I want socks for Christmas.
That’s all that comes to mind. If I think harder I can want other things. I can want loose leaf teas and new sketching pencils and maybe a pour-over with a reusable filter. I’m tired of running out of the paper ones. I can want books – used ones with cracked spines and textured pages.
I can want new journals: blank and waiting. I can want coffee mugs, but they have to have good handles. Not the little ones that make me drink delicately, but the wide handles that fit all four fingers, wrapped and clutching microwaved ceramic. I can want rings that won’t turn my fingers green.
I can want throw blankets and pillows, and even grown-up things like a decent vacuum. A mattress that has springs that don’t tear its seams – but that means I have to admit that I want a house to put it in.
I want a stained-glass lamp like the one my dad had in the attic of our Fawcett Avenue home.
I want our Fawcett Avenue home, but I would settle for a house without a move-out date.
I want Pennsylvania winters instead of Kentucky ones. I want a white Christmas. No more yellowed and dried bluegrass, and no more seventy-degree Novembers. I want red cheeks and runny noses and the relief that comes with closing the front door against the chill.
I want an old wood burning stove. I want day-old turkey in recycled cool whip containers and the ‘r’ sound that my Western Pennsylvanian pappy puts in the word “wash.” I want red birch beer and potato candy kept in the cellar, so it stays cold.
I want holidays unsplit by I-90. I’ll settle for gas money and an E-ZPass.
I want all the Christmas stations to stop playing pop covers of old Christmas songs. I want Nat King Cole, and Bing Crosby, and Andy Williams. I want people to agree that Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” is objectively the best rendition. I want Joni Mitchell’s “River” on repeat. I want Joni Mitchell to have her music on Spotify.
I want to hear John Lennon sing “War is over” and I want it to be true.
I want to not cry every time I hear a choir sing about a mother and a baby left in the cold.
I want Jesus standing on the tiles of my kitchen so I can scream at him, even though I know it would come out as a whisper:
You were supposed to fix it.
I want the blissful Yule-tide excitement of the little girl in white stockings and shiny Mary-Janes and a glittery red dress who sits in front of me at the Christmas Eve service. She wants more than socks for Christmas.
