It's Christmas time....in the ghetto....

We're in the car, my father and I, driving along Kennedy Rd. and listening to a bouncy, reggae version of 'Silver Bells'. My dad has been listening to a CD filled with similarly-interpreted versions of Christmas songs (Jingle Bells with island swing, a Rastafarian Silent Night) and I kind of take it in stride because while he doesn't know Bob Marley from a doorknob, this is exactly the kind of music he would be listening to the day before Christmas Eve.

"Do you like this music?" he asks me after one of our many long silences.

"Uh...it's funny," I say.

"I got it from the black guy at the store. He sells them. I think he is the one singing."

"The black guy?" (Note: my dad works at an Asian supermarket in Brampt on that has a large Jamaican clientele and, so far as I know, an all-Asian workforce, so I'm wondering if there is either one specific black guy who works there, or else my dad is showcasing a Vietnamese knack for confusing his definite articles. I'm not even going to acknowledge any racist implications because I know there aren't any. Anyway...)

My dad says: "He set up a stand in the store and sells his music. He gave me a bunch of these CDs."

Long pause. Now we're a block away from our house.

"He gave you a bunch of THIS specific CD? Why?"

My dad shrugs. "I don't know. He's a nice guy."

In the span of about an hour, this and maybe another two minutes worth of material is all that we say to each other. If you find that sad, don't. There is nothing else to say. All the pertinent details are already known. I know that he will listen to this CD on his drive to work even after Christmas without thinking about it. One day he will get fed up with it (probably right after New Year's), turn it off and switch to 680 News or else some random song on the FM. He will probably give a few of those CDs away at our Christmas party raffle on Friday and if my cousin K gets one, she'll want to listen to it right away and laugh that braying, hysterical laugh of hers that's always more funny than anything she's laughing at. The CD will end up under car seats, in junk drawers, in basement crawl spaces gathering dust and cardboard shavings. There will be a copy kept at the supermarket (on the management office's communal CD rack, probably between Paris by Night 17 and God knows) to be played every holiday season until it is lost or too scratched or replaced with something else. And the black guy who gave it to my dad will take down his booth at the end of the holiday season and every time he comes in or passes by, he will say hi to my dad and be extra friendly to him because that's the kind of response my dad inspires in strangers.

Now I don't know if these things will happen exactly as I describe them, but I imagine that the actual events will be darn close. I guess I'm telling you all of this so that I don't take this kind of instinct for granted, just to reassure myself that although I often find my family mysterious and cruel, there are some details that are imprinted in my mental database that will always be there. Just like how the texture of snow is embedded in my skin and the smell of butter in a hot skill recalled by my nose, these are things that you just know. It kind of seems like a minor victory, but when we're swimming in so much that is unknowable, isn't it kind of great, kind of comforting, to feel like we own certain facts to such a degree that we can get at them without working at all? I think so.

Anyway, Merry Christmas.


Yours,

I


Mistletoe berries are poisonous.