Maybe it's because I was a depressed sort of kid to begin with, but I can't remember ever making a snowman that didn't wind up shop-worn, dirty, and featureless: a dud, in other words. In fairness, our little household wasn't the sort that had an extra floppy fedora and trailing scarf just waiting for Frosty. And my mother wasn't about to fork over a carrot for a snowman's nose. "Just use a rock," she'd say, not looking up from the ironing.
I was fine with that. The only reason I went outside and beavered at building a snowman was because that's what kids did, but my heart was never in it. I preferred to stay curled up on my bed, reading The Borrowers for the 800th time, but my mom always booted me out for my fresh air quota, snow or no snow.
In the winter, I was even less enthusiastic about our Christmas projects at school. They were always the same: the mural entitled Christmas in Other Lands, the potato-print wrapping paper done with blobby tempera paint, the gift for your parents (about which, more later), and the talentless classroom pageant.
The gift business always defeated me. From the time I was a sprat, my mother repeated, year after year, that homemade gifts were the best gifts of all. Although she was my mother, early on I suspected this wasn't true. I didn't think she was deliberately lying, but I decided she must be incredibly self-deluded. If homemade gifts were the best gifts of all, why didn't department stores have massive displays of wavy-looking lumpy woven potholders? Why didn't the downtown Garfinkel's drape its windows with ineptly embroidered dishtowels and set out trays decked with badly-made seashell jewelry?
Usually, with a resigned sigh, I could hand over whatever atrocity I had crafted to a theatrically delighted parent or grandparent. But one year I couldn't. It was the year my fourth grade gift-making was hijacked by The Traveling Art Teacher. The Traveling Art Teacher wasn't often seen but was still universally loathed for her fascistic coloring system and her strange, hideous clothes. "No! No! No! No! No!" she would yell, often at me. Then peering through her slanting cat's eye glasses, she would declare, "Grass is green like this," and she'd scribble a few lines with the most unnatural lime-green Binney-Smith had yet devised. "Grass is always green, tree leaves are always green, skies are always blue, and the sun is always yellow," she'd remind us decisively, while we all nodded obediently, certain she was full of shit. Some arguments aren't worth having, and our fourth grade class already knew that much.
This particular gift-making year, The Traveling Art Teacher instructed us to bring a phonograph record from home and, as was her way, refused to tell us why. "It's a surprise!" she twinkled, fingering her awful handmade ceramic necklace. Maybe it was a surprise to her, but for us it was a day's work chiseling a phonograph record out of our parents for no good reason. But somehow, all of us managed to grub up a phonograph record and bring it to class.
On the appointed day, The Traveling Art Teacher had already set up a little workshop at the front of the class, with our own teacher, Miss Clemons, assisting. On one table, there was a hot plate and oven mitts, while the other table was covered with newspaper and sported three colors of spray paint: silver, gold, and red. The more adventurous of us thought we were actually going to be allowed to spray paint something, and an excited twitter rippled through the class, and was savagely quashed. As it turned out, this was just an assembly-line job.
We stood in line with our phonograph record, mutely handed it to The Traveling Art Teacher, who softened it over the hot plate. At a certain point in the heating, she bent up the record so it had four sides. We were then directed to Miss Clemons who stood by the spray paint and who asked us what color we wanted. Most of us picked gold, a few picked silver, and hardly anyone except me picked red. I thought the gold and silver looked cheap, but was too polite to say so.
Picking up a can, Miss Clemons would woosh our record so it was covered on all sides with gold paint. When the first two of these objects were finished, our class stared at results dumbly, and looked at each other. Do you know what it is? we mouthed. "Sillies! It's a candy dish!" The Traveling Art Teacher squealed. The suck-ups grinned like fools and said, "Oh, yeah! Sure!" while the rest of us wondered what kind of candy dish came with a hole in the bottom and a label.
I still remember trudging home with my candy dish. It was hideous, I knew it was hideous and I knew my parents would think it was hideous. They might lie and exclaim over it, but then it would disappear into some closet with my other crappy-looking homemade gifts. I didn't mind that. I knew I made terrible presents; I was just a child. What did they expect? It was my parent's facial expressions I couldn't tolerate: that rictus of distaste before they caught themselves and pasted on a phony-baloney smile. Christ, I'm just a child, I muttered under my breath,What do they expect?
A very large crack loomed in the sidewalk before me. Somehow my toe caught it and before I could catch myself, I fell heavily, careful to land on my candy dish. It shattered into a hundred pieces, which I gathered up. I would show the shards to my mother, maybe even squeeze out a tear, and say I made it for you! For Christmas! And now look! My mother would look at the ruins with a mixture of relief and bewilderment. Never mind, she'd say, it's the thought that counts.
It was a point on which we could both agree.
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