The Day Before Christmas

Christmas Eve and it’s 30 degrees on the deck.

Morning has come with a sky as blue as a starlet’s eyes, so bright it almost glitters.

I look out as a crow soars down toward the oak trees and up again against the distant horizon of the Santa Monicas, cawing the music of winter.

The chill of the morning seeps into the house, piercing the emerging warmth of a fireplace. Rain, heat, wind, snow and now bone-chilling cold.

Ah, L.A.

What kind of a place is this where one week we tolerate the searing sun, the next we run from the rain, the next we bend into the Santa Anas, the next we slip into coats we haven’t worn since a trip to Big Bear?

I’ll tell you, e-mail jockeys who write me from New Zealand and Scotland and China and Jamaica. I’ll tell you in Tulsa and Lexington and Albuquerque and Palm Beach.

It’s all special effects. Bring up the wind, punch in the rain, blow in the snow. L.A. is all wide-screen and make-believe, as kinetic as a car chase, as soft as a Meg Ryan kiss.

It’s a Streisand note and a Nicholson leer. It’s bugs that walk and antz that talk. It’s a Spielberg fantasy with De Palma sound.

It’s guys like me sitting by a window on the morning of Christmas Eve, pondering the imponderable.

Oh, L.A.

*

*

The house is quiet but for the rustle of paper. Cinelli is wrapping presents. If I listen closely, I can hear the colored ribbon entwining the boxes. I can hear the snipping of scissors, the curling of bows.

I hear the memory of children who only moments before left the house.

My friends Jeffrey and Nicole spent the night. Nicole slept with Cinelli. Jeffrey, who is 5, was my bed mate, small and warm, sleeping sideways, one foot propped over my back, the other over my head.

A long time ago, when my own son was propping his feet over my head, sleep was important. Life was a race then and youth a thunderclap. I had to sleep for the contests at dawn. I had to be rested and ready.

So I moved his feet.

I think about that sometimes and regret the days I didn’t hold the boy and sit with him and talk to him. I think about how I moved the tiny feet and rolled over to sleep.

Time and the evolution of family gives us a second chance. Grandchildren run laughing into our lives and another pair of small feet plop over our heads in the middle of the night.

This time I don’t move them. I reach over and touch them and lie in the darkness content with the night. This time I know the value of a little boy who sleeps sideways.

*

*

“Nobody reads the newspaper on Christmas day,” an old copy editor once told me. “Write whatever you want.”

I treasure the insignificant. If I’m patient, for instance, and watch carefully, I can see shadows on the oak trees move as the sun climbs higher into the sky, rearranging the patterns beneath its awesome glow.

If I’m patient, I can see time pass.

I keep looking for snippets of meaning for a tapestry that will ultimately define who we are. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The barking of dogs and the roaring of freeways.

I keep listening. Wood in the fireplace crackles. Cinelli turns on the radio. Voices play softly under the silence of morning.

Pay attention. Heed the rhythms.

The temperature on the deck rises. I stand for a moment, sensing the day. Fallen leaves adorn the wood like elements of a Monet painting. Dabs of color, artfully applied. Reds, yellows, browns and golds.

“What’re you doing?” Cinelli says, joining me on the deck.

“Writing,” I say.

She doesn’t laugh, she doesn’t question. She knows. The best writing is accomplished when you’re only absorbing. The words will come when the scenes are implanted. She takes my arm and we stand there.

A crow sings winter again, swooping from shadow to sunlight, gleaming a luminous ebony on the day before Christmas. Cue the music. Roll the credits.

Oh, L.A.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com