The Great Christmas Bowl (10 page)

The brim of my hat jammed into my forehead. And I lay prone, facedown.

Maybe I could stay this way.

“Help the Trout!” I heard Gil's voice from the announcer's stand, in between peals of uncontrolled laughter. I couldn't wait to see next week's front page.

Hands rolled me onto my back, and through the mouth slit, I recognized Mike and one of his EMS pals helping me to my feet. “Better stick around,” I said without a smile.

Mike had tears rolling down his face as he tried to hide his laughter. He handed me the finger and I grabbed it.

“Help me over to the field entrance,” I snapped.

Mike grabbed my arm and we slip-slided to the gate, where I waited for the Trouts' dash onto the field. The opposing team came out first and eyed me with undisguised smirks. Yeah, well. . . . I gave them a fins-down.

The band struck up the school song. While Mike steadied me, I held out my fin and wished my team luck.

Their excited expressions snapped me back to the game, to the fact that we were in the semifinals. One more win would land them, and my son, in the state championship.

A real Christmas bowl game.

“Go, Big T!” I yelled and nearly fell again.

I made it back to the sidelines, grabbed a cowbell, and adopted a no-leaving-the-ground cheering strategy. Mike stayed by the fence as I shimmied my dorsal fin, waggled my googly eyes, shook my pom-poms, and screamed the Trouts to a halftime lead of one touchdown to nothing.

The snow turned the field slushy, and I wondered if Kevin's hands were frostbitten. He'd carried the ball for at least forty yards, at least ten in the touchdown drive.

I sported a thin layer of sweat covering my entire body, thanks to my energetic first half.

I waged a one-Trout halftime show, boogying to the band's renditions of “New York, New York” and “King of the Road,” only landing on my backside twice, to the fans' delight.

By the time the team hit the field again, we were revved and ready to cheer them to victory. The other team—the Trojans, from somewhere out in the iron range—closed the gap with a kickoff return that landed them in Trout territory. They scored a field goal while I led the crowd in a “De-fense!” rally.

The Trouts put no points on the board during the third quarter. When the Trojans recovered a fumble on our twenty-yard line, the stands roared to a frenzy of defensive cheering.

The Trojans connected with their wide receiver in the end zone, pushing them into the lead, ten to seven.

The snow had turned to driving ice. Watching the fans huddling under their blankets in the stands, I gave thanks for the head that protected me from the wind. As I grabbed my blow horn, I took a breath and scanned the crowd.

Bud Finlaysen sat in the front row, way to the left. He was bundled in his orange hunting suit, wearing a wool cap. He met my gaze with something like pride in his eyes.

“Go, Trouts!” I bellowed.

I turned to watch the game for a moment and noticed that number 33 had been added to the kickoff return line. I watched as Kevin knocked over a couple defenders, clearing the road for the ball carrier. What had happened to my timid son?

Or for that matter, to his reserved, cultured mother?

The Trouts took it back to the forty, then over midfield, and finally into field goal range.

Please, don't give in to temptation! Go for the touchdown!
But I watched with dismay and a glance at the time clock as they lined up for the attempt.

I turned back to the crowd, banging the cowbell.

They snapped the ball. I could see the play on the faces of my fellow fans. Something wasn't right—or rather had gone wonderfully right! I turned and watched as the kicker—a sophomore with incredible talent—ran the ball into the end zone.

I hit the deck about the same time he did, without, of course, the assistance of a gang of defenders.

“Touchdown!” I screamed, going wild even as I lay on my backside, a flopping fish. But I didn't care. I squirmed on the ground like a ten-year-old, waving my cowbell.

State champs, here we come.

Who was laughing now?

Chapter 8

A concussion and a broken ankle.

The cost of our superstar kicker's touchdown resounded like a death knell through the corridors of the clinic. Never mind that we were going to play the state finals in the Metrodome in Minneapolis, the same place the Minnesota Vikings played football. Never mind that
this
season, out of thirty, had been the first we'd made it all the way to the state finals.

We had no kicker. Our team barely comprised the requisite number for eleven-man ball, and even then, some of the seniors—including Kevin—played both defense and offense. We had no other kicker.

The dismay on Kevin's face as he emerged from the huddle of doom made me want to wrap him in my arms, kiss him on the top of his head, tell him that Mommy would make it better.

I think we all know by now that I would have marched out in pads and a helmet if it would have been permitted.

“I'm so sorry, Kev.” We stood there in silence. Mike was still back in the ER, filling out forms. I had just started to feel my fins, er, fingers again.

“I think I'm going to stick around here for a while,” Kevin said, glancing at his teammates.

“What about our tree? This is decorating weekend.”

From the expression on his face, I knew he'd forgotten. Hadn't he seen the decorations, smelled the cookies?

“Mom—can you and Dad just do it without me? I really should stay. . . .” He wore that look that said if I forced him, played the Mom card, and perhaps fell to the floor in pleading, he'd somehow find the strength to return home and have fun with us. Merry Christmas.

“Sure, that's okay, Kevin.”

He gave me a kiss on the cheek right there in the hall; I counted my blessings and wandered back to the ER.

Mike stood in an equally concerned huddle, only this time it wasn't about the game. “There's a crash out on 61,” he said as he saw me approach. “I'm going to have to stick around.”

Of course he would.

He waved good-bye and left me alone in his orange hunting suit in the middle of the pastel hallway.

Apparently, Christmas tree decorating was a solitary sport.

I drove home, melancholy pressing into my bones along with the chill.

Three weeks until Christmas. Perhaps I shouldn't be so upset. After all, this was just the warm-up. The real deal happened Christmas Eve, when we frosted cookies, ate soup, gathered for the Christmas story. Mike wouldn't be running out then. Kevin wouldn't forget. The rest of the family would be home to celebrate. I supposed I could even wait to put up the tree then.

I draped the fish costume back on the lawn chairs and traipsed inside. Climbing out of the union suit, I left it nearly fully formed in the entryway.

I stood in the kitchen brewing a hot cup of cocoa, staring at the empty place where the tree usually stands—in the living room next to the stairs, where the ceiling soars two stories. One year we wrestled a fifteen-foot tree into place, its base so wide we had to shorten limbs at the bottom to walk around it. I'm not sure why, but the Wallace family ascribes to a “bigger is better” theme when it comes to Christmas trees. Now, staring at the designated tree spot, I thought of the twinkle lights, the cute ornaments that signified the start of a celebration season.

I couldn't wait until Christmas Eve to put up the tree.

But I also couldn't traipse through the snow to find the appropriate tree by myself. As much as my stint as a Trout had honed my muscles, I didn't have the arm strength to drag the conifer through the woods and set it up alone.

I did, however, have my grandmother's fake tree tucked away in the garage. Once upon a time, I'd set up two trees—one in the living room, the other in the basement entertainment room. As festive as the house felt, the work of decorating two trees had outweighed the joy, and I dispensed with the practice after two years.

I poured all my efforts into decorating our fifteen-foot skyscrapers.

Putting on my boots and a coat, I braved the wind and tromped out to the garage. Some rearranging uncovered the tree box underneath a ripped fire pit tarp, a coil of hose, an old air conditioner unit from our now-defunct camper, and a table umbrella. I kicked it all aside and wrestled the box out, dragging it back to the house. I'd worked up a sweat by the time I pushed it through the mudroom into the kitchen.

Grandma's tree had once been a glorious blue spruce before time flattened its needles and twisted its branches. I spent the next half hour setting it up, pulling out the stems, fluffing it into shape. For being neglected so long, it revived with a Norwegian tenacity, and although it didn't soar past nine feet, the fact that it wouldn't soon be dropping its needles soothed the traditionalist inside me.

Besides, it was a keepsake, in a way.

I returned the empty box to the garage, then found the Christmas lights. It took me an hour to detangle the cords and replace the dead bulbs, a job usually reserved for Mike. Because we had miles of extra twinkle, I wove the lights in and out of the branches, wrapping them with sparkle. The tree could probably illuminate the entire house.

That done, I went downstairs to the storage room and dug out the ornaments. The big box contained seven smaller boxes, all marked with our names. Inside, each child had his or her own collection, one I'd helped create, ornament by ornament, through the years. I put on more water for cocoa and sat on the sofa, opening Neil's box. I pulled out the little ornament of a bear holding a book, the one I gave him the year he'd started to read. I could still hear his little voice, feel his warm body on my lap as he climbed up with a book. We spent hours on the sofa in those early days, just us, and then with Brett cocooned next to me, reading
The Cat in the Hat
or
The Story about Ping
or my personal favorite,
The Biggest Bear
. Under the reading bear figurine, I found another ornament, a tiny porcelain piano, for the year Neil took piano lessons. I'd spent hours teaching him his scales, simple songs.

I hung Neil's ornaments, poured myself another cup of cocoa, and opened Brett's box. I laughed aloud at the one of Santa on his sled, the little runners of the ornament long broken off. How many times had I found Brett with his ornaments off the tree, arranged on the sofa, coming to life under the magic of his imagination? Almost every one of his ornaments—the beaver with the fishing rod, the marshmallow men with the roasting sticks, the marching nutcracker soldier (for the year we saw
The Nutcracker
in Minneapolis)—had pieces broken off. They took their place on the tree, worn but loved.

Then, of course, Brianna's horse collection. Year after year she begged us for a pony—even drew a map for Santa one year, detailing our house and yard with her suggestions of where the pony could live (conveniently next to my garden). With some melancholy I gave her a different horse ornament every year, wishing it could be a live animal. (
Never,
declared Mike, who'd grown up on a farm.) The Appaloosa, the Arabian, the Clydesdale—the entire corral went on the tree.

Amy's box held ornaments I'd picked up at craft sales—many of them from exotic places around the world brought back by missionaries passing through. The little Thai girl and the Mexican boy. The Russian matryoshka and the Danish clogs. Amy's heart had been born across the ocean, it seemed, and she'd spent her life longing to travel.

I opened Kevin's box last. He'd been the hardest to buy for, the hardest to understand. The youngest has a way of adopting the traits of those who went before, the hardest time finding his own groove. Inside, the box evidenced his eclectic mix of passions—a miniature figurine of a firefighter the year he had visited the fire station on a school field trip, a dogsled for the years he wore out our
Balto
tape. A soccer ball, for his victory years as a footballer. A miniature Swiss Army knife for the first canoe trip he took with Mike and the boys.

I had purchased a football player for this year—a little snowman with a helmet, pads, and a ball under his arm. I would wait and give it to him to add to the tree.

I finished decorating the tree with my few ornaments and the ones Mike brought into our marriage. I knew I'd hand the kids' personal collections off to them one day, but until they had families of their own, I fully intended to hold these ornaments hostage.

Probably I should have given Neil his . . . and I would—when he came home for Christmas. Maybe I should remind him of that. Or perhaps simply box them up after this season and send them down to Chicago.

Packing up the boxes, I returned the mess downstairs, then sat next to the tree. It had long ago turned dark outside, and the colorful lights glinted off the windows, adding glamour to the room.

I pulled up a blanket, giving the tree a good scrutiny for clumped ornamental groupings. How many years had I rearranged the trees after the children's wild decorating? Now I wished for one of the branches to be dangling low with added weight or one ornament to be hung on another.

In a way, the tree was too beautiful, too perfect.

Lights panned across the windowpane, and relief washed through me as Kevin pulled up. I heard him stomp into the house, pounding his feet on the mat to loosen snow. A few minutes later, he stood at the entry to the living room.

As he was silhouetted in the light from the tree, I couldn't help but notice how he'd filled out, how much he resembled Mike. His broad shoulders had defined with his football workouts, and he no longer carried himself like a child.

Silly, tired tears whisked my eyes. I smiled through them. “How's the team?”

He said nothing for a moment. “The tree is really nice, Mom.” He stepped closer, inspecting the ornaments, smiling as some of them helped him capture a memory. He pulled a dolphin off one of the branches, took it in his large hands. “I remember when I got this. It was that year we went to Cancún for Christmas.”