The Key to Christmas: Colorblind Kids
This evening we make the mistake of keeping the children out past their bedtimes. Driving home -- they in back, screaming at the tops of their lungs; we in front, losing our minds -- Tabitha shrewdly mentions Santa Claus. It will be the first Christmas every member of our family understands English, and so it is also the first Christmas that Santa can be used to bribe and to blackmail.
“Santa’s watching to see if you’re being good,” Tabitha says. “Do you think you are being good?” Instantly, the threat quiets 5-year-old Tallulah -- who longs for an American Girl doll. But Dixie, age 2, continues to holler.
Alas, she is vulnerable. A month ago, introduced to the idea of Santa Claus, Dixie said she wanted a red bike. She has since written Santa an illustrated letter, sat on three different Santas’ laps and lobbied us to speak to Santa on her behalf -- all in an attempt to secure the red bike. The red bike now lays stashed in the basement so she is certain to get it, no matter how she behaves. But she doesn’t know that.
“Dixie,” says Tabitha, firmly but evenly. “What does Dixie want Santa to bring her for Christmas?”
An admirably surgical strike, I think.
“A pink bike!” Dixie shouts.
“No,” says Tabitha, cheerily. “Dixie wants a red bike!”
“No red bike!” she hollers, struggling to liberate herself from her car seat straps. “Pink Bike! Piiiinnnnk Biiiiiiiiiike!”
Around our house the newspapers tend to pile up, unread for days on end, and then they are devoured all at once in great yellowing heaps. There’s real efficiency in ignoring the news until it is old. Ignore it for long enough and you see that very little of it actually matters. An 8-day-old newspaper can be guiltlessly chucked into the recycling bin in a fraction of the time it takes to digest a brand new one. But this morning, flipping through about two weeks’ worth of the New York Times, I stumble upon a story that is so good that I regret I didn’t know about it earlier: Abraham Lincoln was gay. Or rather, a soon-to-be-published book, “The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln,” will lay out the evidence for Lincoln’s homosexuality: He supposedly shared another man’s bed for seven years, he wrote vaguely lurid prose to male friends, he supposedly lusted after a member of his White House security detail (in retrospect perhaps not a good idea).
Log Cabin Republicans may be more aptly named than they know! The case is not airtight, but apparently several Lincoln scholars agree that, if Lincoln were gay, it would explain a lot. For instance, the Times’ energetic reviewer cites Jean Baker, author of a book about Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. “Some of [Mary Todd’s] tempers emerged because Lincoln was so detached,” Baker says. “But I previously thought he was detached because he was thinking great things about his court cases, his debates with Douglas. Now I see there is another explanation.”
There is a rule in life, that the moment a person is accused of being gay he begins, to others, to look the part. I get a fiver out of my wallet. No question about it, no matter what the truth of the matter, it’s impossible to see Lincoln as the same old Abe. How long can it be before we have a new American colloquialism: queer as a $5 bill?
We’ve tried to avoid all talk of bikes. But it’s no use. Every time Santa pops up -- and he’s inevitable, even in Berkeley -- Dixie begins to talk about a “pink bike.”
Her first Christmas that she is able to say what she wants, and she won’t get it.
This morning I have an idea. Spying her munching cereal in her high chair, I grab a red scrap of paper and sneak up on her. “Here Dixie,” I say. “Look at this pink paper.” She looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “That not pink paper!” she hollers. “That red paper!”
Christmas morning. On one side of the hearth, Tallulah’s American Girl doll; on the other, the red bike. Worried that Tallulah might feel shortchanged -- and a doll does seem a bit of a rip-off next to a bike -- Tabitha has piled other, lesser gifts around the doll. But she has done nothing to hide the redness of the bike.
At sunrise the girls tumble out of bed and sprint for pay dirt. Tallulah grabs her doll and surprises me by pretending not to be jealous of the bike. Dixie takes one look at the bike and exclaims, “Pink bike!” Even at 2, people recognize the obligations of Christmas morning.
