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It was the day before Christmas, in those daytime hours of glorious anticipation to the most awaited eve of the whole year: Noche Buena. Noche Buena or Christmas Eve, when we were growing up, carried with it a frothing and wonderful expectation. It was tradition for young Peruvian children to be in bed and hopefully asleep, at least in my household, by around 8pm on that night. We would be roused just after midnight, with the jolly announcement that Papá Noel had come – that the colorful-paper-wrapped presents were at the foot of our quirky and skinny artificial Christmas tree downstairs.
During the afternoon, I would follow Hila around the house throughout her workday chores. The floors were always freshly polished on that day, with the wafting smell of Johnson’s Wax strongly overtaking the house in the afternoon, endorsing it with that unmistakable “everything is surely clean” smell, which would later give way to the more organic and earthy aromas of steam pots filled with the traditional banana-leaf-enfolded tamales by the early evening. I would be in charge of squeezing out the amber dollops of wax in the path of Hila’s handling of the electric buffer machine with its three, madly spinning bristled brushes that I, as a child, always found cool but so creepy in their loud, frenetic whirl. The result was an oak-hued mirror of flooring that was so lovely. I think that if I smelled Johnson’s Wax again today, I would be transported to those Noche Buenas of many yesterdays ago.
There is that electrical-current excitement in children when awaiting the big Christmas reveal. I will never stop being amazed by the concept of expectation. I think it is so much better to be about to open a present than to have already opened it. I wonder if other people feel like that. I guess huge unknowns are thrilling. Think about it. It is similar to how… it is more exciting to be hungry – What shall I cook? What will it taste like? – than to be full. To add to the dramatics, there is such a long and beautiful lag time between the careful crafting of scribbly-handwritten children’s letters to Santa Claus and the actual day.
When we moved to the United States, we found it so peculiar that kids here were made to wait until Christmas morning to open their gifts, when we would be elbow-deep in an adrenaline-aided cumulonimbus cloud of wrapping paper bits by 12:30am. We would then marvel at and ogle our presents for another few minutes and then go outside of our house for the traditional Luces de Bengala (sparklers) and oodles of multi-colored firecrackers and roman candles. We compared notes with our EEUU friends, “What do you mean ‘no fireworks’?” “How odd?” While in Lima, our Christmas celebrations were loud on all the senses.
I remember that one Noche Buena particularly. I had laid out my secret plan. I had not told anyone. I must have been around 5 years old – definitely before age 7 because by then my oldest brother would have already been away at university in California. This would be the night that I would stake out the western facing window of my room, after the grown ups thought that I was already asleep, and scour the skies for the sleigh, the reindeer, and Papá Noel. I was so sure about what I would see. I conjured up, clear in my mind, the imagery of the streamline silhouette of his deer-drawn carriage that I would witness, up high against the southern hemisphere summer sunset rich with strata of purples and oranges and magentas. I leaned against the window for what seemed like hours, but I wonder today how long hours would be to a child. I was so diligent in my watch that I remember feeling disappointed when I had to blink naturally, and that I would try to avoid it as much as possible, to my eyes’ eventual discomfort.
I would wake up the next morning, after the only midnight unveiling of presents I ever missed, and cry deeply in disappointment. But there it was: I had sacrificed an enormous moment for the sake of my investigative project. Nothing turned up in my evidence file, but through adult eyes, it is something beautiful to sacrifice for the sake of discovery – for the faith to glimpse something magical.
I don’t know what happened, but sometime during my Papá Noel stake out, I fell asleep and fell asleep hard. Midnight came, and I could not wake up. My oldest brother tried and tried, with his gentle, but urging way and still could not get me to wake up.
My brother Julio was a soulful, quiet presence in my Life, and also so much fun. He used to be so patient, always has been. There would be afternoons filled with games and make-believes, for the sake of entertaining us, his younger siblings. I remember him playing Superman with me. I was so little, ten years younger than him. He would tell me to make my body as straight as possible, little arms fully stretched out and legs straight – so aerodynamic! – so he could ‘fly’ me around the room, holding me on his two arms. It was one of my favorite activities. I would lose myself in the thought that I was really Superman and feel thrilled. As he would hold and turn me around the room, I would giggle and giggle, making the whole room laugh.
He would be there again and again, when in my teens my father left us and our home. By then we were hardly settled in our new surroundings in Los Angeles for a bit over a year. My brother would take it upon himself to provide outings for my mom and us his younger siblings to places like Disneyland, Knots Berry Farm and the beach. He would instinctually fill the void left in the aftermath of our parents’ divorce, turning a dark time into sweet memories. I remember thinking that he was so generous and mature to exert himself, beyond his own responsibilities and schooling, to be at our side. In my mind, I thought he was so grown up to do so, and today, I realize that he was only 24.
And another night in my early years, with my cheeks soaked in tears, I sat at the edge of my bed – New Year’s Eve in Lima. My parents had let an argument go from a half simmer to a loud over-boil. They were downstairs shouting, and we kids were upstairs, riding it out quietly as we always did, while the air in our home was filled with that dense bitterness of disappointment that is more punctuated by sadnesses that happen during important dates, like birthdays or Christmastimes or New Years….
My brother came to my doorway, and sweetly said to me, “Don’t cry. They say that the way that you spend New Year’s Eve is the way that your year will fare. Please don’t cry.” That moment stayed with me. I stopped crying, and felt some relief. Just having someone there to try to bring me back to a safe place of feeling was important. Someone that I could trust was watching over me – someone real to give me a reason not to lose it.
This afternoon, looking through an old scrapbook, I find a letter addressed to "Sr. Papanoel" (love the formality) written on my behalf in what looks like Julito’s young penmanship. And I remember the custom of our parents asking my older siblings to take dictation for us younger kids that did not know how to write well yet. I try to transport myself back to that afternoon of dictation so many years ago, asking my brother to ask the Big Man for a little piano for my Barbie. And I realize, even in this expression, my brother has always been there to help me find my voice.
That’s my brother – the eldest of us four – who has always had my back.
Bridge Over Troubled Water - performed by Simon & Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_a46WJ1viA
During the afternoon, I would follow Hila around the house throughout her workday chores. The floors were always freshly polished on that day, with the wafting smell of Johnson’s Wax strongly overtaking the house in the afternoon, endorsing it with that unmistakable “everything is surely clean” smell, which would later give way to the more organic and earthy aromas of steam pots filled with the traditional banana-leaf-enfolded tamales by the early evening. I would be in charge of squeezing out the amber dollops of wax in the path of Hila’s handling of the electric buffer machine with its three, madly spinning bristled brushes that I, as a child, always found cool but so creepy in their loud, frenetic whirl. The result was an oak-hued mirror of flooring that was so lovely. I think that if I smelled Johnson’s Wax again today, I would be transported to those Noche Buenas of many yesterdays ago.
There is that electrical-current excitement in children when awaiting the big Christmas reveal. I will never stop being amazed by the concept of expectation. I think it is so much better to be about to open a present than to have already opened it. I wonder if other people feel like that. I guess huge unknowns are thrilling. Think about it. It is similar to how… it is more exciting to be hungry – What shall I cook? What will it taste like? – than to be full. To add to the dramatics, there is such a long and beautiful lag time between the careful crafting of scribbly-handwritten children’s letters to Santa Claus and the actual day.
When we moved to the United States, we found it so peculiar that kids here were made to wait until Christmas morning to open their gifts, when we would be elbow-deep in an adrenaline-aided cumulonimbus cloud of wrapping paper bits by 12:30am. We would then marvel at and ogle our presents for another few minutes and then go outside of our house for the traditional Luces de Bengala (sparklers) and oodles of multi-colored firecrackers and roman candles. We compared notes with our EEUU friends, “What do you mean ‘no fireworks’?” “How odd?” While in Lima, our Christmas celebrations were loud on all the senses.
I remember that one Noche Buena particularly. I had laid out my secret plan. I had not told anyone. I must have been around 5 years old – definitely before age 7 because by then my oldest brother would have already been away at university in California. This would be the night that I would stake out the western facing window of my room, after the grown ups thought that I was already asleep, and scour the skies for the sleigh, the reindeer, and Papá Noel. I was so sure about what I would see. I conjured up, clear in my mind, the imagery of the streamline silhouette of his deer-drawn carriage that I would witness, up high against the southern hemisphere summer sunset rich with strata of purples and oranges and magentas. I leaned against the window for what seemed like hours, but I wonder today how long hours would be to a child. I was so diligent in my watch that I remember feeling disappointed when I had to blink naturally, and that I would try to avoid it as much as possible, to my eyes’ eventual discomfort.
I would wake up the next morning, after the only midnight unveiling of presents I ever missed, and cry deeply in disappointment. But there it was: I had sacrificed an enormous moment for the sake of my investigative project. Nothing turned up in my evidence file, but through adult eyes, it is something beautiful to sacrifice for the sake of discovery – for the faith to glimpse something magical.
I don’t know what happened, but sometime during my Papá Noel stake out, I fell asleep and fell asleep hard. Midnight came, and I could not wake up. My oldest brother tried and tried, with his gentle, but urging way and still could not get me to wake up.
My brother Julio was a soulful, quiet presence in my Life, and also so much fun. He used to be so patient, always has been. There would be afternoons filled with games and make-believes, for the sake of entertaining us, his younger siblings. I remember him playing Superman with me. I was so little, ten years younger than him. He would tell me to make my body as straight as possible, little arms fully stretched out and legs straight – so aerodynamic! – so he could ‘fly’ me around the room, holding me on his two arms. It was one of my favorite activities. I would lose myself in the thought that I was really Superman and feel thrilled. As he would hold and turn me around the room, I would giggle and giggle, making the whole room laugh.
He would be there again and again, when in my teens my father left us and our home. By then we were hardly settled in our new surroundings in Los Angeles for a bit over a year. My brother would take it upon himself to provide outings for my mom and us his younger siblings to places like Disneyland, Knots Berry Farm and the beach. He would instinctually fill the void left in the aftermath of our parents’ divorce, turning a dark time into sweet memories. I remember thinking that he was so generous and mature to exert himself, beyond his own responsibilities and schooling, to be at our side. In my mind, I thought he was so grown up to do so, and today, I realize that he was only 24.
And another night in my early years, with my cheeks soaked in tears, I sat at the edge of my bed – New Year’s Eve in Lima. My parents had let an argument go from a half simmer to a loud over-boil. They were downstairs shouting, and we kids were upstairs, riding it out quietly as we always did, while the air in our home was filled with that dense bitterness of disappointment that is more punctuated by sadnesses that happen during important dates, like birthdays or Christmastimes or New Years….
My brother came to my doorway, and sweetly said to me, “Don’t cry. They say that the way that you spend New Year’s Eve is the way that your year will fare. Please don’t cry.” That moment stayed with me. I stopped crying, and felt some relief. Just having someone there to try to bring me back to a safe place of feeling was important. Someone that I could trust was watching over me – someone real to give me a reason not to lose it.
This afternoon, looking through an old scrapbook, I find a letter addressed to "Sr. Papanoel" (love the formality) written on my behalf in what looks like Julito’s young penmanship. And I remember the custom of our parents asking my older siblings to take dictation for us younger kids that did not know how to write well yet. I try to transport myself back to that afternoon of dictation so many years ago, asking my brother to ask the Big Man for a little piano for my Barbie. And I realize, even in this expression, my brother has always been there to help me find my voice.
That’s my brother – the eldest of us four – who has always had my back.
Bridge Over Troubled Water - performed by Simon & Garfunkel, written by Paul Simon
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_a46WJ1viA