Toudouze Market was a little ahead of its time. It was like Sam’s Club and sorta like a Big Box store too. Mostly it was a warehouse that sold to the public. Upstairs food and grocery and downstairs all the other stuff – electronics, jewelry, clothes, housewares, and TOYS!
When I was six years old I made a fateful trip to Toudouze with my mom and sisters. It was Christmas time. Our family didn’t buy a lot of presents for other people so it never occurred to me that my mom had ‘shopping’ to do. Santa did all the work – right?
And then from one moment to the next, from one sentence to the next my world changed and I would never be the same again… I was standing in an aisle ( feels like it was full of toys – not positive) and my sister, 28 months my senior announced to me with some astonishment in her voice, ” You know Mom and Dad bring all the presents – don’t you? I saw my doll up in the closet.”
Everything began spinning. She seemed so happy to know the secret. It didn’t make any difference to her why her doll came from a closet not Santa?! No, no, no – this couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t take it in. My body wouldn’t absorb it. This changed EVERYTHING.No more magic in the world. Just like that it was all gone.
It is not my earliest memory of feeling sad. Why does this one stick? Maybe because my transition into another reality had begun. My first grade teacher, Mother Bernard had already informed me that I had reached the Age of Reason. I thought that it only meant that I was now accountable for my ‘sins’. Not this. Not knowing and understanding that Santas and Tooth Fairies and Easter Bunnies and Birthday Wishes were all part of ‘pretend’…. What could ever be sadder than that in my whole life?
In what feels like a few lifetimes later I found myself at maybe my 55th Christmas Midnight Mass. It was during the years when we went to church on The River in San Antonio. Being the holiday season every tree was drooling rainbows of lights and the cypress trees were shadows that felt like big warm mammas giving you a hug. I knew that inside the altar would be stark white marble with a shock of screaming red poinsettias only allowed for the celebration of the nativity. St. Mary’s is one of the oldest churches in town, massive and cavernous specifically to make us all feel small. It works every time. The night was cold ( and that is special for us San Antonians cause we have known too many coolish humid Santa Days and we’ve never seen a snowman!). Frigid temps always clear my head and I was feeling the expansiveness. Then it happened. Walking up the steps I was transformed once more. I felt the MAGIC again – as real as anything. I had been a Santa for my kids and they no longer believed but he was back!! Not in the red suit, no Bunnies hiding eggs, or Fairies buying teeth – but Magic. I knew it for certain. It was pure bliss. The very same as my first grade happiness.
My Christmas Magic has returned every year unleashed by the Macy’s Day Parade and filling me with joy and peace right through the New Year. Toudouze Market is long gone, just a memory now and the spirit of Christmas that I experienced there is snugly tucked into my soul …. Jingle all the Way
UPDATE: Another family gathering over the weekend brought our usual quorum of females cloistered in a side bedroom gossiping and ready should a family vote be required (on anything?). Christmas is in the air and the Santa disclosure came up. No one was properly sympathetic or outraged (some 60 yrs after the fact) by what my tender Christmas spirit had endured and then it got worse. My younger sister, who would have been about 5 yrs old at the time, stated flatly, “Yes, and then you told me”. I thought she was teasing. She was serious as a heart attack. I almost HAD a heart of attack. Could I really be a victim and a perpetrator?! I felt empty inside. At that moment Roberta dispassionately announced that it hadn’t bothered her. Not a problem. No trauma. No drama. You have no idea how hard it is and supremely painful to be such a sensitive (wimpy) child
So it seems there are two kinds of human animals celebrating Christmas. The kind that would just as soon get their baby doll and BB gun from a vending machine as have the old man in red go to the trouble. The rest of us MUST have the fairy tale. The magic. I guess, in the end, so long as wishes come true and the stuff gets delivered and every boy and girl feels joy in their heart it matters not the transport system…
My World My Words 