Death of the Mythic Creatures

I lost the real thing, pursuing the fake thing

On Sunday, Christopher and I woke before dawn with flashlights shining into our bedroom window. I padded to the kitchen where the stove said 4:46, and discovered Easter grass across the floor and a grinning three year old with jelly bean juice encircling his lips. “They outside,” Clyde said, referring to Max and Augie, stalking eggs in the bushes. Four hours and one botched hunt later, we wrangled the boys into their best clothes and crammed them into a church pew. The service was followed by another hunt. By eleven a.m. we’d had several sugar highs and lows and I felt depressed. “How have we raised such disrespectful kids?” I asked Christopher, scrambling brunch in a tempest of self-loathing. He felt annoyed, too, pulling a crushed Cadbury wrapper from behind a couch cushion. But the raw fatigue and the messy kitchen didn’t throw him into an existential crisis.

Was this because I spent all of Friday driving hither and yon, procuring the Paz and the Mini eggs and the eco-grass and the locally-bought books, all of which had to be purchased at different stores in different towns? As with all holidays, I feel uniquely responsible for my children’s satisfaction—and yet, eyes-stinging, I told Max, the leader of the pre-dawn rebellion: “You ruined Easter!”

When I was small, Santa used to come down the front stairs in a coat just like my father’s—a terracotta fireman’s jacket with big, metal buckles. Santa had my father’s same tobacco and coffee scented breath and he also had a beard that fell in white gobs onto his chest and shoes. When, at age four, I found a garbage bag in the playroom (??!!) filled with the doll I’d hoped for, my father sat me down and said: “I’m sorry, I cannot lie to you. There is no Santa.” Suddenly the scary guy with the Barbasol beard made sense.

My father, Pappy, refused to subscribe to most cultural norms. I eye-rolled like it was my job so that my friends would understand I knew it wasn’t normal to get picked up from school (with my sister, Lily) on the back of a motorcycle, Pappy’s jorongo flapping in the wind. The stories are charming now, but at the time my father’s eccentricity felt like a stain that spread onto me. I longed for a dad who would place me on the lap of another man at the mall and say, yes, this stranger will fulfill your most private dream. Just tell him, honey, and quick. Other kids are waiting.

The concept of mythical creatures who come into the house at night and leave gifts and candy remains highly intoxicating. They’re critical to my fantasy of ‘normalcy;’ of even, perhaps, the dream that I’m better than normal; that I might, indeed, be the mythical creature I’ve assembled in my imagination—the Perfect American Mother, PAM—offerer of fantasies I wanted for myself and did not receive. But now that Max is eight and turning into a cool-dude Bart Simpson type, the pressure of these myths has ballooned into an unbearable burden.

I’d rather not be Santa, I’d rather not be the Easter Bunny and I’d rather not be the desperate PAM who found herself crying in the pantry during those dreary, early morning hours, and when discovered, pretended to be moaning at the incomparable deliciousness of this new brand of gluten free cracker.

Thanks to Pappy, Lily and I have Bob Dylan written in our souls. She recently asked if I’d seen the 2005 documentary No Direction Home, which chronicles his transition from American folk hero to electric guitar player. I hadn’t, and I watched it this week, waiting for the scene she’d described. The film centers around a series of concerts in England, 1966, where contemptuous crowds come to see Dylan play. They applaud the first, acoustic set, then boo when the wires come out. One fan even shouts: “JUDAS!” Finally, baby-faced Dylan does the most amazing thing: he looks out at the lights and the un-seeable faces and shouts: “I don’t believe you…You’re a LIAR!” Then he turns to the band and says: “Play it fucking loud!” before blowing them up with “Like a Rolling Stone.” I don’t believe you; you’re a liar. In other words, I choose.

Here’s what PAM sees for me on Easter: I’ve just rolled out of the Doen catalogue with my children searching for eggs in the slanting, golden sunlight of the Santa Ynez Valley. I hold onto this image, even though when they went to sleep, the boys insisted on mis-matched super-hero pajamas and also it’s rainy and cold and we live in New York. I ramp up my boys’ excitement until they vibrate at bedtime, then expect them to sleep until a reasonable hour; I’m disappointed when they’re rowdy after eating the flock of peeps I’ve piled onto dozens of chocolate eggs. They’re supposed to believe this is all gifted by a giant rabbit, but they’re required to show gratitude and reverence to ME, and also… Jesus. Just as the first sugar high wanes, they need to sit still and stay quiet for an hour in a tight pew and feel inspired by the man who came back from the dead.

On Monday morning as I gave the plastic eggs a bubble bath so that I could re-use them next year, (yes, really) I began to feel Pappy’s spirit all around me. Giggling. And he gave me an insight—maybe Max is pushing buttons because he’s old enough to know these fables are fables, but we’re not letting him in on the facts. There’s a point at which the myth ceases to be a tale, and instead becomes a lie. He’s feeling it about the bunny, I’m feeling it about PAM. The myths use symbols that point to love and togetherness, but we get so obsessed with the signaling we forget the love and togetherness. We lose the real thing, pursuing the fake thing. Pappy was onto this.

I think Christopher and I need to take Max to lunch. We need to sit him down and look him in the eye and say that the magic of the holidays comes from how lucky we are to be together because we love each other; because we enjoy each other and because we don’t have infinite days as a close little unit. But not with “HOW DARE YOU NOT UNDERSTAND YOU INGRATE” energy. I know Max would appreciate why it upset us not to see their faces on Easter morning if he knew it was me and Christopher who stuffed and hid the eggs and prepped the baskets. He’s ready to be brought in on the idea that the magic is all of us. Part of him probably yearns for the responsibility of holding the fable for his brothers. I’m not sure it would diminishing anything, anyway: after the garbage bag discovery, Christmas still felt holy and beautiful and filled with meaning. Even “knowing” Santa wasn’t real, I still believed.

In a macabre twist, our dog, Frankie, killed a wild rabbit on Monday. First I found a leg on the living room carpet. Yesterday, Christopher and the boys found the head with one ear in the yard. And I’m like, alright, universe, you didn’t have to get so heavy-handed with the symbolism. Time to kill the bunny. Time for me to start looking at the momfluencers and the expensive hippy clothing companies and at the magazines on the rack with the smiling mothers on the cover, dipping eggs into Ball jars of dye and managing to dry them without leaving fingerprints on the side (HOW THOUGH) and saying: “I don’t believe you.”

(Photo: DOEN)