There is a reason why I procrastinated about writing my Christmas letter until almost 2am on Christmas Day. The reason is that it comes from my heart, and to give it even just here in this holiday newsletter, it’s not so easy. I have 200 Christmas cards address, stamped and ready to be stuffed with this letter for 3 days now. But I couldn’t get started. Last night, Sam said something to me as he was about to go to bed. He said he had one last gift wish. I almost started yelling at him. I’d been shopping for weeks. Our Santa Fe house had been transformed into Santa’s workshop for two days, and I was tired of buying and wrapping. When he told me what he wanted, I nearly cried.
And I knew it was time to begin this.
All day I had been thinking about different Christmases. My Christmases for the first 9 years were really happy ones.
My parents always made things so nice for us. We didn’t have much, I know now, but it felt abundant. I only had one really bad one as a child, and it was a doozy. But mostly I have of love and gratitude for those early ones. Dennis and me had a good spat yesterday on the way to the ski area, and my daughter reminded us that it was Christmas and made us promise, for Christmas’ sake, not to fight again. So far so good.
Every year my friend Jason produces a faux Christmas radio broadcast called “The Mr. Soft Talk Show.” I look forward to it every year. Dennis became a big fan of Mr. Soft Talk this year, listening to 4 prior “broadcasts” on cd on the long drive to Santa Fe. When doing the Christmas eve dishes, Nell and I were listening to the 2015 Mr. Soft
Talk (a combo of music, comedy, and traditional readings.”)
Cyndy: …and did you know that Jason is doing all the voices?
Nell: but this is a radio show.
Cyndy: well it’s a fake radio show that Jason does. You know, Jason.
Nell: Who?
Cyndy: Jason. In New York.
Nell: Help me out, here.
Cyndy: Uh, we always meet him at that same deli. We always get the chicken soup.
Nell: Oh! The one with the hair…
Cyndy: Yes
Nell: And the eyes….
Cyndy: uh, yes.
Nell: Yes! This is him? On this show?
Cyndy: Yes.
(from the audio: Jason VO “And that was Boris Karloff reading ‘The year without a Santa Claus’”
Cyndy: Nell.
Nell: Yeah, Mommy?
Cyndy: That wasn’t Jason. It was Boris Karloff.
Nell: Who’s Boris Karloff?
Cyndy: You know Boris Karloff,
Nell: Help me out here.
Cyndy: He was the Frankenstein monster. I thought that voice sounded familiar. Never mind.
Once I fell madly in love. This love was so crazy, so wonderful that I couldn’t see straight most days. It was a blustery fall. I was in New York. The leaves were all turning color. I had never seen that before. I couldn’t believe my life most days. I had all this color, feeling, happiness. I saw it snow in New York for the first time that December. I was walking down Bleecker Street with my love and again, I couldn’t feel my feet, they were walking on air. We bought a Christmas tree. It was blue. I had never seen a blue tree. A couple of days before Christmas he broke up with me. He said he had to go back to his life and work things out. That this was all make believe. It was like a bad movie. Now New York was cold and harsh and unforgiving. A few days later, he contacted me and said that he would like to celebrate Christmas eve and Christmas day with me. A kind of closure. And so we did. On Christmas eve he gave me a book about the show “Get Smart” and inscribed it: “It’s always either Chaos or Control….” I made a beautiful holiday dinner. My friend Liam came over. It was my first Christmas away from my family in Los Angeles. After desert, after Liam left, after dragging out the last goodbye, he shut the door and left. And that was that. I never wanted to feel so good or so bad ever again.
For many years…maybe 1980 to 1993, my friends from San Francisco State University would go to Castro Street during Christmas week and sing carols at midnight. Darren Server was our leader. Ellen Idelson, Shanna Straussberg, Tim DiPasqua, Gale Bonoto, Bob Locke, Deborah Swisher, Mark Brazil, and others lifted their voices. I forget some names, but I remember their faces and can hear the arrangements and the harmonies like it was this evening. We would stand in the same spot each year, in front of the hardware store, as young men were coming out of bars, perhaps missing or estranged from their families at Christmas. No one had hears of AIDS yet. And these men would stand and listen to us sing. Some remained a long time, and many would join in. Some had gorgeous voices. It was joyous and memorable, and we did it every year for the music (we had amassed a big repertoire after 3 years) and for crowds and the looks on the faces of young homesick men, many who may be long gone.
I had a boyfriend once who made Christmas trees. He was a San Francisco lighting designer and had just moved to LA to be with me. He found a grunt job doing something related: making the strands of lights….rows and rows of them, for those big red and white light trees you see on the top of bank buildings. I used to come and meet him for lunch near Ivar Ave., and would see him, alone, with these strands of lights stretched across the floor. We would go get lunch at Molly’s (a burger stand). My dad had died that year. I now leaned on this man pretty heavily, and he accommodated my need to grow up and get married and live at the beach, and get a doggie, and all that play house stuff. Eventually this would come to no good, but to the very end he was kind and patient. When I cancelled our wedding and later broke up with him, and a bunch of other awful stuff, he gave me nothing but understanding. A couple of months later, his papa died, and now I wanted to be there for him but everything had changed between us.
Whenever I see those Christmas trees on top of buildings in LA, I remember a wonderful guy and I am grateful for our love and his shoulder.
The other night I went to Andy and Katy’s Christmas open house. I had looked forward to it for weeks and now the day was here. I wasn’t feeling well so I got there late and many people were leaving. Everyone’s getting older! There were so many unopened bottles of red wine and not so many drinking. If you don’t know, Andy was my longest relationship before my marriage to Dennis. His oldest friends are some of my oldest friends now, and nearly all are in the theatre. I cover a lot of ground at a party like this in terms of friendships, and extended family, and even some collaborators. But if you know Andy, he has some stuff locked up inside. Stuff I never had a pass to understand, though I tried. Recently, he portrayed his own father in a reading of “Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been?,” a docudrama about the House on Un-American activities hearings in the early 1950s during the height of the McCarthy era. I didn’t know this reading was going on. I cried when I learned on Facebook that I had missed it. I know how hard that must have been to do, and from all accounts, Andy was brilliant. I love this man and his family. I taught Andy to camp and to ski. I was the first woman he lived with, even though he was 35 when we met. I brought the first Christmas tree into his apartment. We made many Christmases together at 1831 Grace Ave., Apt 1.
But anyway back to this party at Andy and Katy’s. A beautiful Christmas tree. Tasteful, thoughtful. A Classic Garrett-Parks family tree.
When Andy and I ended our relationship, the main things that we had acquired as a couple were the Christmas ornaments. I remember we had to split them up, and each was like a little memory of us. Hard. Anyway, back at Andy an Katy’s tree: I peeked to see if some of our ornaments had made it into his and Katy’s beautiful home. But I couldn’t find any. A little pang. I couldn’t remember what I was looking for actually. But the love, the many Christmases, it’s all around us with the history we share with each other, and so many friends, and a community of talented artists.
A month ago I decided to buy Sam a snowboard for Christmas. Sam is my skiing buddy since he was a mere tot. A little speed demon I could barely keep up with. But recently he made the switch and announced he was not going back on skis. I figure he’s tall enough now (almost 5’10”) that it was time to make the equipment purchase. I got the board and the bindings at ValSurf and hid them in the car undetected. Dennis drove them to Santa Fe, and arrived a couple hours before Sam and I, so he went to REI to purchase the boots.
Then Sam announced he really wanted to go snowboarding on Christmas eve.
“Maybe we should give him the gift now” Dennis says. I am torn. I really wanted that happy Christmas morning moment for my first born, my shredding buddy. But I don’t want to pay to rent a board after this investment. “No,” I said to Dennis. “Let’s find another way.” Meantime Sam is saying “Let’s go rent our gear now, Mom.” Classic Dennis, the man who can make a deal for anything. Dennis talks the salesman at REI into being on our team. Sam goes into get fitted for his boots, and walks out of there with boots and board in hand thinking he has just rented the gear. The next day the family hit the mountain and Sam didn’t say a word. We didn’t know if he was on to us or not. My son Sam is a very bright kid. An A student. A math genius. Very geared toward science. He plays classical piano and is teaching himself guitar. He is starting to write music too. He also wants to act (ugh! Another one!) But you know, I forgot to teach my son to sing. I was telling Karen Culliver the other day at Andy and Katy’s party that.
My 11-year old Nell sings all time time. She has performed in 4 musicals, sung in front of bands. She’s belting it out in the school choir. How could I have failed my son so?
My Nell. She belongs to this theatre company. It’s awesome. I am so happy for her. They do experimental plays.
In the spring musical, “O Lucky Man” an entire RV full of children die in an crash, and the accident is staged in slomo in a very Martha Graham esque dance. In another scene, a woman is being tortured, and Nell comes on passing out café lattes to the interrogators. In their most recent play, “Everything” it’s set in a futuristic world in which teenagers have become so entitled, so over-indulged, that by law, on their 14th birthday they are forced to go to a labor camp in Arizona, called “Camp Holiday” until they turn 18. Nell played a sweet looking little menace who testifies against “Camp Holiday” before the Supreme Court. She screams 100% of her lines at the top of her lungs, ranting about hipsters, music buskers, and slow Starbucks employees. “Give me my FRAPPACINO NOW!!!!!!”
OK,you had to be there. Well no actually, it’s on vimeo if you want to watch it:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/vimeo/151a36be55d6515e
Now I don’t know if I can take all the credit for Sam searching for his creative side. I have been telling him for years that it’s there. Nell never went in search. It was in plain sight. Sam is surrounded by his sister’s pursuits, his cousinroomate, the theatre student, and for a time this year, his mother the playwright.
This past year I mounted a workshop production of my play, “The Last Vaudevillian.” This opus had been in development for going on 17 years, and spans my family’s 6 generations in vaudeville and theatre. The play centers around a mother and daughter (based on my mother and I). The mother is very toxic, but desperate to be heard.
The daughter is equally desperate to get away from the mother, and eventually is able to face her by becoming a writer, and specifically writing about her mother’s demise. It was an interesting experience, though the lessons I learned, some were harsh and unexpected. I will say this. This subject is particularly hard to talk about, but here are
a few things:
• Note to self: when casting one’s mother and one’s self, please make sure that both actors, however seasoned, (dare I
say “professional” cuz that’s what they kept saying they were) understand that there is no point being on stage without
a strong objective. Also, knowing the lines would be very helpful.
• Other note to self: when casting yourself-self, and you are exposing possibly one of most eye opening moments of
your life at the end of the play, make sure you cast someone who knows how to put it all out there. I mean emotionally. Listen to your first instincts. When you are watching auditions and you see this actress who the director wants to cast as you, and you have to ask “but can this girl bring the emotional goods?” and the director doesn’t know if it’s yes or no, chances are it’s NO.
• Last note to self: when choosing a director, be mindful that you aren’t choosing someone with the very toxic qualities of your mother that caused you to write the play in the first place.
On the bright side:
1. Silver lining #1: Instead of memorializing my dead ancestors and telling a piece of history, the play actually spawned another generation of women in my theatre. We needed a girl child in the play to do several silent bits, and to portray successive generations of women in theatre. Nell was cast more out of necessity than out of nepotism because I could insure her transportation. But still, Nell stole the show. She did not have one word of dialogue, and apparently didn’t need any. Absolute highway robbery. I’m not kidding. So while those in the company that were arguing about who was the most professional of the professionals, Nell landed artist management. We signed last fall, and she has been out on several auditions. Generation #7.
2. Silver lining #2: during our short run over 3 weekends, Sam must have attended at least 5-6 times. Dennis even more. My nephew Kole (Sam’s roommate, and our resident theatre student) worked on the show backstage nightly.
Nell in the cast of course. When we would come home after the performance, we would sit at the table and talk about the show. Kole had questions about our vaudeville ancestry. And observations of the play and the performances.
We talked every night as a family. And sometimes the boys would even try some of the dialogue out for fun. The company was miserable and bickering about me. But my family held me up and we became closer than ever. They knew what I was trying to do and what was working and what wasn’t working. I relied on them, and those late night talks and got the greatest reward from the workshop right there at home. I love my family.
This morning, Sam was completely surprised by his present. No clue that the brand new boots and board he had been on a day before were a rental. And he was blown away. He hadn’t asked for a shiny new snow board with brand new boots.
This is what he asked for:
1:00 am on Christmas eve.
Sam: I just thought of one more present
Mom: Are you kidding? You know what time it is? It’s actually Christmas day already!
Sam: it’s just this…..can you teach me how to sing?
Mom: ………….
(Speechless, then hug)
Mom: Oh Sam.
(still hugging)
Sam: I didn’t expect this.
Mom: Yes of course.
Sam: OK, merry Christmas mom.
Mom: Merry Christmas….
And I will….
Cyndy Fujikawa
Dec 25, 2015
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