Christmas Past

I think back over the years, the last several this season has been spent working as the fly man for a local ballet school and company working their version of Nutcracker which amazingly came out of the south originally but has morphed into its own version.  Of course this gives me Christmas off which I am still getting used to as up until just a few short years ago I would have been working, either working on a show, delivering packages or spending my day with the youth at one of the facilities I have worked at over the last twenty plus years.

To be honest I took my joy from watching others revel in this time of year as for me it only harbors sadness and reminds me of loneliness.  I know it is not supposed to but growing up shuttled from home to home as I grew up I knew I was only a visitor for a short time and though there were those who did their best to make sure there was a sense of continuity like my Grandma Wood who always sent a book of lifesavers which I must admit I always looked for more than the toys or clothes as these I kept to myself while those other gifts tended to get lost in the constant movement.  When I got older and began to understand the true meaning behind Christmas a a celebration of another child's birth who in his young life also knew being moved around albeit with his family; this season began to take on a new meaning to me which had nothing to do with stuff although if I could afford to I would give tons of stuff away but alas that was not to be.

I look back and know when Christmas really changed, I was seventeen and only a few short months earlier I had not just been kicked out of a foster home but was given a police escort out of town all for asking if I might be allowed to be at my own placement hearing,  In only a few short months I sat in an emergency placement in Alameda County somewhere I believe in Oakland, as the only Caucasian I got to know what prejudice felt like in the tenth degree, I know the only thing that saved me from having to battle everyday was one young man who saw beyond the differences in the amount of pigment in our skin, the fact his family were rather high in Oakland's organized crime meant others were afraid of him.  Reality was far different he was just another young man who had gotten trapped in a system which was more about who controlled the purse strings as each child is labelled with a number to which is attached a dollar amount.  Of course I would not learn till much later just how big this business was until I worked in the system.

I have side tracked so let me move on, my biological mother had a lawyer who was as important to me anyway as any family member because out of her own pocket she helped my mom and me by flying up to Oakland from Newport Beach and paid for my ticket back.  At the airport late that August I saw my older sister who I had not seen in almost eight years.  From there I was put into yet another emergency shelter this one in Orange County and because I believe there is a difference in the cultures and not because of skin colors but more so just by economies and geography which in my years I have to say plays a big part.  This facility was well laid out separating children by age group and gender unless they were really little except at meal times and school.  At seventeen as a  boy who had a full mustache those in the teen boys cottage thought at first I was a new staff member. Given a reprieve from having to go to school for a short time I would be sent across the main greenbelt to help in the nursery cottage. I can only say it was a travesty and a learning experience as I got to help  or try to help comfort infants and toddlers some who had both arms and/or legs broken, cigarette burns all over their bodies but there was also some fun times as while all the older children were in school I got to play follow the leader with the preschool aged children helping them forget where they were as we explored what little nature was inside the walled compound.  Of course that could not last as I finally had to go to school even though I was a bit beyond what they were teaching.  I did though create a couple of friendships that to this day I know I was forever changed by, though upon my transfer to a group home at the Top of the World in Laguna Beach I have never seen or heard from those five or six again.  It was that year I was able to go see the Christmas production at the Crystal Cathedral of course we were in the nose bleed section right under where they launched the angels from and even though I got sidetracked by being able to see up the blond haired blue eyed angel"s with her well, let me skip that and just say that having had the opportunity a year before hear the crap that was taught there on Sundays I was impressed as they mostly got it right though I am not so sure angels wear pastel pink bikini panties. Oops did not mean to go there.

I can honestly say that was the start of a whole new variation for Christmas for me.  First the boys I had to live with well, lets just say I think of the five, four of their mothers had been on crack and the fifth apparently had been weened off oc crack as his mom was on it when she breast feed him.  That house burned down a few years back and I for one am not sad to see it go as it was for the owner about making money, as she did not give a damn about any of us or any of the boys at her other group homes.  Let me do the math for you six boys in a four bedroom house times anywhere from 3000 to 10000.dollars a month per boy, yep for that woman it was about the cash.  Moving on, it was right after Christmas that I sat with my very young and bubbly personality raven haired lawyer who I had to admit I used to ask to see just so she would come take me to lunch but that to is not why we are here as that instance I happened to ask her what would happen if say I just took off.  Smiling she told me the house parent would call the authorities but nothing would really happen other than the county would take me off the books. I was gone the next week thanks to my older sister and her friend Andrea.

The next years found me doing Christmas in a variety of places but most notably with a teacher who took me in as one of her sons, the fact she only had one made me son number two.  My most memorable moment was sitting with some of her ex students all ballet dancers in well known companies.  As a long time drama teacher she had many notable students I will not mention but as on of these students had come back to dance in a local ballet as the Plum Fairy.  No presents exchanged hands other than the bottle of wine brought to my then current pseudo mom.  One of the best Christmases I ever had just sitting and listening to their stories and in return them listening to mine and in the end as someone had went out and managed more wine it was them listening to my stories and asking questions.  This only two years after my first professional gig as an assistant director and designer for a children's theater workshop which happened to be one of my summer jobs and would have been a year round job if I had not been given the boot and subsequent escort out of the northern Cali town.  Something else that happened the two Christmases I spent in that house was i got to tag along to what seemed like hundreds of theatrical productions in various high schools as my pseudo mom was a judge for various competitions for the high schools.  Some of my independent study high school drama assignments if I remember correctly were to right up my take on a few of the productions.  It was after I moved to the desert and started working on productions in college and then going into stage craft as a profession landing my first Master Electrician and Board Op job just by coincidence at the Palm Springs Follies in its inaugural season that Christmas became about work which in the world of entertainment was not a bad thing.

As years past and I at times went into other endeavors which included working at a number of youth facilities which included a year and a half at a summer camp and conference center and then a short stint helping start a wilderness survival program where I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas and every day in between sitting around a campfire and sleeping in the snow just before I would find myself a part of an instant just add a dad family.  Let me just say holidays continued to be about working which in the entertainment field meant nice paydays which as a dad in an environment where work was never guaranteed was a good thing.  One of the best though was the year I ran a jeep tour company in Palm Springs as Christmas caroling in an open air jeep travelling fifty mph down the highway well that is one trip that will never be forgotten.

Now though that has changed as during the last few years starting in 2008 I have had the opportunity to stay home which has allowed me to think. My issue is at this time of year I can not help but think of the missed opportunities to reach out to help put a smile of another child's face who like I has never known what it means to have a home to call their own.  This to me reminds me how even though there might be a crowd of people around growing up I too was alone knowing it would not be long before I was moved on to yet another relative or a strange family.

So I guess these last couple of years being able to watch as both the young boys along with girls perform the Nutcracker and smiling as they tease me for my sideline dancing it has been nice to see intact families partaking in their traditions of helping to put smiles onto other faces.  Now come the nineteenth when my arms are burning from making it snow by a little magic of my own I may feel a little different.