The Santa Claus Kid Rides Again.

The other morning, much like just about every other morning, I went into my daughter's bedroom at about 5:15 after I heard her on the Eavesdropper/ BabyMonitor, chit-chatting away with her Ikea stuffed rat and her dog-chewed Little People. She barks high-pitched commands at them and rubs their noggins together so that they exchange thoughts, I guess; she holds them high above her head and allows them to converse with one another from their perches in her mitts, and then she swoops them down to collide with each other in the middle of her breath.

I opened the door, hit the light, and said my Good Morning. Violet was sitting up in her bed, her back to the board, holding a small broken pine branch in her one hand, the two or three silver tinsels strands spaghetti-ing off it flapping wildly as she talked at the thing. She paid me no mind. I kinda froze in my tracks trying to figure out what was stranger: the fact that she had somehow smuggled a piece of our Christmas tree into her chambers/ or the fact that she was fully engaged in conference with it, first thing before dawn. Whatever, I thought. I need coffee in the next three minutes or goblins are gonna fly out of my face. Stepping through/over/on her small regiment of plastic dinosaurs on the carpet, I made my way over to her and bent down to scoop her up as she held her holiday branch to her ear like it was a cell phone, talking her toddler jive scat at some half-dead congregation of Montana needles.

That's when I noticed our digital camera sitting there, half under her pajama'd thigh.

Hmph. That's what I thought. Maybe I even said it out loud, Hmph.

Her getting hold of the camera somehow didn't really surprise me all that much. It's the sort of well-used borderline piece of junk that pretty much lives where ever it gets plopped down; the kitchen counter, the coffee table. I've found it on the back of the toilet before; don't ask me/ I don't know/ I don't wanna know. So, Violet, on her tippy-toes, somehow reaching her arm up and just barely curving her little wrist over the smooth bend of the counter top, pawing her tiny hand around up there for a tangible tragedy: a world-class meat fork or a ninja's sock knife or a fucking rattlesnake; her fishing around in those dangerous invisible heavens and then just coming up with something easy like the box store Kodak didn't really bother me at all. There were no photos in it for her to erase; I'd loaded them into the computer just yesterday afternoon. And it was too big to swallow; although I would give good money for some footage of her trying to jam it past her jaws; I guarantee you she tried. No, the only thing that sorta irked me about her having the camera in her bedroom with her was more connected to her also having the Christmas branch.

I thought, maybe this is how it starts. Hoarding. Hoarders.

She held on to her branch, jabbering into it as she held it to her ear, and so I let her keep it as I bit my bottom lip a little and carried her out into the kitchen and slid her into the high chair. Dear Lord, I thought. I knew it was all too good to be true. Two years of just flat-out little kid bliss getting me stoned every couple minutes with her dance moves in front of the cartoons and the mashed avocado smeared across her smile; two years of singing songs in the Honda to my whole galaxy looking at me in the rear-view, all of her sweet attention zoning in my song, my eyes in the glass. A hundred years of happiness and joy jammed into 23 months. And now what...now this? My kid might be a pack rat?

To be fair, as I doled out the porridge (toast shreds) to Oliver Twist (Violet), I wasn't really thinking about my little girl, down the road, weighing in at a solid three-fifty/trapped in her own house behind Castle Walls of petrified cat shit and Salvation Army knick-knacks and three thousand Rice Krispie boxes she's saving for if she needs them, you know: later on. To be fair, I was thinking solely about if she decided that, as she gets older, as she grows up and matures into a more adventurous horader: would she ever start hoarding my fishing shit? Because, the thought of my rod and my net and stuff, all jammed up under her bed, packed in tight behind other teenage hoarding loot like her mom's summer mumu's or, God forbid, the dog's food; the thought of my trout gear disappearing on me like that made me a little nervous.

But still, like I said before, I still hadn't had my coffee yet, or my anti-anxiety meds, so just as soon as the whole Hoarders notion popped onto my radar, it simply blipped a couple blips and petered out on the dark screen of my morning seas. I made us all our food and wheeled Violet into the living room in her chair so she could rub strawberry jam in her hair while she sucked down some milk and watched the morning news with Daddy. I forgot all about the branch and the camera. That's how I roll before the coffee. I forget the minute that just happened.

Anyways, I sipped at my joe and poked at my grapefruit slices and we watched the news for a little while, my kid alternating between mouthfuls of jellied toast and talking into the Christmas branch phone.

"Who you talking to, sweetheart?!" I asked her at one point. She just ignored me.

"You talking to Santa Claus there?" I said, with, you know, cute Daddy condescension. Her eyes darted at mine for a second. I swear she stared a bullet hole through my cheek. I turned back to the TV. We sat there like that for awhile, doing our thing when a commercial came on with a Santa Claus standing in a used car lot.

Boom. Violet screeched like I never heard her before. I jumped up, sure she was choking or on fire or something. She was waving the branch around like a tiny spazz and hollering at the television with all her little lungs could muster. I looked at the commercial again. One of those local jobs where the volume is six times louder than anything else you've been watching. The Santa was HoHoHo'ing and swinging his sack of wrapped empty boxes around. He didn't look all that believable or anything, but whatever.

I was kind of thrilled. Up until now Violet hadn't shown much interest or even any kind of recognition of Santa Claus. I'd tried to push him on her with a stuffed Kringle I got at Walmart and a couple old decorations, but she'd seemed more afraid of him than interested, so I figured it was too early yet. Maybe next year.

But now, she was just freaking out. Her eyeballs were about to pop out of her skull as she slammed the branch on her crumby tray and jolted her arms up and down and screeched from her mountaintop. She was smiling and giddy; not at all fearful like she'd seemed to me before.

"You like Santa Claus?" I asked her, uncertain as to what the hell was happening. Kids don't just decide to like Santa one morning over breakfast, do they?

She just waved her needles and kicked her legs and made this face of absolute surprise/delight/recognition as if she'd eaten a whole frosted doughnut by herself and just couldn't control her little body anymore. It was a convulsion, in a way. A Christmas Conniption.

"Daddy's happy!," I told her, gleefully as I could manage. "Daddy's little girl digs Santa Claus! Hooraaay!"

She didn't look at me at all and within a few seconds the commercial ended and Violet immediately turned all her focus back to her branch, rushing it back up to her ear again and letting loose with a nonsensical barrage of ishkibibble. It was as if she was some kind of crazy lady calling her sisters of gossip, letting them know she'd just seen you-know-who doing you-know-what. I was, to be honest, a little dazed by this point. What kind of trigger was that? A Salt Lake actor playing Santa in a used car lot on the tube and my kid goes bananas?

I sipped my coffee and dipped into my Facebook.

"SHEEHSEHHSHHEEEEEMAMMMMMMANAMMMATTTTTTTTTABABABAMMMA!", Violet exploded.

What the fuck! I shot up again and this time she was cramming the branch into her head, pushing the soft needles through her hair as she flapped her hands and wiggled her fingers and held her mouth wide open as it just let go a siren of sound. I looked at her, my heart racing, and she was staring at the TV again. This time: a Santa Claus in a department store with little runts sitting on his lap saying something or other; I couldn't hear anything through Violet's noise.

I was in shock. I walked over to her chair and reached down to take the branch out of her hand. Without moving her eyes from the Santa on the screen she sunk her teeth hard into the ham of my hand.

"FUUUUUCK!" I screamed. "What the hell, Violet!" She was a Pitbull, locked in forever. I dropped her Christmas branch and she dug her teeth out of my skin.

I was pissed. Her teethmarks were perfectly tattooed in the meat. It hurt like hell. Kids are vipers. I wheeled her fast back into the kitchen, scrambling to come up with some kind of discipline before I'd even had a whole cup of coffee; torn between painful rage and fascinated interest in this Santa Claus button that made her insanely alive unlike any fucking Dora or Snoopy had ever managed yet. And they'd been pretty impressive so far: I'd seen her cut quite a few six-whiskey jigs across the living room floor when the Mexican girl wandered in. But this, all this was entirely something different. This was borderline madness with talking at tree parts and biting.

I unstrapped Violet and just set her down on the floor to run back towards the TV, the branch to her ear, the conversation still burning up the line. What was I going to do. It was me who had wanted her to love Christmas and get kind of bonkers over Santa Claus. I didn't know what to do, or how to do it. I went in to wake up Monica so I could get in the shower.

"Monica?"

"Whhhhhhhhhmmmm." Her face was under a pillow where it stayed.

"You up? Violet's in the living room watching TV."

"Whhhhmmmmmaaaaaammmmm."

"What the hell are you saying? Are you up? Guess what? Violet is tripping on acid whenever Santa Claus appears on commercials and shit on TV. And she had a piece of the Christmas tree in her bed with her, I guess all night, and she's talking into it like it's her cell phone."

"Whhhhhhhhmmmmmm. Turnthelightawwwwwwf."

"She bit me."

"Whmmm."

"Because I tried to take her Christmas tree branch away from her during a Santa commercial and she was using it to hit herself in the head in a fit of elation, I think."

"Shutthelightandleavethedooropenandshutthelight."

"Ok, I gotta get in the shower."

I left the light on and went into Violet's room to see if she'd made her way back there yet, but she hadn't. I was about to roll out when I noticed the camera still sitting on her bed. I picked it up and turned it on.

Oh my.

Oh my.

Sometimes something shoots down under the surface of your papery skin, like hard dope; some kind of lightning that's traveled ten thousand light years over purple star ranges, down through the cold dark canyons of burnt-out suns; never stopping/ always chooglin'; something wild and magical darting across vast galaxies, descending down out of the tumbling Marshmallow Hills of Heaven; splashing across martian lava rivers, on the backs of epic horses with crisp blue steam shooting out of their faces; forever moving; unkillable; an empire's army of vapors coming all that way just to slam into your chicken chest and zombie-walk you down the early morning hall: your heart pounding like the dinosaurs collapsing ; the cheap Kodak like some old Bible torch in your hand. Something moving you out into the living room: to stare in awe at the Highchair Kid with a cheek full of toast.

To watch her talking at a Christmas tree branch.

To stand in the twinkle in her eye.

To hear the HoHoHo's fading down your street on a northbound Doppler gust of sleigh bell.

Sledders.

There were always stretches along the steep forever hill where people had already shoveled and salted, even as trillions of flakes kept falling; powder sugaring the street where the plows had passed a half hour ago, dusting the windshields of freshly parked cars.

In the last colorless moments of visible day, me and my brother would yank our sleds off of silent unshoveled glides of sidewalk, and the blades would erupt: the red metal scraping down into the concrete tundra, one of our sleds hitting it just a millisecond before the other's did; the screech of two blades cutting across rows of snowy lawns, the unmistakable sound smashing through other kids' suppertime windows just as the next set of blades spilled down on to the cement and piled into the same warm kitchens on the heels of the first. Eyes lifted fast from the plop of mashed potatoes in front of them/ spoons got set back down on the half acre pillow of steaming meatloaf/ milk spilling out of tipped-back Grimace and Hamburgler glasses is suddenly dammed, mid-flow, by shortstops and bullies and flute players: their eyes widening through the mac-n-cheese mist; snow-tired kids drawn out of their exhausted evening lulls by the distant scrapings of other sledders/ later sledders, passing by outside. 

Back at the house, me and my brother flung off our soaked gloves, our crusted Kmart scarves. We unzipped and tugged and used our one boot to get our other boot off; one boot clamping down on the other one as we leaned up against the coffe table or the door jam, tilting with fading balances as we pressed down upon our own arches to egg the tight mildew-y clamps off a couple inches at a time.

Just getting out of our shit was torture.We were already beaten, whipped.

But we managed somehow: eventually stepping out of our fallen suits to stand there in the living room in our hot wool sweaters and corduroys; our over-stretched tube socks collapsing red and blue rings around our ankles. In the kitchen we washed our hands with bar soap and talked to Mom about the day as she clanked spoons on pot edges. Every few seconds, I would look up at the small window above the sink, past the supermarket fern, and in the outskirts of weak glow from the backdoor light, I'd see the fresh flakes still falling.

I never wanted them to stop. Even a single snowflake meant there was hope. More could come. School could be canceled again. Another day on the hill could be ours.

At the table, we cut soft meat with the sides of our forks. We sopped white bread in small lakes of mud and took bites of bright corn mid-sentence. Mom poured milk into my Bill Bergey glass for me and into my brother's Wilbert Montgomery glass for him and I drank the cool milk with one hand while I steadied a forkfull of potatoes au gratin with the other; my eyeballs bending in my face to see the latest flakes falling down along the side of our house.

Then: the sound.

The blades of another slamming into the concrete out there in the night and I freeze my gulps, the glass pressing a cool smooth line into the bridge of my nose.

I shift my eyes and watch my brother freeze his gulps, our eyes meeting out above the paralyzed rims; the electrifying slide of a night sledder's metal richocheting off two young fresh hearts pumping double-time blood down in their pink bony chests; down by their Salisbury Steaks.

Pancake Papa's Crowbar Memory Blues.

Pretty much the first thing I can remember, my very first memory in this world, was digging my wooden cage, where they kept me. I was in the hospital for a hernia operation: I think I was three, maybe four years old. There's nothing etched in the concrete, mind you, just some impressionist sketches that somehow got splattered on my empty memory card. In the one, I'm standing up in a big wooden crib; I wrap my hands around some slats/feeling the smooth round of the slats. I feel the slats even now, even half a life later. In the other one: I am looking up at a TV on the wall, hospital-mounted. I don't remember what was on. I wish I did though. I just have this fuzzy vision of standing there in my cell/crib, looking up at that televison on the wall. And there were other kids around too. Other sick kids, I guess.

I revisit those moments a lot these days as I try and guess when my daughter's first real memory will burn itself into her mind. Will she be three or four, or older? Will I be in it? I wanna be in it bad. I want her first memory to be her father, standing mid-stream, his fly rod arc'd, a silvery trout the size of a hanging provolone dancing across the shimmering ripples.

Or I want her to remember a Christmas morning where Dad and Mom come into her room just as she's beginning to stir. We lift her out of bed and set her down and take her hand and lead her out into the living room where we've already cut the lamps so that only the lights on the tree illuminate the world. Magic reds and blues and yellows and greens glinting off the garland, sparking off the tinsel. I want her breath to flip over on itself as effervesence shoots through her heart like a jar of lightning.

But, I know. That isn't how shit goes. With my luck, her first memory, that first tiny Polaroid magneted to the fridge door in her sweet little head, will more than likely be something weird. Or gross. She'll pop out of bed some night and open her door all by her big girl self and wander around some, looking for Mommy and Daddy. She'll pitter patter across the carpet, into the kitchen, across the cheap plastic floor. She'll poke her tiny nose in the small opening leading into our bedroom: and see two pink Orcas wrestling while the dogs lay at the foot of the bed, damaged beyond comprehension by years of witness, years of lying there, inches from the deed getting done. Christ, I hope not. For everyone's sake, but especially my daughter's.

No, it can't go that wrong.

Chances are Violet's first memories will rise up out of some common afternoon. When nothing seems remarkable or exciting, when raindrops are pinging off the front window glass and there is the slight waft of burning toast rolling down the hall, something, some abstract moment in time, will speed down out of the Heavens and suction cup itself to my little girl's history. And then it will have begun, for her. The long winding train of days hooting its whistle at the bottom of the mountain and rolling out for the long journey to come.

Maybe it'll happen some Saturday morning, when I'm microwaving frozen pancakes.

I don't know why I wonder this shit. It could be because I'm constantly staring at her from across the couch or in the rearview. I'm always looking at her in strange wonder. It fascinates me more than anything that has ever happened: what is she seeing right now as she is gawking at that tree while we're stopped at a red light. What does she feel when she catches her first glimpse of me or Monica in the early morning kitchen. What the hell is she thinking when she's all pensive in the tub each night, the warm bath water floating her plastic boats around The Cape of Her Toes as she just sits there and  stares hard into the eyes of a Wal-Mart Brontosaurus.

Life is always going off all around her. Around us. Like paparazzi flashbulbs. A hundred times a day, I see her registering stuff/ plugging in facts/ smiling at her own homemade notions as they skip out across the backs of her eyes. It thrills me. And not just because it's my own kid, though I know that's a huge part of it. It just makes me damn giddy to think that somewhere, at some random second down the line, I might just happen to saunter into someone's very first memory. Little old me, the star of Act One.

That floors me.

And so, I keep barging into her fields. Outta the corners of her eyes, I come wandering out, standing in front of The Wonder Pets or whatever she's trying to clock on the tube; the lumbering oaf who knows where the food is/how to make the room dark/when to come in in the morning. That guy with the Pancake Power, hanging around like a playa on the corner, trying to crowbar his way into something real real good.

The dude who swipes the diapers: finagling to be in the shot when the mighty shot gets taken.