines—but being a wise man was quite a distinction. You had to carry yourself with grace and dignity. You had to look wise.

  That’s why I was a little confused when I learned that Mike Walston had also been designated a wise man.

  Mike Walston was the poor kid of the class. As it turned out, most of us at my old school were pretty poor, but we had not yet seen enough of the world to know it. What we did know was that we were better off than Mike Walston.

  We knew because we started each day at St. Elizabeth’s by going around the room and telling Sister Julia what we ate for breakfast that morning. It turned out that Mike Walston seldom had breakfast. When it was his turn to answer, he’d stand up and smile a big unselfconscious smile and say, “Nothing.” After the kids laughed at his answer a few times, he stopped smiling, but his answer didn’t change. As it was, Mike Walston was singled out as different, possibly ignorant, and, generally speaking, not a good person to associate with. All I knew was that the honor of being designated a wise man had been diminished by my having to share that distinction with Mike Walston. And to make matters worse, he was the head wise man. He was to present the gold.

  We began rehearsals right after Thanksgiving. We three kings would stand in the wings during most of rehearsal, Mike Walston first, me behind him, and Joey Amback, the myrrh guy, behind me. When it was time for us to enter, Mike Walston, being gold, would lead the way.

  Unfortunately, Mike Walston was having trouble remembering his lines. (“We are the three wise men. I bring you gold.”) And, of course, every time he stumbled during rehearsal, the class would laugh at him. I only made matters worse by making faces whenever he messed up, causing the class to laugh even louder.

  As we got closer to opening night, Mike Walston was still having trouble. Many of us speculated that Sister Julia would have to make a switch, and that I, being frankincense and the next wise man on the totem pole, was the likely candidate to move up. So when Sister Julia asked me to stay after school the day before the performance, I was prepared: if she felt my talents were better suited to the role of head wise man, I would, with all due grace and dignity, accept the promotion and present gold to the Christ-child on opening night.

  But that’s not what Sister Julia wanted. Instead, I heard these shocking words: “I want you to help Mike Walston remember his lines when we perform the play tomorrow night.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “I want you to practice his lines with him before you go on stage,” Sister Julia continued, “and if he forgets his lines when he kneels down by the baby Jesus, I want you to kneel down beside him and whisper his lines to him so the audience won’t know he forgot.”

  I said I would do it.

  Sister Julia dismissed me, and I walked home that day in a daze. This was not the way it was supposed to be. Nonetheless, the next night, I did as Sister Julia told me. Mike Walston, Joey Amback, and I showed up in our bathrobes, somebody from the props department handed us cardboard crowns covered with tinfoil, and then Mike Walston and I went right to work on his lines: “We are the three wise men. I bring you gold.”

  He did it fine offstage when he was relaxed, but I was afraid that once we got on stage, he’d freeze. I was prepared though: if he froze, I’d kneel down beside him and bail him out. If nothing else, my friends would know who was the hero and who was the goat.

  The play went on and we watched as the innkeeper turned Joseph and Mary away, they shacked up in the stable, and the sheep and goats and cows gathered around. Mike Walston and I went over his lines once more while the shepherds did their thing, and then it was time for our big entrance.

  Mike Walston led us across the stage toward the Star of Bethlehem and the manger. With Mary and Joseph looking on, Mike knelt in front of the baby Jesus and—didn’t say a word. He froze. I was about to kneel down to help him, but just then, he glanced up at me and smiled a big smile. Then he turned, looked at Mary, and spat out his lines in the same matter-of-fact tone he used when he told us about breakfast: “We are the three wise men. I bring you gold.”

  I was stunned. There was a fairly long pause before Joey Amback gave me a nudge. Then I remembered where I was. I knelt down next to Mike Walston, turned to Mary, and said, “And I bring you gold.”

  I couldn’t believe my own words. I was the frankincense guy, but I had said, plain as day, “I bring you gold.” There was a shocked hush over the entire church basement audience—broken only by a few nervous coughs—until Joey Amback knelt next to me and said, “Yeah, I bring you gold, too.”

  Then the whole audience roared. The third wise man had bailed me out. Life in the second grade would go on. I would not have to spend my remaining days standing against the fence during recess. And Mike Walston would receive kudos for his fine performance.

  The lesson stuck with me. Years later, when my bos
s was having trouble and there was talk of replacing him, I remembered the Christmas play and lent him a hand. Sure, I wanted to move up, but not at all costs. I know firsthand that the wisest of wise men stumble once in a while. And when that happens, it’s nice to have somebody around who will cover your rear.

  Snow Ice Cream

  The first snowfall. When I was little, new snow meant one thing: we’d get to make snow ice cream.

  As soon as enough snow had accumulated on the ground, my mother would send my brothers and sisters and me out to collect the new snow in mixing bowls, drinking glasses, soup cans—anything we could find. Then we’d bring all of the containers back to the kitchen.

  While Mom dumped the snow into a big glass mixing bowl, we kids would take off our coats, hats, and gloves, and spread them throughout the rest of the house to dry over any available furnace vent. Then we gathered in the kitchen where we’d take turns warming our feet over the vent next to the oven.

  Mom would take the big bowl of snow, add some sugar, milk, and vanilla extract, and mix it all up. Then she gave us each a bowl full, and we sat around the kitchen table—me with my little brothers and sisters at a time before we were old enough to know pain or worry—eating snow ice cream while Mom took care of everything else.

  Those were rare, beautiful moments…frozen in time, frozen in memory…and I’d give anything to go back to that kitchen with my mother, brothers, and sisters for just five minutes.

  I haven’t had snow ice cream in a lot of years. And there are probably many reasons not to eat snow ice cream nowadays. Even though new fallen snow may look pure and white, there are probably lots of impurities in the stuff. It’s just a matter of time before somebody sounds the alarm about the harmful effects of acid snow.

  Even so, snow ice cream still sounds pretty good to me. It sounds like kids warming their cold little toes over the furnace vent. It sounds like Mom mixing up a batch of something cold and sweet in the kitchen. And in the middle of shopping for presents, sending out Christmas cards, decorating the tree, balancing the checkbook, and myriad other holiday-related activities, it sounds like a pretty good way to spend a December afternoon.

  Where do we keep those mixing bowls anyway?

  Unwrapping Our Gifts

  When we open our presents at Christmas, I am in charge of gathering up the wrapping paper.

  I don’t know exactly when or why I became my family’s designated cleaner-upper, but over the years, as I’ve gotten to know myself a little bit better, I understand that this was no accident. Getting rid of the wrapping paper is part of who I am.

  I learned from my mother how to wrap gifts. She wrapped things in plain white tissue paper with a simple ribbon and hand-made bow. And after all the presents had been opened, she gathered up the tissue paper, ribbons, and bows, and saved them to be used again next year.

  After witnessing her simple and efficient methods for years, I was amazed to learn how much effort some people put into wrapping Christmas presents.

  I don’t fault people who go to the time and trouble to wrap a gift nicely. Many people even have their gifts wrapped right at the department store—which is the way I would do it if money were no object. You could accuse them of being lazy or of wasting money, but the way I see it, they’re supporting all those gift wrappers working in all those gift-wrapping departments for the holiday season. There’s nothing wrong with that.

  But we do need to keep things in perspective. I think we all agree that when it comes to gifts, it is the thought that counts. And the gift wrap—being once removed from the gift, and twice removed from the thought—should actually matter hardly at all.

  So that’s why I’m out there getting rid of the paper as soon as it comes off the gift. I figure the fewer distractions there are, the more likely we are to get down to the important things: the good feelings between the person receiving the gift and the person giving it.

  If I could, I’d even get rid of the gifts. But I’ve been told I will be barred from all future family functions if I start hauling away presents as soon as they’ve been opened.

  One of my friends is always telling me, “I’ll hold a strong thought for you.” That’s what I want under my tree. In a perfect world, we’d remove the wrapping paper and find strong thoughts from all our friends and relatives. And when I stop and think about it, that’s exactly what I get.

  But still, every once in a while, the thought gets lost in the Christmas shuffle. That’s why I think it would be nice if we could do away with the gift-wrap and the presents. Then we could all sit around the tree on Christmas morning and share our thoughts of each other.

  But most of us can’t quite bring ourselves to do that. The kids probably wouldn’t understand that kind of Christmas as well as they understand a Barbie Christmas or a Wii Christmas. And there’s something to be said for the joy of giving.

  It’s the pros and cons of issues like this that make me think life is not so much wonderful as it is ambiguous. Fortunately, wonder and ambiguity are not mutually exclusive.

  I myself would probably not be very good at sitting around a tree telling people how I feel about them. I suspect many people are the same way. That’s why we enjoy giving presents. If we can’t tell them how we feel, we can at least try to show them with a little gift at Christmas.

  And if you’ve really neglected someone throughout the year, you can get them a big gift at Christmas. Retailers love guilt.

  We are funny creatures. We usually know what’s important, but those things seem so weighty and imposing that we are easily distracted. We go bowling when we know in our hearts and souls that we should be spending time with our children. Or we don’t go bowling when we know in our hearts and souls that we need time to relax and be with friends. I think it was Aristophanes who first said that many of life’s mysteries would be solved if there were only some magic formula to accurately determine whether it is the right time or the wrong time in one’s life to go bowling.

  And, of course, we spend lots of money on big Christmas presents when all most people want is to know that they are loved.

  Anyway, I said it was no accident that I ended up being the one in my family to gather up the wrapping paper at Christmas. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life trying to find the right balance between the package and the contents—between the things we regard as distractions and the things we consider to hold meaning.

  Along the way, I’ve known a number of people who have spent the better part of their lives focusing on their own personal gift-wrap instead. Appearance is everything. They wrap themselves up without realizing that many people would be more interested in what’s inside.

  And I’ve known yet another group of people who have spent their lives stripping the distractions away. These people are best described as “focused.” They figure out what they want to do with their lives and they focus on that, refusing to be sidetracked. They have found their gifts, but they sometimes forget to share them.

  As with most things, the answer probably lies in moderation. It’s true that too many distractions can prevent us from realizing who and what we are—from being aware. But in keeping with life’s ambiguity, it’s those same distractions that give life its rich texture. We don’t need to become hermits, but in everything we do, we need to try to find what’s important.

  I have an inkling of what’s important at Christmas. And since I can’t strip away the gifts, the least I can do is get the wrapping paper out of the way.

  Here’s wishing you an Uncluttered Christmas and a Very Ambiguous New Year.

  The Scariest Costume

  I’m going to a costume party this weekend, and I don’t know what to wear. I’m not very creative, so I’m thinking of going as my evil twin. Or I might go as an Olympic water polo player. Something about me in a Speedo and a bathing cap strikes me as funny. It could also be pretty scary.

  If I really wanted to scare people, I’d go as a midlife crisis. The dictionary defines it as “a period of e
motional turmoil characterized by a strong desire for change.” A professor I once had defined it as the death of your father.

  I haven’t reached a midlife crisis yet, but I hear footsteps. And when I turn around to see what’s coming, I see myself, way back there—so far back that I may never catch up. So far back, I’m almost gone.

  In between are lots of people that sort of look like me. There’s me the father and me the son. Me the husband, brother, son-in-law, and my old friend, me the soccer coach. Me the student, the writer, the foreman, the public relations guy…you get the idea. Sometimes I look back and wonder what happened to that other guy. Is there anything left of him or is he gone forever? It’s frightening.

  I think this happens to a lot of people. We go through life taking on various roles, and if we’re not careful, we lose track of ourselves. Before you know it, people are saying, “What happened to him? He used to be so much fun.” Meanwhile, you wander around, fulfilling your duties, but with a vague sense of disillusionment. Then your father dies, and next thing you know, you’re headed for the beach in a convertible with a woman half your age while your wife and kids sit around waiting for the child support checks.

  I don’t want that to happen to me—except maybe for the convertible part. So I think I know what I’m going to do for this costume party. I’m going to go as myself. I just hope somebody recognizes me.

  Decorating the House

  Last weekend, I put up the Christmas lights at our house. My greatest fear is of falling off the ladder while I’m decorating. I know I have to go sometime, but I want it to be in a blaze of glory: foiling a band of terrorists by taking a bullet for Santa at the mall... stopping a herd of stampeding reindeer in order to save a sleigh full of Christmas toys for the orphanage... something dramatic. What I don’t want is to be found dangling from the downspout with a noose of burned-out Christmas lights around my neck.