A world away

Luis took me with him on a real estate listing today to a six-story building in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the neighborhood I was born and raised in. When I saw the building again, it brought back to me an extraordinary incident that happened there, coincidentally 33 years ago to the day, an incident that for me symbolized the end of my innocence.

I vividly and fondly remember my childhood in Flatbush in the 1960s and 1970s. I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything else. We lived in a six-story building on Ocean Avenue called Ethel Arms (which Luis likes to call "Ethel Flabby Arms"). Ocean Avenue was once a sleepy path leading to Sheepshead Bay, but in the 1920s, as immigrant waves kept rolling in, high-rise apartment buildings sprouted all along the avenue, urbanizing it. When I was growing up, Ocean Avenue was a four-lane street, and the most popular sport was dodging cars to get to the other side. Once across, you entered Ditmas Park, where the scenery changed markedly and you felt like you were in the country.

The side streets were--and still are--lined with shade trees and stately Victorian homes dating from the early 1900s. The nearby Pink Palace in Sophie's Choice exemplifies those homes. Erasmus Hall High School, alma mater of Barbra Streisand, Susan Hayward, and Donny Most, was the closest public high school. Movie stars such as Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford lived in Flatbush around the time it urbanized. By the early 1970s the only famous local residents I knew of were Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki, a few soap actors, and Barry Manilow and his mother. The giant, fenced-in house across from my building was purportedly the home of a porn director, but I never knew whether that was true.

I always felt safe growing up in Flatbush, and evidently so did my parents, since they let me play unsupervised out on the big, open dangerous street. We weren't really unsupervised, as hundreds of invisible pairs of eyes somehow managed to report unseemly activity to our respective parents. Assaults and thefts were rare, but there did seem to be a fair amount of arson. On Hallowe'en my mother and some friends' parents would escort us to select homes around the neighborhood, including the Ebinger house on E. 19th Street. For those unfamiliar with Ebinger's, it was a family-owned bakery famous for its chocolate blackout cake.

The local movie palaces were the spectacular Loew's Kings (Baroque) and Rialto (Beaux-Arts) theatres, both now houses of worship. I realize now how magnificent some of the local architecture was. I remember old ice-cream parlors like Karp's on Flatbush and Newkirk, where my mother would get me a little cup of Coke syrup to combat an upset stomach.

At the time, I was unaware that the rest of the world was not like mine. Mine was what would be categorized today as "diverse"--a concept that is now enforced politically rather than organically. My building was like a mini-United Nations of different races, religions, and family status. The Pavlicases were a middle-aged Greek couple whose apartment smelled of cardamom, anise, and cumin. Our Jewish neighbor Miriam was a housebound single hemophiliac living with her 80-year-old widowed mother. My best friend, a black girl named Angela Barnes, had a white mom and a black dad. Glenn was a soft-spoken Jamaican man who I think was probably gay. I had friends who were Argentinian, Chinese, Haitian, Italian, Irish, Norwegian, Puerto Rican, Russian. I started studying Spanish on my own when I was 11 by sitting with El Diario and a Spanish dictionary so I could try to understand the Hispanics around the corner. Later, when we moved to an all-Irish block in Sunset Park in my late teens, I realized that worlds like mine were the exception rather than the rule.

In the summer of 1975, I was in love with a beautiful Trinidadian girl named Allison whom I'd been hanging out with for 6 months. When people ask me whether that wasn't a sign that I was straight, I remind them that we were both 12 and neither of us had gone through puberty yet. When we'd watch "Gidget" movies together, I was far more interested in James Darren than Sandra Dee.

Every Sunday morning I went to 10:00 mass at Our Lady of Refuge Church. I sometimes served as a lector, reading from the New Testament before the priest delivered the Gospel reading. I was a faithful churchgoer, a good little Catholic boy who never questioned authority, at least not until much later.

That was the first summer I had been allowed to cross Ocean Avenue by myself and play at my friend Chris's house on E. 19th Street between Ditmas and Newkirk avenues. I had a pretty large group of friends of different ages and backgrounds, and we all hung out together, forming cliques and clubs and factions but in the end always coming back together. Ditmas Park was like living in a suburban community without the sameness. On summer nights a big group of our friends would divide into teams and play Ring-o-levio for hours, using the 16-block grid of Ditmas Park as our playing field.

On August 9 of that year, the news broke that Sam Bronfman, a son of Seagram's heir Edgar Bronfman, had been kidnapped. At first there were reports that Bronfman was tied up in a cave somewhere, but then it was discovered that he was being held in an apartment building right around the corner from our building! My friends and I stood on the corner for long periods, trying to see if there was any action, but all we saw were black cars with tinted windows waiting for something.

One night, a news reporter said that one of the kidnappers was Dominic Byrne, the father of one of my classmates, Tommy. Everyone in the area knew Mr. Byrne, a small, slight Irishman who used to own a liquor store on Newkirk Plaza and then became a limo driver. No one could believe that he could be involved in such a caper because he was so unassuming. There was hushed talk of homosexual activity between Tommy's father and the other kidnapper, a fireman named Mel Lynch. (Lynch later claimed in court that he and Sam Bronfman had met at a gay bar and had been lovers and that Sam was a co-conspirator in the kidnapping, an allegation that was never proved.)

At church the following Sunday, the priest asked everyone to pray for Mr. Byrne, an upstanding usher known to everyone in the community. It was all anyone talked about for weeks. When school started a month later, Tommy wasn't there, though I think eventually he returned after the publicity had died down. Tommy's father went to prison for 3 years, for extortion, not kidnapping.

When I saw the building that was the scene of the crime yesterday I felt a little sad. It was the first time I realized that the kidnapping symbolically signaled the end of the Flatbush I had known and loved, or maybe I'm just older and more cynical.

In October 1975, New York City went bankrupt, and the federal government refused to bail the city out. Garbage piled up on the streets, and crime spiked as cops became scarcer. In 1976 the brand-new 10-speed bike I got for graduation was stolen from me at knifepoint in broad daylight on Ditmas Avenue, half a block from my building.

By 1977, the burning of Bushwick during the NYC blackout and the Son of Sam shootings were further emblems of the city's ailing health. Many of my friends and their families were moving to the suburbs or to other states to escape the worsening climate. My mother was mugged in the vestibule of our building, and my father had his wallet stolen several times. And then, the coup de grace: some random teenager picked up my 8-year-old brother and dropped up him on his head on the grass down the block for no apparent reason. In September 1977, we said goodbye to Flatbush.

It was strange walking around the area. I found a faded patch of concrete where a bunch of us had etched our initials in the then newly paved sidewalk. And there was the fence--or was it the fence?--we climbed over to get to our favorite hiding place during Ring-o-levio. Everything looked the same as it did 30 years ago, only smaller and less magical. Today I live only 3 miles from my childhood home, but in so many respects it's a world away.

Continue reading...

Kieran O'Leary is 45 and not single

The first 45 I ever bought was Marie Osmond's "Paper Roses," in 1973. I was 10. That should have been a tipoff. The next one was "Half-Breed," by Cher. Get the picture?

Today I turned the number of revolutions per minute in a staple of my youth: my beloved 7-inch vinyl singles. The days of 33 are past, and hopefully I'm not quite speeding toward 78. (If you don't know what on earth I'm talking about, you're too young to be reading this.)

The first thing I saw when I awoke this morning were six little yellow Post-Its with "Happy Birthday" in familiar handwriting dotting each of our six wardrobes. On the front door were 5 rows and 12 columns of symmetrically arranged Post-Its. (The center one under the peephole said "Harry Birthday," a chiding reference to my former partner.) More sticky notes on the bathroom mirror, the pantry, and inside my laptop.

In the center of the kitchen table Boo Boo Bunny and Boo Boo Kitty, our stuffed avatars, guarded a green vase with 3 dozen pink roses, and a dozen more in the living room.

I opened my sock drawer: another sticky. In the teapot: another. And one in the teacup.

The pinprick that burst the balloon was a message from mom: "I was calling to wish you a happy birthday. I thought I would get you personally, but I guess you're busy doing something." What's a birthday without the gift of maternal guilt?

As Luis can attest, I'm a sentimentalist (and by that, he means pack rat). I keep things that most people would have pitched long ago: my journals, my grade-school report cards, my first love letters, my first ticket stub for a baseball game. Every now and then I revisit those things, to make them real again, to remind myself of where I've been and how they made me who I am today. Andrea would probably say, "That's extra Irish."

Luis was working, and I had no plans. It was kind of muggy out, so I took a bus ride out to Bay Ridge, which took about an hour. First stop, a pizzeria on Third Avenue. I plunked my money down and said in my best Tony Manero voice, "Two. Gimme two." To me Saturday Night Fever is a documentary.

Next stop: Shore Road, which hugs the southwestern coast of Brooklyn from 69th Street to 99th Street. I spend many of my high-school years hanging out there, thinking about what it would be like to live in Manhattan, or The City, as we called it. The houses along the shore look the same as they did 30 years ago, but the old haunts are gone. I used to mock adults who reminisced about the "good old days," but now I understand what they mean. It's not that they were such good old days, but I miss the days when time didn't seem to move so quickly. There was the place where Mark and I took up jogging so we could cruise men. There was the spot where my friends and I had a picnic the day after I got home from my junior year abroad. And there was where I took my prom date before I knew the truth about myself. The signposts are all still there; only the times and I have changed.

I guess what I find unsettling about a birthday, and this one in particular, is the stark reminder of how many summers and winters have passed and the uncertainty of how many lie ahead. I try to remember what I did last year or the year before that, and sometimes I can't. So I guess that's why I hold on to things that help me remember.

My 45s seem so quaint, inefficient, and fragile now. Now I can download a song file in a flash. But then, it's not the 45s I miss so much as the memories stashed between their grooves.

When I get in one of these introspective moods, in the end I am always grateful for my bounteous life. As Dickens said, "Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." Those dozens of little stickies and roses echo the truth of those words. The turntable may be a relic, but at 45 the disks are still spinning.

Continue reading...

Playing catchup

I watched the Manhattan skyline fade as we made our way to the New Jersey Turnpike. After a highly stressful work week, I needed to melt away like the sky. As a kid I always enjoyed my hiatus from school, when I could truly do nothing but lie in bed and play with my friends until late in the evening. But there are no such rites of passages anymore. The further away from school I get, the more I forget how it used to be, when Memorial Day and Labor Day bookended my golden days of leisure and time seemed a vast stretch of desert before me.

A hint of summer's leave was evident in the long shadows of afternoon. The sun seemed fixed in the sky as the silver Volvo with me, Andrea, and Luis sped south. The antidote to my stress was a trip to Luis's mom's house in Maryland, an 1830s farmhouse, set on 13 acres of foliage and pasture, complete with horses, deer, and snapping turtles. Enticed by the fortuitously stunning weather, the absence of Luis's family, cocktails, and a pool, we really had no reason not to go.

I hadn't been to the house in at least a year and a half. In fact, I hadn't been in the DC area in quite a long time. I had lived there for 13 years and still remember my way around, but in the end my life there was rather unmemorable, except, of course, for meeting Luis.

As soon as we unpacked we raced toward the pool, cocktails in hand, the sun blazing overhead. I doused myself in SPF 30 sunblock and set up my iPod boombox on the pool's edge and put on a playlist of summer songs, starting with Jan and Dean's "Surf City." I couldn't wait to get on the diving board. I can't remember the last time I went swimming. I hopped up on the board and felt like a giddy little kid.

All traces of stress dissolved as I plunged into the warm blue water. As I swam I realized that with my eyes open it was the first time I could see clearly underwater. Before my LASIK surgery I had to wear goggles or keep my eyes closed with my contacts in.

Maybe it was the chlorine waterlogging my brain. I felt exhilarated, there among the gingko trees and butterfly bushes, and started dancing around in the water. Luis was playing real estate agent, and Andrea periodically looked up from her Vanity Fair to shake her head. The Ketchup Song, a summer hit for Spanish girl group Las Ketchup a few years ago, came on, and my inner 13-year-old girl took over. I started doing The Ketchup Dance to the scorn of Andrea and Luis, who didn't know what to make of it. I got up on the diving board and did a little shimmy, then cartwheeled into the water.

In the evening, after a siesta, we drove into DC and had Thai food with Carole and Carl. They live about two blocks from my first apartment in DC. It was strange to see the old neighborhood, where the winos, brawling dykes, and welfare mothers had been supplanted by Starbucks, doggie day care, and art galleries. After dinner we walked to Eastern Market, where I spent much of my first year in DC. Sadly, the market had burned down several months ago, and it is now being rebuilt with community support.

One phenomenon I don't find much of in New York is the 7-Eleven. The suburban ones are always full of half-living people who buy lots of beer and lottery tickets and then vanish God-knows-where into the night. I think it was one of the few times that Andrea and I felt like hipsters as we bought groceries for the house.

That night I slept like a baby. The next morning I could barely lift my head off the pillow. My neck felt like it was in a vise, and my left shoulder was very sore. I guess I'd gotten carried away with the Ketchup dancing and cartwheeling.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday. More drinks, more pool, more relaxing. Carole and Carl came to the house for a visit. Later we drove into DC to have dinner with our friend Johnny in Adams Morgan. After dinner we went down Luis's old block to see the apartment he owned when we met, then to some of the places in Georgetown where he grew up. Like New York, Washington is in the midst of a big housing boom. New construction is popping up everywhere.

I was dreading Monday, but more than Monday I was dreading Tuesday and going back to work. These three days of relaxation were relaxing, rehabilitating, and reflective. I wish I could have had more time. It was important to savor them and hold them as snapshots in my mind. I remember something I read that Paul Bowles wrote...

... we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

Continue reading...

When it's time to change...

I always thought it would be an affair, or a Maserati, or a wacky new interest, like skydiving, that would jolt me into a midlife crisis. I thought I had gone through one a few years ago, when I started hanging out with The Young, people 10 or more years younger than I who liked to stay out late and party. I went disco roller skating and ate hash brownies. I even bought some White Stripes albums for the occasion. But that was nothing compared to what I'm going through now.

In the past few weeks, I've gotten the sinking feeling that my real midlife crisis has been simmering for some time, like an unwatched pot, waiting to boil over. I can trace it back to my trip to Ireland last summer. For someone who had mocked his Irish heritage for pretty much 40-something years, finding my roots had an unexpectedly profound effect on me. A few months later, on my fifth visit to the UK, I spent 10 days in London with Andrea. It was like being in love again. In part my romantic notions had to do with discovering more about my identity. Getting my Irish citizenship in January opened a treasure chest of possibilities: Luis and I could get married, have free health care, get jobs, buy a house, travel. On my trip to London and Edinburgh in March, I met family I never knew I had. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place. I felt even more like I belong there. I felt connected. Since then, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that I want to be there. The trouble is, I don't know what to do about it. All I know is that the whole idea is weighing heavily on me.

I've always liked the Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken." When I was younger, I saw no urgency in it. If I started down one road and didn't like it, I figured I could always turn back and go the other way. When I was younger, time stretched out endlessly before me. I was in full control of it. I don't feel that way anymore. Time is in full control of me. Songs run through my head, like time won't give me time,, time keeps flowing like a river to the sea, and time won't let me wait that long.

I realize now when I read Frost's poem that there are actually many roads and many forks. Which ones you take depends on how much risk you're willing to face. Complacency and inertia are comforting friends once you're on the road. You get settled into your routine, you lead a comfortable life, everything becomes familiar and safe. Why shake things up? Why not continue along the road you're on and see where it ends? But what if that road leads you nowhere?

Last week I took a class called "Mastering Priorities," taught by Dr. Rick Brinkman. He's an Anthony Robbins type, a motivational speaker who gives strategies for coping with everyone's number one enemy: time. At first I thought the seminar would be platitudinous, but it was quite the opposite. Dr. Brinkman asserts that the key to mastering our priorities is understanding our values, like family, career, fun, friendship. Our values drive our goals, and our goals drive our priorities. If something is a priority and conflicts with your values, Dr. Rick says, it causes internal stress and you need to rethink it.

Coincidentally, this last point was raised almost verbatim in a tarot card reading I had last week, after I took the class. The reader, a stranger, said the cards showed me to be in a state of major change and upheaval. As a result, he said, I am experiencing a high level of internal stress, which is caused by my fear of what might happen if I make the change. The change, which will continue until next spring, will have a positive outcome, with a pleasant surprise involving my relationship. In the light of the inner turmoil I've been going through the past few months, the reading was as clear as day to me. Then why don't I feel any better?

I'm still looking into going to grad school, but I'm not convinced that's the answer to my angst. I have so many things to consider about my life in New York: Luis, my family, my friends, our building project. What would I lose? What would I gain?

I don't have the answers yet, but the weight of this feeling is as oppressive as humidity in July. Eventually something will give. I keep going back to the last lines of that Frost poem: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." Maybe I need to go back to listening to The White Stripes.

Continue reading...

Communion

I made my first Holy Communion 36 years ago, together with my friends Arlene and Kathy. Looking back, we were little angels then, so impressionable and eager to receive this most blessed of sacraments. The girls, in white lace dresses and veils, looked like little brides of Jesus, and the boys, in navy blue suits, resembled miniature Christian soldiers. On the day we first tasted that pristine white wafer on our eager tongues (a phrase that would acquire a new meaning in junior high), we were one step closer to becoming adults in the Catholic Church.

Much has happened in the intervening years to negate the sanctity of that day. I have failed to be the model my church elders hoped to mold me into. Before receiving Communion, Catholics must be in a "state of grace." This means going to confession to cleanse their souls so they can receive Christ's body and blood. Since homosexuality is considered a mortal sin, I can never achieve that state of grace. Frankly I don't care how other humans judge my soul; I know that if a higher power exists, it made me this way and doesn't judge me.

Catholics believe in transubstantiation, the process by which symbolic substances (the communion wafer and the wine) are converted into the actual substances (Christ's body and blood). Technically this belief makes Catholics cannibals. However, I'm sure anyone who's been shipwrecked will tell you a communion wafer tastes nothing like a thigh.

Today Arlene's daughter Gabrielle is making her first Holy Communion. Luis and I go to the Mass and sit in the very last row. Despite not having gone to church for about 20 years, I still remember every single part of the Mass--every prayer, every genuflection, every gesture. If I could somehow download this knowledge to a memory stick and clear out my brain, I could concentrate on winning a Nobel prize. But there it remains, like a needle stuck on a broken record.

Gabrielle and all the 8-year-old boys and girls look sweet in their dresses and suits, so solemn and wide-eyed, beaming all the way to their pews. All, that is, but the very last child, a chubby Hispanic boy dressed in a white suit, standing at the back of the church, sobbing uncontrollably. I look over at his pew and see an empty space where his parents or godparents should be. Another woman, maybe his sister or aunt, cradles his head in her hands and strokes it while his body heaves with tearful gasps. I can't help looking at him, wondering what could have happened on the day he is to get his first taste of Jesus. It didn't look like a case of nerves. Judging from the women crying around him, I suspect it is something terrible. I never do find out, but it haunts me for the rest of the day.

I pray for Mass to end; Luis tries a different tack.

After Mass we go to a Communion lunch at Monte's, the oldest Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. It's three doors down from our new building, so we spend much of the lunch explaining our plans. Neither of us knows many of the guests. Arlene introduces us to some friends of hers.

"This is Kieran. We've known each other since the third grade." Some people nod, mildly interested in this pedigree. "And this," Arlene says, "is his partner, Luis." More mild interest. "Luis helped us sell our house." Suddenly eyes light up, oohs and aahs are uttered, as though a celebrity is in their midst. Such is the of a real estate agent in Park Slope.

This is an emotional day for Arlene, maybe even a bigger day for her than for her daughter. She's been through a lot of rough times, and seeing everyone close to her in one room moves her to tears.

Arlene is telling her husband's aunt about the longevity of our friendship.

"Don't ever lose that," the woman says. "I live down the block from my best friend. We've known each other since we were six. I'm 71 now. I wouldn't trade it for anything."

Kathy and I have known each other since first grade. We've known Arlene since the third. Throughout our formative years, into high school and college, we were inseparable. We know things about each other that probably no one else knows. Kathy was the first person I came out to. Arlene taught me how to dance. I was Arlene's shoulder after breakups. Time and distance have separated us physically, but in communion, we are a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Continue reading...

Church and steak

I spent my Saturday at the two places you're likely to find an Irishman: church and the pub. By church, of course, I mean Trinity, my boxing gym, which is conveniently named like a church. I did a heavy workout because I knew I'd be taking in a lot of calories later. Andrea and I ventured to Woodside, Queens, to meet Cathy and her twin daughters Cathy and Emily, at Donovan's Pub. I hadn't been to the pub in more than 20 years. My dad grew up in Long Island City and for my grandfather's 75th birthday we had a big celebration at Donovan's, the year before he died.

Donovan's has both a true Irish clientele and a Plastic Paddy one. The pub proudly boasts the prestigious title of "number one burger in New York," an arguable distinction claimed by many. I live around the corner from Bonnie's Grill, which also claims the best burger title (and in my eyes, they're right).

We were at Donovan's to toast my becoming an Irish citizen. Cathy the mom, born in the U.S., became an Irish citizen a long time ago, and both her daughters are Irish citizens. Andrea said she was reminded of the Sesame Street lyric "One of these things is not like the others..." but the one thing we all have in common is a Latin connection: the twins' father is Hispanic, Andrea is half-Puerto Rican, and I have Luis.

Cathy the mom showed us photos of the family property in County Cork and of the twins with their cousins as kids and as adults. I wish I'd been more interested in my Irish relatives way back when, since it's nice that they've kept up their relationships throughout the years and have such a close connection with Ireland. Cathy regaled us with Irish tales full of romance, kinship, and lack of indoor plumbing.

I thought while at the pub I might have a flashback to my childhood, but I didn't. I spent many of my formative years in bars, being dragged there by my father and plopped into a corner while he drank himself into a stupor. Maybe he thought I didn't notice, or maybe he didn't care. Well into my adulthood I couldn't go anywhere near a pub, bar, lounge, or wedding reception. That's probably why I never went to gay bars when I came out. I couldn't stand to be around anyone drinking.

But all that's changed. This was a joyous occasion. The burgers were delicious, the Guinness smooth, and in the company of delightful lasses, I was happy to celebrate being Irish.

Continue reading...

Spirit on a stick

Last year at this time, 9 inches of snow blanketed the ground, and transit workers walked off their jobs. Luis was away in El Salvador visiting his family, and the holidays were rather drab and cold. This year the holiday season, by comparison, has been blissful. The city has been empty, the weather has been mild, and the trains are running normally. While the rest of Luis's family went to El Salvador, he chose to stay here and spend Christmas with me for the first time in three years.

Except for a party at my boxing gym and a couple of small get-togethers, I skipped big celebrations. I did most of my Christmas shopping online, and the rest I spaced out over a few weeks. We bought a 2-ft-high tabletop fir for a Christmas tree that fit perfectly on the windowsill next to my father. We had no ornaments or lights: everything is in storage, since we knew we wouldn't be having a big tree for at least another year, maybe two. I bought some vintage ornaments at Bob and Judi's Coolectibles in Park Slope. Andie and Mike gave us a cute, star-shaped ornament with our names on it.



Our friend John from Virginia stayed with us Christmas eve and day. It was his birthday, so we celebrated at our favorite local restaurant, Blue Ribbon. We went to a local get-together, and on Christmas day we went to my mother's for a few hours. We ate dinner at Jean-Georges with Eric and Sheri on Christmas day. All in all, the holiday was low-key.

Now that The Christmas Season starts some time between Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving, the time it takes for me to get sick of Christmas has shortened considerably. From giant inflatable snowmen to dancing Santa dolls to epilepsy-inducing lights, by Christmas Eve I'm weary of it all. It's hard to get the Christmas spirit after the 95th playing of "Jingle Bell Rock."

This year I left some gift buying until the very end, including my mother's gift. Andrea and I decided to brave shopping last Saturday. The weather was stunning, and the stores were not as maddening as we expected.

We started out at Sav-On Fifth, a local discount store in Park Slope packed with useful (and not-so-useful) items for home and personal use. I wanted to buy mom her yearly bottle of Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds, which she asks for every Christmas. I wasn't sure whether the store sold it, but it seemed like the logical place.

We started our search in the personal hygiene aisle, which has every hair relaxer and moisturizer known to man.

"I don't even know if they sell perfume here," I said. "But it seems like they should." I realized that Andrea had stopped about midway down the aisle. I turned around and saw Andrea smelling a stick of deodorant. A smile spread over her face.

"Arctic Ice," she said. "It was Richie's favorite. I can't find it anywhere."

"Really?" I said. "It seems like it would be a common scent."

"You'd think," she said, "but believe me, I've tried to find it all over the city."

"Look," I said. "There's only one stick left on the shelf. It's like you were meant to have it."

Andrea bought the deodorant, and I bought the perfume. "I never think to come in here," Andrea said.

"It's definitely a sign," I said, realizing that I had just witnessed the true essence of the Christmas spirit.

Continue reading...