Creatures and stirrings

There's a darting movement on the periphery of my vision and I look up from my reading just in time to see a small grey mouse zip across the floor. It disappears in the moment it takes for my mind to find the word "mouse" and I spend the next few minutes puzzling over the questions: where did it come from? where did it go?

Another minute or two and I realize what it was doing. It was stirring. You have to laugh when something like that occurs to you, and I did. It's the night before Christmas and, in this house, at least, a mouse is stirring.

Take that, Clement Moore.

The place is over a hundred years old, so I shouldn't be surprised if there are more little creatures not listed on the deed who have nonetheless set up housekeeping here. Still, tomorrow maybe I'll poke around and see if I can't scare up some sort of trap. A humane one, naturally, catch and release, in the spirit of the season.

I have had, perhaps against reason, a good deal of that spirit in the past few weeks, finding myself smiling a great deal and cheerily shopping and wishing for snow and even whistling carols.

This upbeat attitude puts me at odds with a lot of my friends this year, it seems. At least a handful have told me over drinks or in hurried street corner conversations that they "just can't wait for Christmas to be over with". Another dozen or so have said, while admiring mine, that they simply couldn't find time to put up a tree this year. "I managed to dig a wreath out of the closet," a co-worker confided to me today. "I'll put it on the door tonight. That's the best I can do."

I understand. We're all busy, hewing to harried schedules, real or imagined. I don't believe in enforced merriment or mandated decoration or observance of any secular or religious ritual you aren't 100 percent comfortable with or able to wedge into your lifestyle. If Christmas feels like a chore, you're doing it wrong anyway and probably should stop.

Still, it's a little disappointing, I guess, in a year when I actually managed to pull it all together, to decorate, send cards, give gifts, bake cookies, visit friends and have some semblance of goodwill toward my fellow human consistent with the ubiquitous songs...well, yes, it's disappointing that everyone else isn't right there with me.

Saturday before last was a near perfect day, with snow falling as I rushed around making preparations for what turned out to be a lovely party on Sunday night. As I went store to store, it seemed as though everyone was there with me, in the holiday moment, greeting me with smiles, extending good wishes, saying "please" and "pardon me" and "thank you" instead of elbowing their way through the aisles and scowling, drenched in humbug.

I remembered the same pre-party routine from a Christmas seven years ago, the snow, the shopping, the smiles and all, except it was accomplished alongside a man with whom I was truly, deeply in love. It says something, I think, that the memory came this year with feelings of warmth and nostalgia, not heat and bitterness.

And afterward, with my car packed literally to the roof with food and parcels, a convivial cocktail hour with almost all of the old gang, even the former couple formerly known as The Twins, no longer estranged but not quite ready to consider making the leap toward giving it another go. Even if they do, they'll probably never be The Twins again anyway. Jerry's a blond now and, for the rest of us, the experience of seeing them separately these past few months has reminded us they're individuals and don't really look that much alike anyway.

For me, the twins are now those little miracles who did the impossible: civilized Jeff. I spent a nervous three or four hours alone with them a few weeks ago, doing my avuncular duty while Jackie and Jill got some precious "alone time" to do some shopping and visit friends.

I'm not particularly keen on children; they don't drink and are not, as a rule, interesting dinner companions. But a teensy part of me looks into the sparkling eyes of these specific kids -- one of whom bears my name, by the way, and is clearly the smarter, prettier one -- and can't help but love the messy little spit-and-shit factories my friends have made. The larger, pragmatic part of me whispers in their ears, subliminally reminding them of their obligation to look after their godfather and titular uncle in his dottage.

Erik claps me on the back, buys me a Scotch and hands me a brightly colored gift bag which turns out to be a sex toy we joked about at a shop in Chicago months ago. "It's a gag gift," he brays, "literally!" An hour or so later, The Giant Queen pulls his chair alongside mine and lowers his voice, hardly necessary with the noise in the bar of diners waiting for tables.

"You seem tired," he says. "Are you still having sleepless nights?"

I am tired, I allow, but it's because the day has been full and I've still got cleaning and baking on the agenda before a few dozen folks descend on my house tomorrow. "I'm sleeping fine," I add, "when I remember to do it."

For a while, it's true, I was having trouble. It wasn't tossing and turning. It was not even getting into bed. Three days at a stretch in one case, and I was really worried for both my health and sanity.

I eventually ascribed my insomnia to a sort of generalized anxiety, a fear of the world brought on by just too much exposure to it. In a year when a friend gets sent to prison, another's car is stolen, one is beaten and another sent to war, you start to wonder "what's next?" and the wondering leads to fear and the fear to nights restlessly pacing the floor, now and then glancing out the window.

Two years ago, everyone seemed to be crowing that the world had fundamentally and irrevocably changed, that nothing would ever be the same again, that our society, humanity and decency teetered on a cliff and any moment could tip into the abyss. That's enough to keep Sominex on your tongue all the time.

Eventually, though, you realize -- or I did, anyway -- that nothing has changed at all, not really. My world is exactly as it was on September 10, 2001, and the main reason is that I am surrounded by wonderful, generous, funny friends who I love and who, even when I taunt them mercilessly, manage somehow to love me back. That's all I need to make a world, although I'm blessed with so much more. The scary parts, the bad parts, the unjust and evil and ugly parts, they don't matter much when good people have got your back.

The Giant Queen chuckles. "You can be a real fucking Hallmark card sometimes, can't you?" he says.

I bop him on the head with Erik's gift.

"OK," he allows. "Maybe you're more from the Shoebox line." We light cigars, push back from the bar, and rejoin the rest of the reasons I'm sleeping well again.

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