Most of us probably have a single Christmas that stands out. It”s typically a cocktail mixed in childhood. Pour equal parts unquestioning belief in Santa, add a perfect gift or two, and shake well, so any cross memories drain out, and only the good remains. It tastes better each year, with the passing of time.
I used to place mine at 1976. I was 6 years old. I also had the chicken pox, as evidenced by the Christmas snapshots that show my beaming face covered in red blotches. But I don”t remember the pain and the itching as much as Santa, the perfect tree, and the Steve Austin “Six Million Dollar Man” action figure waiting beneath it on Christmas morning.
For many years, I placed my perfect Christmas there. Others, I didn”t remember at all.
Fast forward to December 1998. We”d only been married two years and were living in Jackson. I don”t know how we afforded it in retrospect, but we gave each other a trip to New York as a Christmas present. We spent a few days there a week before Christmas, sightseeing and doing some gift shopping for everyone else.
We found ourselves sitting in a little bar in Soho, which was playing the “Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack. It stuck in my craw that we needed our own copy. As we explored the city, we made it a point to stop in music stores to look for it. Wherever we went, no luck, no dice.
We finally found a copy of the CD in a Borders Books & Music, a huge multistory place with books below and music up top.
We listened to it that year and the next; eventually, we lost track of it, like all of us do with so many of the little things.
We changed over time. We had our first baby in 2000. We got new jobs, and moved to a new town.
Then the world changed, on Sept. 11, 2001.
I remember Christmas 2001. My thoughts went back to our trip to New York, and how the holidays must be so gut-wrenchingly different for everyone there, compared to just the year before.
I thought about that CD. And I remembered where I bought it — The Borders Books & Music, World Trade Center Plaza, just beneath the twin towers.
We scoured our place for the CD, and finally found it.
All of us recall the images of Ground Zero. Some may not realize that a good bit of the mall at the World Trade Center, most of which was underground, could still be navigated after the tragedy. Rescue workers, braving the rubble and the dust, found an eerie ghost town with things like credit cards still resting next to cash registers, in mid-transaction.
Each holiday season, I can”t help but remember our time there, and our quest for Charlie Brown.
Yes, the CD I bought is a piece of crass commercialism from a tourist trap, bought by someone who was better off saving his money. And, clearly, it has no direct connection to anything, any more than the other millions of pieces of merchandise that moved through that place over the years.
Yet I still look at it as a piece of the world before 9/11, which I managed to steal away.
We still bring out the CD, and listen to the music each Christmas season. And it makes each one memorable.
“;N;N;”0
Steve Mullen is Managing Editor of The Dispatch.
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