The Miracle with the Paper

I remember that first Christmas Eve after it was just the three of us. We had just moved into the English Village apartments, an apartment complex with about 15 different buildings, centered on a courtyard with hills for sledding and surrounded by a big iron gate that went around the whole block. We lived in Bldg. 9, Apt. 4B, but I used to tell people we owned the whole thing and just let other people live there too. I was seven years old.

We didn’t have any furniture then. No tables or chairs. Just the Christmas tree, all dressed up, its bright lights making the shiny hardwood floor glisten against the darkness of night that blanketed the bare windows. Mom made a big pot of boiled shrimp. You could smell the spices in the air, as the steam warmed up the kitchen. She taped wrapping paper to the floor, a big long piece right in front of the tree. She put down plates and glasses and candles. She transformed our nothingness into a feasting table at our feet. My brother and I got to eat all the shrimp we wanted, and we stayed up laughing, feeling special. We went to bed with our hearts full. That was the miracle of our first Christmas as a trio.

Years later, I would try to repeat the miracle with the paper.

We were poor again. This time with pieces of furniture collected over the years but without any food, nonetheless food for a feast. We did have cardboard boxes left over from our last move. I knew we would need them again, although I couldn’t have known just how soon. Being sixteen, I was old enough to know things were bad, but not old enough to see the bad things coming ahead of time. I used the boxes anyway. This was worth it, I decided.

Rolls of Christmas wrapping paper were another odd thing that managed to survive move after move, a small sign of normalcy, I suppose, that mom was trying to maintain for us. And in this moment, they served their purpose. There would be no presents the next day, but by the time I was done, there would at least be a tree.

And so I wrapped the different sized boxes with different colored paper. Some boxes I wrapped in brown or gold paper for a trunk. For the flaps, I used green; they were the branches. I even cut out ornaments and pasted them on.

I worked on the tree in secret, creeping up and down the stairs for supplies after the house was asleep. It’s going to be such a beautiful surprise, and everyone deserves a surprise on Christmas morning, I thought. A reason to celebrate, to feel special, to feel hopeful.

But before long, my brother came up to my room and caught me in the act. How annoying. It was going to be a surprise for him too. As he stood there spoiling his own gift, I was sure he would make fun of me. That is part of the big brother job description after all.

But instead, to my surprise, he started to help. And so we wrapped the tree together, sharing ideas and bringing the tree to life. That night is still one of my favorite memories of us to this day. We forgot everything we had been through, we stopped wondering about what was coming next, and we were kids again. And out of the scraps around us, we made something beautiful.

It was a tree in three parts. When we were done, we carried it down the steps piece by piece, holding in our excitement. Mom’s room was right at the bottom of the stairs, so we had to be careful of course — avoiding the creaky step (the 4th one from the bottom) and closing the stairwell door slowly so that it wouldn’t slam. I’m hard-pressed to remember another time we came together with such urgency and coordination, to be honest. Perhaps when we were very little. Back before the first miracle of the paper, when there were still four of us.

In those days, we would “steal” fruit from the kitchen, early on Sunday mornings before our parents were awake. He would lower a basket tied to a jump rope over the second floor railing and I, the gopher, would run in and out of the kitchen, a bounty of oranges and apples overflowing from my tiny arms and hands, running until I made it far enough up the steps to reach the basket and drop in the goods. Every time, we were sure that mom and dad were hot on our trail, that we were on the verge of inevitable capture. Those were good mornings. We were in sync, tied together by joy and a common mission.

Here again, about ten years later, again we had a common mission. Yes, it was to surprise mom. But also maybe it was just to bring joy to that place, that house that was laid solemn with the hollow symbols of a trio trying to hold onto some semblance of a family — the symbols we sought having turned to ghosts that haunted our static movements from room to room. I remember the over-sized couch gathering dust for lack of people coming together. The bathtub clogged, always filled partly with water that one had to empty or stand in for each cold shower, the bathwater unheated for lack of electricity. The sixty -inch TV that at one point gave mom a sense of pride, sitting unusable for its distorted image and lack of cable connection. The refrigerator running to keep fresh nothing but bare shelves. The electric stove being mocked silently by 2 camping stoves sitting on its lifeless burners.

Yes, it was this space that we wanted to bring joy to again. We wanted to bring spirit back to these symbols. We wanted to take our energy back from those ghosts, from the failures, the fights, the uphill battles and all the unfair decisions we had to make over the years. That space needed life. We needed life, and we needed to remember that there was once a different story there between the three of us.

We placed our creation right in the center of the living room, angling the boxes just right to balance on top of one other. Our tree stood tall, and we stood proud. We were little elves, relishing in our handy work and excited with hope for the chance to make our mom smile.

And the miracle worked. Because even though we didn’t get the reaction we were hoping for — instead of a smile, we drew anger, mom only seeing a reminder of our scarcity — in those moments before the big reveal, while my brother and I waited in anticipation, we were alive with joy again, smiling and enjoying a few more hours of reclaimed innocence, and falling asleep just like that first Christmas Eve, with our hearts full.