Christmas Thoughts

Christmas Eve. I think if I tried hard enough I could remember every Christmas Eve. This Christmas Eve I won’t forget. I went to a Catholic mass in Beyoglu, but left early because it was too crowded, and the choir sounded like they were choking on birdseed. I exchanged gifts with my girlfriend, and went alone to a coffee shop to read the new book she’d gotten me about Istanbul. All day I had been trying to delay the loneliness, keeping myself busy with errands, emails, anything that might take my mind off my family, who was together back in New York.

When I got home the loneliness began to settle, like the snowflakes that land quietly outside your window on Christmas. It’s a small pang, easy enough to brush away, but come back to it ten minutes later and there’s a fresh dusting. So, like most lonely writers, I write. And when I write, I am happy. There’s something about sitting down in an attempt to write the perfect sentence—concentrating on the appropriate syntax, listening for subtle assonance, selecting not a good word, but the word—that makes most of one’s problems go away. Or perhaps writing augments them. When you read that perfect sentence, you remember your subject matter, and typically the writer’s truest material is derived from sadness.

Oh, you are sad, you ask? No, not sad. Just… I have an anecdote. I bought eggs tonight, because tomorrow I am making cheesy eggs for my flat mates. We’re going to spend Christmas morning together. We call ourselves orphans because we’re all stuck in Istanbul for Christmas.

There was barely anyone at the supermarket. I remember a man taping boxes together with packing tape. There were two men talking quietly in the egg aisle. The man behind the bread counter paced back and forth with his head down, as if he were waiting for news he knew would be devastating. I waited for the cashier to insert a new role of tape into the register. My mind began to wander.

I imagined that I was back in New York. Mom, ever prescient about possible, impending food debacles, realizes at 9:45pm that we have no eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast. She hands me five dollars and sends me off to Stewart’s. I leave everyone chatting in the living room, or watching television, or eating cookies and drinking wine or cider at the scarlet clothed dinner table. At the supermarket, I leave the car idling in the lot with the heat blasting furiously, like how Old Man Winter blows cold air and freezes whole lakes in those old cartoons.

I can’t help but notice that the place is empty, save for a hefty cashier who wishes me a Merry Christmas and inquires after my sudden presence on Christmas Eve.

“Oh, we forgot eggs for breakfast tomorrow,” I tell her. She remarks that it’s a good thing I got there when I did, because she was closing the place in ten minutes. I shoot a look outside to make sure the car is still there.

Although the place is empty, it gives me a distinct comfort because I know there is a warm bustling back home. Soon I’ll step through the back door, stomp my boots, and enter the dim kitchen. I’ll put the eggs in the fridge and go to the living room and sit by one of my brothers. We’ll chat about football, chide each other about some old joke, and then everyone will head to bed. I will stay up reading beneath a lamp. Perhaps I’ll write a little. Then when I can’t keep my eyes open anymore, I’ll go to bed.

The loneliness at Stewart’s, when experienced in contradistinction to that which I’ll experience at home in five minutes, is a lovely feeling. The eggnog cartons stand rigidly in the fridge. The cookie boxes are piled in perfect symmetry, and will remain so for at least two more days. No one will handle them. They’ll all soon be plunged into darkness, staring out the window like paralytics, following the occasional passing car or the whirling orange lights of a snowplow with only their eyes. I have my eggs, but staring at these perishables gives me a sort of comfort. They will be alone tonight, but I will not. While they languish, I will experience the warmest human contact I’ve felt in a year.

“You gonna buy those eggs or what?” the cashier remarks with a smile.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” I reply. “Just thinking about what else my mother might need for tomorrow.”

“Well, I’m closing, so unless you want to spend the night here, you better let me ring those eggs up.” I hop over to the register. She laughs.

“I knew you wouldn’t want to spend the night here,” she smiles as she passes the scanner over the cardboard barcode.

“Yeah,” I say. “You’re right about that.”