Who's Better Off?

Ironically, it was mommy and daddy who couldn't sleep, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring--not even a mouse. Don't always believe what you read, even on food labels. Oh sure, it might say decaf...

Downstairs in the front room, which I believe is called the "living" room--I can never remember which is the family room, and which is the living room, so for arguments sake, the living room is the room classically reserved for the formal china and fancy schmancy table and chairs--is what we classify as our play and guest room, depending on the context. We set up a queen-sized bed for dad's recent visit, when it was only known as the playroom. It also has a fireplace, so we put the Christmas tree next to it and hung the stockings. Jackson and I slept in the bed and waited for Santa. He promised to stay up all night waiting, until we let him know about Santa's ability to know when you are sleeping. Kapow! Fast asleep.

Jackson got up first and saw all the presents. He was excited, but not like I used to be. It wasn't disappointing, just interesting. The world has changed for kids. Maybe I make a little more money than the average Joe--I'm not rich, but when political pundits say there is a war on the middle class, I'm it. Middle: not poor, not rich, just playing the game by the rules.

When I grew up it was different.

I saw a train set in a toy store that I pointed out to my Aunt Bev. "That's what I want for Christmas." She frowned. I was young, perhaps eight or nine. But the look on her face is with me still, not like a photograph; more like a strand of DNA, a twisted ladder whose rungs connect her pain to mine, her desire to provide to my outstretched hands, her disappointment to my dawning comprehension of our place on the food chain.

"Maybe something...” she paused. The words were difficult. "...a little smaller."

"NO! I don't want anything else. I want that."

My dad would have back-handed me over the train table, through three displays and the display window, and onto the front sidewalk, shivering and bleeding. But my aunt just whispered, "I-I'll see what I can do."

She told my step-mother, who talked to me when we were alone. "Your aunt Bev told me you asked her for a train."

Shame washed through me like a chill wind. Mom looked at me with those eyes that see, that could read my thoughts as from a teleprompter. Her expression softened when she saw that I understood. For once she wasn't angry. And I sensed something else too, something I would rarely see from her--a faint wisp of compassion, like a nip of perfume.

I found an old Lionel train set in my grandmother’s basement that used to belong to my father. It was heavy and smelled of oil. It didn't work any more, but I set it up anyway and imagined it did. That was the closest I ever came.

My own kids don't wait nearly so long. They have three train sets, remote control cars and planes, a Game boy, race tracks, Hot Wheelz, board games, figurines of dinosaurs and every genus of animal from the African deserts to the Arctic, and a crate of Disney movies that would take weeks to get through. When my oldest gets up on Christmas morning, he gets back in bed next to me and tells me Santa came, and waits patiently for me to wake up. Sometimes I put toys into the attic, and it takes months before he notices. I was made do with a broken down train set that only left from Dream Central Station. My son can play with a new toy for a day and lose interest.

Who's better off?