Christmas eve 1992

The piano movers are hefty. They are built like Moais statues from Easter Island. They spread apart the French doors in the Music room. A man with side burns get down on all fours and begins to attack the faux ebony pillar we used to gnaw on as kids. The movers are all clad in red hoodies. They are disassembling the legs. They place a mat around the top of the piano as if a blanket to a horse. They are manipulating the instrument.  It is Christmas eve, morning. There is Christmas music playing. We are listening to George Winston. There is Amy Grant's Christmas. There was more snow outside during the State Cross-Country championship than there on the ground on Christmas eve.

After the piano is moved we will open presents since we always open presents on Christmas eve morning at our house and celebrated Christmas morning at Grandmas.


The movers are hefty. They are wrapping music. They are removing the legs. They are dissecting the slab of wood that brought joy.

I wonder what Renae is doing right now

Once the piano is moved we will no longer have a music room. My sister Jenn will move downstairs and have her own room. I will move into the piano room, the rom with the full-sized mirror that I used the last two years to rehearse my Young Columbus speech.  I will move my writing desk and my television and Sega Genesis and CD player into the new bedroom.  I will have a chandelier. I will have a larger closet. I will continue to listen to enya every night while chiseling out my speech for the incumbent Young Columbus. I will refrain from peeking across the voyeuristic canyon between houses at the college girl next door who squeezed my hand when I somehow met her at Bradley library.

The movers come in.   I am thinking about Renae. I am wondering when she is leaving for Chicago.

 Dad has played a trick on my sister Jenn telling her that the large horizontal package under the tree is a guitar for me. It has my name on it. It is actually an expensive keyboard for Jenn. Dad tells Jenn to help me open the package. When she does she is florid.

She smiles at a man who has a decade left of time on this planet.

 

  Mom hands me the last gift stating that this is for me. It is to be my main gift.

Normally there is an order form that somehow gets circulated around campus. Mom made the coat.
Perhaps because our family is always on a budget. Perhaps because Dad assist with the paper route so that he will have gas and coffee money. She made the coats herself.. She worked at in while I was in school hiding it in her closet next to the upstairs bathroom.

The cross country letters are beautiful. They are pumpkin orange. It is beautiful. It is my armor.
It looks like there is no moon. It black with flaring orange embedded around the collar and the cuffs of the sleeves.

My name is branded in cursive font above my right nipple. On the opposite side is the year I will graduate. 96. It is larger than the usual font.

On the back of the jacket there is Manual Rams shaped like a rainbow.

Below there are two words:

CROSS COUNTRY.

  

 I wear my jacket with pride.