I had a dream about a boy who had a face I knew and a body I didn’t and my one job was to form his likeness into clay. Really that was all I had to do. The clay had to be dug fresh from a little stream that ran right outside the pavilion where we stood. We were on the set of some kind of movie that was also an art studio and that was my one and only job: to have him stand at just the right angle, under just the right light, and get down all his details on a miniature mud model. I positioned him just so, holding onto his shoulders to adjust his stance under the light. The clay started to dry up in my hands. I was etching everything I could with a barbecue stick. I stared at the spot above his ears and tried to get it exactly right.
I don’t know why the movie people needed the clay model so badly but it was very urgent and they were telling me to hurry it up. (I suddenly recall, typing up this dream, something a little cousin of mine said a few years ago — he was maybe 7 or 8 years old at the time and drawing something on the back of a paper placemat and said, “You can’t rush art!”) I needed more clay.
A little girl stood across the shallow stream outside the pavilion, the one where we had to dig up the clay for the model. She crossed it like it was nothing, wetting her navy Converse to the ankles just to meet me where I stood. She looked like my little sister when she was still little and I felt a tender fondness towards her. She held out her hands and gave me all the clay I needed.
The whole dream I felt tipsy and absolutely in love, in the frantic flurry of the movie set and everyone bustling around me rushing to get lights camera action in place and me standing in the middle of the mess, trying to get the shape of this boy’s brow exactly right, zooming in amidst the noise. He stood there patiently, not knowing all this time that I loved him.
(For I loved him silently, in spite of myself.)
Above his head a light shone, so brightly I had to put my hands on his shoulders and move him again. We laughed. I positioned him half under the shade, so I could see him more clearly. The light blazed. I couldn’t tell if it was the sun or the moon.
Last Friday night I had a video call with my cousins — two little girls and two not-so-little-ones-anymore and my cousin-best-friend and her two brothers. We watched The Cat Returns, or they watched it and I half-paid attention while my anxious mind wandered over to an application I had spent the whole day writing. The Cat Returns is enchanting and sort of insane. It’s a love story about cats who aren’t the protagonists of the story — and you really only meet the prince at the end. His sweetheart is a beautiful forlorn cat who carries all the chemistry on her own throughout most of the movie, because she’s all alone and she loves him so much you can feel it. All the chemistry is in the longing. The sweet absurdity of the movie reminded me of a Diana Wynne Jones book, which is to say the best kind of delirious whimsical fantasy. The grand declaration of love at the end is a simple sentence: “Just for the record, I think I may have a little crush on you.”
That’s the thing about crushes—and the reason, maybe, I woke up from the dream mid-conversation, feeling delicious: it’s just all this untapped potential. It’s a fantasy that’s sort of half-true because it isn’t real yet. It’s indulgent, to be zoning in on someone who has a face you know and a body you don’t and feeling like all your senses are waking up, as you pay very close attention with the utmost care even when the world around you is a rush hour train.
Christmas time always feels like that feeling too. Everything is chaotic and a last dash to the finish and so terribly romantic because of it. Even in the midst of loneliness and disappointment. We will annoy each other and step on one another’s toes at the holiday parties and family gatherings but it will be sort of all the more sweet for it, because look, we got together anyway. Everybody here is trying and everything is so crazy and nothing is as pleasant as you maybe hoped and that’s what makes all the magic. There’s so much magic here, like slivers of icing between layers of cake.
A boy once asked me why I love Christmas so much. He didn’t like Christmas, and dreaded it a lot. I wasn’t sure how to explain it to him in words. First off, we celebrate things kind of excessively over here — there’s this joke that in the Philippines, the Christmas season starts in September. We’re a pretty festive people. And maybe it’s my upbringing, memories of driving through streets lined with parols etched into my cells, but I’ve just always experienced it as a time when everything feels magical, despite whatever life is bringing on a particular year. It’s the music and the lights and the velvety red poinsettias — how could your heart not soften at the sight?
Maybe everything feels magical because we’re all trying to make it so. We’re all setting up decorations and thinking about people and buying presents or sending texts and tying little bows. Maybe sometimes because we’re supposed to but mostly, because we want to. It’s a time that feels both cranky and generous. It holds space for all of it. It’s a time when everyone is thinking about each other and most of our hearts are open at least a crack more than usual.
Every December I watch:
Serendipity
Sleepless in Seattle
When Harry Met Sally
And last year I added
Moonstruck
And when I was 16 I spent my holiday break reading Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, and I loved it so much I reread it every holiday break throughout my teens. So when it came out on Netflix last year I got pretty excited and made my entire family watch it with me. I watched it again this year too, letting it play in the background while I did other tasks and stressed out over things (December is, after all, a very stressful time).
And Kelly Link’s “The Lady and The Fox,” from the short story collection My True Love Gave to Me. That year I was 16, I also read Franny & Zooey by JD Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age. I don’t read them every year, but they always feel like Christmas to me, too.
And I listen to Christmas music, all of the classics, but mostly a select few wintery sad songs. Last year I finally put them together on a playlist, after listening to this rotation for maybe a decade.
And I try to go to the bookstore. Even just once.
Every Christmas, from the year I was 15 up until I was 22, I would spend my holiday breaks working retail. Bakeries are so crazy during the holidays. Ladies with large leather handbags come in all flustered ordering 34 boxes of brownies they plan to give as gifts, cousins and siblings rush to reserve pastries for Noche Buena, and sometimes you get a December birthday celebrant who asks, in a timid voice, if you could include a pink or blue candle with the cake, please. The lines are so long but everybody is willing to wait.
I never loved the stress at the time, and many years I dreaded diving in straight from finals to the bakeshop. But I did think it was sort of romantic, to be working the floor at a bakery in the frazzled height of the holidays. Standing at your spot behind the counter, looking one customer in the eyes and listening intently. Writing down the thing they wanted to wrap up in a bow and give to someone who was on their mind, or take as their offering at a holiday gathering, or bring home to feel a little bit special as they celebrated alone. Everyone had a different story and a different order. Sometimes it was stressful and sometimes it was fun. The quick days fizzed by in a moonstruck daze.
Here’s a little poem that came to me the other morning:
Love in December and all the time
Love is the fever of a many-winged thing With its fiery claws and gossamer wings And teeth to sink flesh with venom so sweet Let’s get out of here and grab something to eat
Happy holidays!
I am folding good juju like glitter confetti into this virtual envelope and sending it with a kiss xx