Tree’s dead, toys are broken, dessert’s on fire
So on a brutal winter’s day -- 74 degrees, if you include the windchill -- we take down the outdoor lights. They lie in lacy heaps in front of the house, like hastily discarded clothing. I tell myself that taking lights off the house is similar to undressing a bride, but it is better than that. There’s no lifetime commitment. No concerns over birth control. No honeymoon flight to catch at the crack of dawn.
“What are you doing, Dad?” someone asks.
“Just putting away the lights,” I say.
“Why?”
Because it’s January, and there’s a certain point when, if you leave the lights up too long, you become one of those families that seem to never get it together -- which we are, but why advertise it? Besides, back inside this house, I find only frustration and latent hostility. Just listen.
“I can’t get this thing to honk,” my wife says, tinkering with one of the baby’s new toys.
“Maybe it’s defective,” I say. “The honker, I mean.”
“It was honking yesterday,” notes the boy.
Weren’t we all? Just last month, our house was a hotbed of excitement and a sort of frantic idealism. There was Christmas on the horizon and the promise of life-altering possessions on the way.
That passed like a speeding train, and now we are left with January, a month devoted to white sales and hauling dead trees to the curb.
But the holidays don’t really end till the college kids go back to school. In the kitchen stands one of them, holding something resembling a welder’s torch.
“What’s that she’s got?” I ask my wife, warily watching the blue flame.
“A creme brulee torch,” she answers.
“Of course,” I say. “A creme brulee torch.”
It was just one of several items the children acquired over the holidays, one that will probably be used feverishly for about two weeks, then stuffed to the back of a cupboard till the next time we move. But for now, it is working overtime, scorching little cups of custard till their sugared tops glisten like the powdered slopes of Innsbruck. That’s what a creme brulee torch does. For many years, we managed to live without one.
“Can I have two?” asks her brother, sniffing the little dishes of custard.
“Maybe,” the older daughter says.
Having a kid back from college is like having a celebrity in the house, and who needs that, really? Especially a very poor celebrity who doesn’t always pick up after herself and monopolizes the bathroom, filling the shower stall with all manner of scented shampoos, body gels and conditioners. One day last week, totally by accident, I went to work smelling like a lilac tree. Fortunately, no one noticed.
“Anyone seen my Weezer CD?” the college girl asks. “Maybe it’s under your clothes?” I say.
“Where?” she asks.
“On your bedroom floor,” I say. “Maybe it’s under there.”
“No, not there,” she says with the certainty that half a college education brings.
Slowly, over the course of winter break, our older daughter has built a pile of clothes on her bedroom floor. It is as if she were building a monument to winter break. Or preparing a cable TV stunt where someone jumps into a pile of stale laundry nose first, risking almost certain death. With college kids, you never quite know.
“I need to go to Costco,” she announces. “Is anyone going to Costco? Anyone?”
I’m not going to Costco. I’m sitting right here on the couch, eating creme brulee and waiting for Brett Favre to do something heroic on TV. I am making the most of these last few days that our daughter is home, soaking up the gratitude and good feelings that run rampant in an American home after the holidays.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get this thing to honk,” the wife says, frustrated that the Christmas toys have already started to break down.
“It was working yesterday,” I say.
“Honk, honk,” teases the boy.
“See, at least he’s working,” I say.
On the TV, Favre completes a pass. Then another. His team appears to have this game in the bag. But at the last moment, he throws one to the other team. Generous guy, that Favre.
“Tomorrow, I’m making creme brulee for breakfast,” the college girl announces.
“A breakfast brulee?” the little girl asks.
“There’s no such thing as a breakfast brulee,” her mom notes.
“There is now,” the college girl says.
Such is the kind of thinking we expect out of America’s colleges and universities. With the new year, there is even more reason for hope and optimism. Each young mind, a multiplex of novel thought and fresh ideas.
“When are you going back?” I ask.
“In the morning, Dad,” says Queen Brulee.
“Oh, nooooooo,” cries her little sister.
“Oh, nooooooo,” moans her brother.
“And I’m taking this with me,” she says, waving the creme brulee torch like Wyatt Earp waved pistols.
“Oh, nooooooo,” says her mom.
And with that, our holidays come to a close.
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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
