Did you ever have a moment that, upon remembering it later, you can’t be entirely sure actually happened? Christmas moments are especially strange like that. The child-like part of me has always considered those times a magical key to the season. The adult side of me just thinks I’m actually, and finally, going completely bonkers. The reality is likely somewhere in between the two.
I was having a contemplative pause in Michael’s – the craft store – while shopping for gifts for the Boston Children’s Holiday Hour. A text from my Mom came in, which reminded me that our last Christmas Eve at my childhood home might have been the last Christmas Eve at my childhood home, and I was seized with an unexpected wave of melancholy. Losing track of what I was even looking to find, I wandered in haunted fashion, lost in some icky space between past and present. In an empty corner of the expansive store, I heard a little voice.
“Excuse me,” someone said. I looked around, wondering if I had lost my damn mind at last. Lowering my gaze, I saw a boy before me, just half my height, staring up at me with pleading eyes. It wasn’t the fact that a child was talking to me that was jarring, it was that he looked rather like me – or what I looked like long ago. His dark hair, a little too long and unruly, only the top of which was pulled into a messy ponytail, was slightly different – I never let mine get that long – but his eyes were very much like my own. He was slight, and his clothes hung a little too loosely on him. He held my gaze and started speaking softly but clearly.
“Have you seen two women? One is older and has red hair, the other is younger with long straight brown hair,” he began. He continued with a lengthy description but I wasn’t listening. So shocked by his appearance and his composure, I didn’t hear his words. Disconcerted by his earnestness, I initially wondered if this was some scam designed to distract me while the aliens or the criminals snuck up behind me and did whatever they were going to do.
Soon enough, thanks to a pause in his tale, I came to my senses and realized he lost whomever was with him. Not wanting him to panic, I asked if he was ok and if he wanted me to find an employee to help him find his party. Quickly he said no, and then hurried away.
Unsure whether I should follow him, look for the two women he described, or tell one of the many inept employees at Michael’s, I ultimately mistrusted what might have even happened. He seemed more like an angel than a real person. Maybe this was just me spiraling into ‘Black Swan’ territory. When I finally thought of following him to make sure he found who he lost, or who lost him, he was long gone. Attempting to set my mind at ease, I reasoned that he was relatively calm, and so maybe this was normal for him.
Instantly I traveled back to the traumatic moment in the Amsterdam Mall when I let go of my mother’s hand for a minute or two, transfixed by some sparkly object or scene. I kept her in my peripheral vision, so didn’t think much of it until I reached up and grabbed the hand of a stranger. When I looked up and realized my mistake, I pulled my hand back, out of embarrassment and surprise. I didn’t see my mother anywhere, and I instantly panicked. I wasn’t more than six or seven years old, but I remember it vividly. Just as I was about to start bawling, she appeared. Relieved yet inconsolable, I’d felt terror for the first time in my life, and never forgot it. To this day, whenever I think of what fear is, I think back to that moment. A split second of abject fright. A startled heaving and the feeling of not being able to breathe. But somehow I held it together, and perhaps that’s what the boy was doing.
I picked up my pace and hurried down the aisles, trying to find the boy. Rushing and darting about like an animal sensing entrapment, I scanned the store, wondering if I should tell an employee. I searched for an older woman with red hair, and a woman with straight brown hair. I searched for a little boy with a wild ponytail. I searched for a day in the past when I reached up and found only a stranger’s hand.
Near the front of the store now, I found two women pushing a cart, unhurried and walking with a shared annoyance. “Josiah,” the older woman with dark red hair yelled. “Come on!” as the boy rounded the corner, also relatively unconcerned. Apparently I was the only one who was the slightest bit worried. Glad of the denouement, I still couldn’t shake the notion that I lost a bit of myself again.
In a goddamned craft store.
I wanted to cry.
