The Santa Stalker

I'm running out of time.

Christmas is in 3 days, and then he'll be gone.

The jolly fat man, my holiday muse and favorite myth, Santa Claus.

I love Santa. I always have. It got a little weird and out of control once my dad started to look like Santa. Now that I live on the opposite coast from my dad, Santa has become kind of a substitute, a doppelganger if you will. The Santa at the Glendale Galleria is a singing Santa, like my dad. So I love to go and see him and... well... just see him, I guess.

Every Christmas season I steal as many moments in Santa's presence as I can. I love to go down to the mall and just stand there, watching him with the little kids. I could probably spend a whole afternoon there, if I had a whole afternoon during Christmas where my presence was not absolutely required somewhere else. But even a few moments are enough to fill me up for a while.

It's the kids, of course. Mine are just barely too big to sit on his lap anymore. (I told Emma and Claire I'd give them a dollar if they'd get a Santa picture this year and initially they said yes, but once we got there they backed out on me.) The optimal kid age for Santa is up to about 5, I'd say. After that, they're just there for the candy cane or stickers or whatever.

Here comes a family with three kids. Big brother is 6, he's a pro, sits in the middle just smiling at the camera. Santa is just a lap for him. Little sister is 3, maybe 4. She is enthralled. Baby brother, age 1, perches on the right knee and Santa holds him up and as soon as Mom steps away from him he starts to cry, slowly, his face going from a little scared to contorted with fear... click!

Captured in time.

For the most part, from my observations, the 2 to 3 year olds don't like him. No they do not. They are either terrified, in shock, or outright enraged. "Mom!" their eyes say as the camera flashes, "Mom! How could you do this to me? I trusted you! And you gave me to this big hairy stranger!" Ah, that's a look to treasure. I have a couple of those pictures, myself. Crying gently or screwing their eyes up and screaming. Not happy. Those kids are fun to watch.

But the best are the little ones who stare in wonder. Jackpot! That's what I came for. Tiny little girls in fancy velvet dresses wearing white tights with lace on the butt, little boys with their hair slicked back for the photo, set gently on Santa's lap to gaze up at him with wide, trusting eyes. You can tell that's what he took the job for.

A little hand touches the beard (it's real) and I start to tear up. Okay, why? Why do I do this?

Santa has made me a voyeur. I'm spying on the small moments of another family's Christmas, because my own family is so far away. Every child I watch - maybe -  is me, or my brothers, or my baby sister. And every Santa is my daddy.

Aw jeez. Really? Santa is a father fixation? I had way too many psych classes in college. Can't I just, I don't know, enjoy the little kids, the innocence, the joy? Does it have to be so deep?

No, it doesn't, although thinking about it that way makes it even more special for me. So I watch the kids on Santa's lap, remembering all of us sitting on daddy's lap at Christmas time and it makes me feel happy. So sue me.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, Dad.

Here's me and Santa during his down time. He was available to walk me 

down the aisle at my wedding to Dan on August 5, 2007. Looking good, Santa.

What Christmas Is All About

My husband works for a pretty awesome company. Panda Restaurant Group does a lot of charitable work, both locally and throughout the country. They are big fans of Stephen R. Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", and have monthly seminars to encourage the personal growth of their employees.

Covey has a "Seven Habits" program targeted at children. Without going into details (because there are lots of details), kids learn self-esteem and empowerment skills to lay a foundation for success in school and later in the real world. Panda has sponsored this program in a number of inner-city schools, and on Thursday, December 10th, they held a Christmas party for the neediest kids from these schools.

Dan was Santa last year. (I found it a little amusing that a disaffected agnostic Jew was playing Santa... but I digress.) He's a jolly fellow most of the time and therefore eminently qualified for the job. As the party approached, Dan asked me if I would be his Mrs. Claus.

Now, if any of you know me, you may know that my dad is, in fact, Santa. By that I mean he plays one at Christmas. He's a stout fellow with a booming voice and a real white beard, the friendliest Santa you'd ever want to meet. My mom, in the past few years, has been his Mrs. at some of his appearances. With her glasses and silver-streaked hair, she is his perfect foil (as she has been for forty-eight years now). So the irony was not lost on me. I could not think of one earthly reason to say no.

Someone rustled up an elaborate Mrs. Claus costume for me, a long red velvet gown with faux-fur trim. I bought a wig at Party City and headed off for my debut.

Panda's huge dining and events room was packed with round banquet tables, full of elementary school kids and their teachers. A group of enthusiastic employees led them in a holiday singalong, and then it was our big moment. Dan -- I mean, Santa -- and I entered the room waving and smiling, saying hello to as many children as possible on our way to the stage.

Dan did his Santa bit, congratulating the kids on their Seven Habits work. Then he said, "I need some help bringing my helpers in!" and led them in a cheer, ending in Abracadabra, and the doors opened.

A group of Panda employees had each sponsored one child, and they streamed in with all the gifts as boisterous holiday music played. Some wheeled in shiny new bikes adorned with giant bows, and that's when I choked up a little.

Dan explained that the teachers and faculty in these schools had identified the neediest kids, and for many of them, this was going to be their only Christmas gift.

You know, I think I'm usually a pretty good writer, but I can't fully explain what I felt at that moment. I thought the kids would be jumping up and down and screaming with joy. Instead, as I walked through the room with my Santa, I realized that these kids were just stunned. I'm sure they had never been to a party like this, in an immense building with a waterfall inside, a 15-foot-tall Christmas tree in the lobby, and all the Orange Chicken they could eat. They opened their gifts with their mouths hanging open, slowly, as if it wasn't really happening.

One lovely little thing held onto a new bike and pushed it slowly past the crowd, all the time gazing at us with her huge brown eyes. She wasn't even smiling; her expression was more a kind of amazed disbelief. I was spellbound.

I bent down to speak to her. "Do you like your bike?"

All she could do was nod. I said, "You've been a very good girl this year."

And then she smiled the most beautiful smile I've ever seen.

I'm going to try not to think about what kind of life she returned to. I'm going to hope that she has enough to eat and that her parents are kind to her. I'm going to pray that, in spite of her tender age, she will remember the seventh habit, "sharpening the saw": preserving and enhancing the greatest asset she has - herself.

I'm going to remember this sweet, nameless little girl all my days, and I'm definitely coming back as Mrs. Claus for as long as they want me. It was my best present ever.

The Clauses pose with Dan's co-worker, Glenn. Nice square pillow, Santa.

A New Addition to the "What to Expect" Genre

(Now that I’m an “experienced” mom, I feel qualified to fill in a few gaping holes in the “What to Expect” genre. Call it “What to Expect When The Glow Wears Off”. This is part of an essay in progress and I thought it would be fun to share. Feel free to add your own experiences in the comments section.)


1. You will have to cook. A lot.

Oh, how I loved breastfeeding my babies. The problem came when they started to demand actual food. See, I’m not much of a cook. I had my first child at 34; prior to that, I’d spent my adult life in a completely narcissistic world where I ate out or ordered in all the time. The fact that I worked in restaurants for years only reinforced my opinion that cooking was something somebody else did.

Today I find myself feeding three small kids three times a day, and I can honestly say that I just hate it. They are picky eaters, which is weird, since I have a really limited menu available to them anyway. I do all the kid standards: mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, spaghetti and meatballs, etc. My kids will eat exactly five vegetables: green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, peas and corn. I should really just write everything I can cook on a list and number it and rotate the meals. “Okay kids, we’re having number 12 tonight.” “Oh man, we just had number 12! Can’t we have 8 instead?” “Sorry guys, I don’t have any 8 left. Maybe tomorrow.”


2. You have to clean stuff. A lot.

Re previous comment: You cook, you also have to clean up the dishes. And the spills. And the crumbs. And the shit they throw on the floor when they’re little and the shit they throw at each other when they’re older. My advice: get a dog. That will at least take care of the floor.

You will have to clean truly gross stuff. It starts with the diapers, and goes downhill from there. Just wait until your 5-year-old eats a big ol' slice of NASCAR-themed birthday cake (black icing on the wheels) and washes it down with lemonade. You will be amazed at the color of the projectile vomit that hits your walls later that day. Oh yeah: don’t let the dog clean that one up, or you'll hurl too.

You will do laundry. Your second child will triple your laundry. Your third child will increase your laundry tenfold. If you have more than three, it will no longer matter, because just the word “laundry” will send you into a catatonic state until you wake up and find yourself folding the last little t-shirt and placing it atop a teetering pile of children’s clothes.

If you ask your husband to help you fold the children’s clothes he will look at you as if his ears just fell off.

You will endlessly wash your children. The first nervous sponge baths, gingerly cleaning around the umbilical cord with an alcohol-soaked q-tip, will become a distant memory in 5 or 6 years, when you are wrestling your rainbow-hued kindergartner into the tub after she learns the word “tattoo” and decides to go all Kat Von D on herself with her (washable? I think not) Crayola markers. I have, as of this Mother’s Day, been bathing children for 12 years, and I can tell you it’s getting old. I have been known to smell their heads to determine whether or not an actual bath is called for, or if we can just grab a couple of diaper-wipes and call it even.


3. Your children will hurt you.

And I don’t mean your feelings. You will be injured by the little darlings. The aches and pains of pregnancy, the agony of labor, even the first chomp on your nipple by your angelic teething nursing baby are just a warmup.

You will be poked sharply in the eye by the deadly index finger of a toddler having a meltdown. Your six-year-old’s enormous forehead will connect violently with your orbital bone during a tickling match gone horribly wrong, resulting in the kind of shiner that will make folks wonder if they should have the cops come by your house. Your son will swing his plastic sword (“I said, no weapons in the house! Ever!”) at his sister, but will instead connect with your shinbone as you walk by, resulting in a bright purple egg that takes weeks to fade. The little one will tip over while standing on a dining room chair (“I said, sit in your chair! Now!”) but luckily you will be standing there to break the fall; the impact of said chair against quadricep muscle will then result in a deep thick painful bruise.

They will be very sorry, of course. Their little faces will scrunch up in sorrow and then terror when they hear you scream some very adult expressions of pain. And that’s when you have to suck it up and apologize and tell them, “it’s okay honey, mommy’s just got an owie” when what you really want to do is cry. (Special note: it scares your kids when you cry.)


4. You will wonder what the hell you were thinking.

One day, before you know it, your sweet baby boy will be twelve years old and smell like teen spirit. He will go to a friend’s house for a sleepover and the next day the other kid’s mom will call to let you know that the two of them were caught looking at inappropriate videos on YouTube. When you ask him about it he will give you the eye roll and say “geez, mom. Are you gonna give me ‘the talk’ now?” and slam his door in your face.

And you will wonder what the hell you were thinking.

And your friends will be no help at all, saying things like, “oh just wait till it’s your girls”.


5. And finally: You will be blown away, pretty much daily, by how much you love them.

Okay, so maybe this one’s been covered in the other books. Really, everyone knows that’s why you do it in the first place: because (ideally, anyway) you and your spouse have so much love, you want to share it with kids of your own. But the utter ferociousness of that love will, every now and then, just clock you upside your head.

It will happen when you least expect it. When you tiptoe in to watch your little girl sleeping like an angel, a mere hour after she threw herself screaming on the floor because she didn’t want to go to bed. When you have read Green Eggs and Ham for the 73rd time and you realize that he knows the words by heart and is “reading” along with you. When you are up to your elbows in dirty dishes and she brings you a dandelion, offering it with the biggest grin ever, saying “it’s as pretty as you are”! When you watch your preschooler “graduate”, and your heart swells up as he walks by in his cardboard cap with the yarn tassel, and to your amazement you burst into tears.

And yes, when you hold your crying 5-year-old after he has spewed black icing and lemonade on the wall, because he is scared and sick and only mommy – no one else – can help him feel better.

My sweet baby boy, about 12 years ago. You can't see the dog in this picture, but he's there.

The Weight, or, Take a Load Off My Fanny. (with apologies to The Band.)

I am turning into the Mom with the Heavy Bottom. It’s been a noble fight, holding it off as long as I have; but I’ve been putting on some pounds lately, and it’s all going straight to my thighs. Inner and outer. I seriously look like I’m wearing chaps. The seams of my jeans are wearing thin where my thighs rub together. When I’m wearing a skirt, they get stuck together even though the rest of my body is moving. It’s a strange sensation, and even stranger to duck into a corner to squat so they’ll unglue.

The thing is, I look pretty good everywhere else. Face, arms, belly… even my ass is fairly normal. But my thighs look as if they were injected with saline, like they do to plump up chickens.

I mistakenly told my husband the truth about my weight the other day. He was trying to figure out how much I weighed so he’d know what size scuba suit to buy me, and he told the salesgirl “I think she weighs about 145”, and that’s exactly when I knew I would love him FOREVER. Because he was WAAAAAY off. Like, I weigh that much, plus a toddler.

Sadly, I have no motivation to lose the weight right now, either. I feel fine. Okay, I don’t like the whole my-life-is-a-pair-of-corduroy-pants business, but hey, I’m pretty busy with the kids, and they sure don’t care about my thighs, and we’ve already established that Dan is completely oblivious (did I mention I’ll love him forever?). I can still squeeze into my jeans, until the inner seams rub off, anyway.

I’ve had weight issues since the day I turned 30. My doctor had informed me that “your metabolism just changes once you hit 30” and on that day my metabolism immediately took that as permission. I became a lifetime member of Weight Watchers that year, and have since done Jenny Craig, Atkins, Slim-Fast, various other deprivation diets, and at least three additional trips back to Weight Watchers.

The Weight Watchers program is big on tricks and affirmations to keep you on track. As a mom who (like most moms) tends to “clean up” the kids’ dinner plates (with my mouth), one of my favorites is “I am not a garbage can. [Point at real garbage can] THAT is a garbage can.”

There’s the 20-minute rule: you can have the one slice of pizza, but if you want another, get up and set the kitchen timer for 20 minutes. If you still want it after the timer goes off, go ahead. (Repeat as necessary.) It actually works: most of the time, you realize you’re full.

Then there’s the exercise where you look at the offending food (usually a dessert or sweet of some kind) and say: “I am stronger than this food. This food is not stronger than me.”

But there is always an exception to every rule, and mine is a tiny, brightly colored cone of corn syrupy deliciousness:

Candy corn.

Candy corn is Herculean in its power over me. I am but an innocent fawn in the presence of its leonine strength. In my imagination, it lines up and marches into my open mouth while I am tied to the chair, Gulliver-like in my helplessness. When I swear I will never buy it again, there it is at the grocery in a big happy orange cardboard Halloween display, glowing like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and I toss it in my cart while averting my eyes: “No one saw that, it didn’t really happen, it’s not really there.” And then I get in the car and rip open the bag and ritually eat each piece in three bites: white, yellow, orange… white, yellow, orange… over and over all the way home. Then I hide it from the kids like a heroin habit. I’ll snack on it until I’m so sick that I’m chasing it with Maalox, and yet I will not stop.

Maybe the cone-shape of the candy is why it’s all going to my thighs, turning me into a cone-shaped woman. And maybe this painful confession is the first step on my road to recovery. Hi, my name is Leanne, and I am a candy-corn-aholic.

That's it! I can do it! The healing starts today. I’ll have a couple of weeks to eat right, exercise and go through withdrawal before Thanksgiving, which should be a breeze compared to Halloween. Unless my kids have candy corn in their trick-or-treat bags. Then we might have a problem.

Streets of Fire

Dan bought me a bike today. And when I say a bike, I mean a road bike. Not a mountain bike, a touring bike, a cruiser or a hybrid bike. I am now the proud owner of a jet-black Cannondale Synapse Alloy 5, featuring “relaxed geometry and advanced vibration-damping properties.” Also, it cost about as much as my wedding gown.

Bikes have changed a lot since I was 16¹ and rode my 10-speed Schwinn Varsity in a road race in Mason, Ohio and came in second. For one thing, they are made of space-age materials, and the fact that my new bike is made primarily from aluminum and not carbon is, apparently, going to be a major source of humiliation for me. A carbon bike costs about twice as much as my new ride. Dan kept saying, “Here, lift this! Feel how light it is!” and I would lift the expensive bike, but the weight differential (approx. 20 ounces, as far as I could tell) was imperceptible to me. Bike snobs of the world, shun me.

My redemption will be in the “componentry”, as Dan calls it, or the “clicking stuff” as I call it. When I rode my Schwinn, as I recall, the shifter was a little metal thingy that sat on the right handlebar. It had the numbers 1 through 10 on it. Thus, you clicked to the number you wanted, and that was the gear you were in. Something like that. Now, the shifters are little paddles built right into the brake thingies.² The little black paddle does one thing and the bigger one does something else, and the right one goes up and the left one goes down, or vice versa. Anyway that’s how you shift the thing.

And don’t get me started about the damn pedals. Did you know that bikers have to wear special shoes that they clip into special pedals so their feet are actually attached to the bike? Here’s me, falling over. Thud. I think this is written in the same Rulebook that dictates the long tight black padded shorts and the snug zip-up jersey with writing all over it that is supposed to make you look like you’ve been in the Tour de France even though you are riding down Foothill Boulevard past the Toyota dealership. But I digress.

Dan took me to Helen’s Cycles in Santa Monica, where I already know I am not going to be cool enough. I mean, come on, Santa Monica! We saw a dude drive up in a white Beemer convertible, unlit cigar hanging out of his mouth, white polo shirt with the collar flipped up, stacked little female companion by his side. He was like a tv character, seriously. Like maybe the cocky film producer who gets decapitated on CSI.

But Dan bought his bike there and really likes the place. He's become a real expert on bikes since he took up road riding with his sons; he tends to become an expert at everything he gets interested in. He took some cooking classes with Sam: ask him about pasta making sometime.

So we go in to look at this one Cannondale that’s on sale, and after a while I am out on the street test riding bikes. Damon, our sales person, talks technical stuff with Dan – “so this one has 105s, not Tiagras” “the head tube is a little longer, I think it fits her better” – while I pedal up and down a side street and try not to look foolish.

“How do you like this one? How does it feel?”

Dan wants me to get a bike sooo bad. He is already picturing the two of us out on the road, touring wine country perhaps, or cruising down the PCH.³

“It’s good,” I say. I have ridden exactly two Cannondale bikes, up and down the same side street in Santa Monica, and the main thing I am thinking is “wow, this seat is really crushing my lady business”. But I also want a bike. I want to recapture the feeling of complete freedom, riding through the countryside in Mason⁴, the wind in my hair⁵; I also want to be able to climb two flights of stairs without panting, and riding a bike is the only form of exercise that appeals to me whatsoever. So I say, “It’s better than the other one. I like it.”

He tells me it’s an excellent bike. I am completely dependent on him as far as this purchase goes. I look at Damon helplessly and say, “It’s like taking a 12 year old to a car dealership.” And even though it’s a bit more than we wanted to spend, Dan gets it for me. And then he gets me the bike computer. And the bike bag with the spare tire in it. And a pump and two water bottles that attach to the bike frame, and a new helmet, and some lights for the front and back, and some of those obnoxious padded shorts (which my lady business will appreciate, I’m sure).⁶ Oh yeah, and some gloves. Damon magnanimously takes 10 percent off the accessories for him.⁷ We load the bike into the minivan, and all the way home I map out the places I am going to ride. Good thing Dan’s driving.

Now we’re home, and it’s dark out, and I am actually looking forward to getting up early and going for a ride. Which, if you know me, is a miracle. Look for me on Foothill Boulevard; I’ll be the one wearing bike shorts and a Springsteen t-shirt.

¹1978. Same year I saw Bruce on the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour. Damn good year.

² Give me a couple of weeks, I’ll know the right names for all this stuff.

³ I, on the other hand, expect to be cruising around the Rose Bowl parking lot.

⁴ Which has long since been razed and paved and overdeveloped into “Cincinnati’s Top Suburb”. I’m not lying. I was there recently, and they have banners flying along Tylersville Road, where I used to ride, crowing this great honor recently bestowed by Cincy Magazine.

⁵ You didn’t wear helmets back then unless you were in a race. It was awesome.

⁶ I did not get the Tour de France shirt, or the special shoes and pedals. Yet.

⁷ Which just about covers the 9.75% sales tax in L.A. County.

Life and Flames

"Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared." ~Otto Weininger

Monday, August 31st, 2009.

I am standing on a hotel balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is dark. I can hear the steady soothing crash of the waves, and although it is one of my favorite places to be, tonight in my mind’s eye I can also see the ocean turning into a monster, pounding at the earth that confines it. I look at the ocean and I can see fury, because today I left fury behind: a slow-moving, insidious fury that burned and choked La Crescenta, the town where I live and breathe, the place I call home.

It’s been burning since Wednesday. On the news tonight they said the Station Fire was over 164 square miles, the size of Las Vegas. Every morning we awoke to sick yellow haze and floating ash-flakes, delicate and light as snowflakes, lighting on our clothes and hair and cars but not melting, just sitting there, gray and dirty and toxic and sneering. The ash fell and the air was thick and we coughed and stayed inside. Each day we coped; each night we stood with our neighbors and pointed at the flames up the hill, wondering what would happen next.

Sunday morning, I started to feel like my bronchial tubes were trying to claw through my chest. Sunday night, my friend Becki and her family were on Day Two of mandatory evacuation from their house, a mile up the hill from us. Sunday night another friend told me about the 2 a.m. wake-up robocall telling her to evacuate. Sunday night I stopped watching the flames, turned off the news, took an ativan and surrendered.

Sleep is a wonderful thing, when your body is worn down from an oxygen-starved environment and the effort of keeping things normal for your kids, even though normal surrounded by fire is kind of like birthday cake surrounded by ninjas: things you haven’t had to deal with simultaneously before. Plus you probably haven’t ever personally dealt with ninjas, either.

So Sunday night I was sleeping soundly, as you can imagine, when the phone rang at 2:17 a.m. Before I even checked the caller ID, I knew what it was. LA CO SHERIFF said the phone. This is a mandatory evacuation, said the robovoice.

But it was a mistake. Somebody had pushed the wrong button. Within 25 minutes of our first fumblings with refugee status, we learned that we could stay. Within 5 minutes of that determination, I was asleep again, this time on the couch, because the bedroom smelled like smoke from the trips out to the garage. Dan tells me he got the “oops” robocall after I went back to sleep. Didn’t hear a thing. Yay, ativan.

I was in a peaceful, floaty dream when Dan came out to the living room cradling Alabama, our old cat, and whispering urgently, “Leanne, you need to wake up. Bama’s dying.”

Now, coming out of a deep sleep, it sounded a bit like “Emma’s dying,” and Emma is my 8-year-old daughter, and I was just about to scream when he said “she was under the bed and howling” and I realized it was the cat, who’s been very sick with kidney disease. She was 16 and probably couldn’t take the bad air.

It was 6:30 a.m. on Monday, day six of the fire, and I took one look at her and knew this was it. The vet’s office was not yet open, and the emergency vet was too far away. We wrapped her in a towel and Dan held her and she trembled slightly, her eyes blank. I caressed her sweet black head and whispered in her ear, “I love you Bama, thank you for being the best mama kitty,” and she gasped three little gasps and was still. I nuzzled her anyway and we were silent, and my hand crept over her chest and made sure there was no heartbeat and no breath and Dan said, “I think she’s gone.”

Numb, I made a fresh pot of coffee while Dan dug a deep hole beneath the bougainvillea in the back yard near her favorite sunning spot and we buried her right away, before the kids were awake.

The radio was on, and the dire news reports about the fire were more of the same. Raging out of control. Air quality was “borderline hazardous”. The evacuations started 4 blocks north of us. And fire crews were planning to set controlled burns at the top of our street in an attempt to keep the blaze from destroying homes in our area.

I sat listless on the couch, clutching my coffee, tears in my eyes, but I was too tired for even the effort it took to sob. Dan sat down next to me.

“I’ve been thinking. I’m going to take the day off. Let’s go to the beach.”

Alabama died at 7:20. By nine we had booked a room at a lovely hotel in Oxnard, right on the beach. By 11 a.m. the kids and the bags were in the van. I stopped at Baja Fresh for a big iced tea, got some cash, gassed up and drove as fast as I could away from the smoke and fury in my beautiful mountains.

It’s now exactly 12 hours since we hit the freeway. Dan spent the day with us poolside in the cool, clean air, and we all had dinner by the harbor. We had ice cream and watched the sunset. Dan went back to take care of the dogs and the house.

The kids are asleep. My lungs are lighter by small degrees, and I sit on the balcony listening to the waves.

But I’ve watched an out of control fire from my front yard, and I’ve held my kitty as she died, and it’s taking a little more effort for me to feel comforted and not overwhelmed by nature. So I close my eyes and breathe. It’s good to breathe.

The King of Pop

I cried while watching Michael Jackson’s memorial service. This fact surprised me for a moment, and then I just let the tears fall. I know I’m not the only person who has a sort of Anne Frank philosophy and tries to see the good inside everyone. After all, he was a father who loved his kids. As a mom, I will never, under any circumstances, be able to separate myself from that bond; the pain a child must feel at losing a beloved parent is unimaginable.

My 17-year-old stepson did not get it at all. “He was a freak show,” Sam said. “Too weird for me.” And that’s how most young people today will remember Michael Jackson: the accusations of pedophilia, the plastic surgery, the blanket-covered baby dangled over the balcony.

I was 7 years old when the Jackson Five reached their peak. My brothers and I watched their Saturday morning cartoon show; the Osmond Brothers had one too, but the Jacksons were so much funnier. We loved it. We lived in a white-bread suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, and the Jacksons were our first connection with people of color, and we didn’t really care. Yes, they were different but their music was cool and the show was funny and Michael was a kid, just like us.

He was most of all a brilliant artist and performer. Everything that was said at his memorial about his impact on the world of music was true. He was a generous humanitarian as well. But Al Sharpton, though his intentions were good, shouldn’t have said to his children “there wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy.” Because that’s not true. He was strange. He was very strange.

It’s apparent now that Michael Jackson was a tortured soul and carried around a lot of self-loathing. In my opinion, it all points to some kind of terrible abuse suffered as a child. Violence, perhaps, or molestation. His childlike obsessions, substance abuse, and ongoing voluntary disfigurement are clues. How much do you hate yourself if you want to destroy your own face?

It’s sad that he died, when he on the verge of touring and possibly mesmerizing us as a performer once again. But it’s a small comfort to know that we will not have to watch the man descend into any further acts of weirdness, accusations of impropriety, or self-mutilation. No more chimps or blankets (or kids named Blanket) or drugged-out interviews. For me. at least, I can sing “I’ll Be There” and remember the boy who touched my heart and opened my eyes.