Page 58 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
Little hands patted my cheeks, and then he was up on his feet with them planted on either side of me, jumping up and down.
But I was bouncing far too much for just Asher to be jumping.
I groaned and cracked one eye open. My room was still dark, but I could see her.
Lina.
She was kneeling beside me, rocking up and down like a big kid. Her hair was loose and lightly curled. She was wearing red plaid pyjamas, and I could tell she was smiling. “Good morning, Cal,” she called. “Are you awake?”
“I am now,” I said.
Lina slid off the bed with a giggle and wrapped her arms around Asher. “Time to get up, Cal. We’re ready to go downstairs and see what Santa left behind!”
Asher grabbed my hand and pulled. I pretended he was a man of great strength and fell out of the bed, which earned me an uproarious bout of laughter from my son, who collapsed beside me while clutching his ribs. I pulled him in for a hug, messed up his hair, and kissed the top of his head. “Merry Christmas, kiddo.”
“Merry Christmas, Dad!”
Asher was up and on his feet again, tugging at my wrist, pleading with me to hurry up. Lina had gone to the doorway and was waiting for us both. She was smiling and had her arms crossed. “Your father was awake and heading downstairs when Asher came to get me. He said he’d start a pot of coffee.”
I stood up. Asher bolted out the door, down the hall, and stopped at the top of the stairs. He wasn’t allowed to go down until I went down. It was a household family rule that my wife had put in place to guarantee that she and I would be there to see his face when he saw what Santa had left him overnight.
Lina fell into step beside me as we walked to the top of the stairs. I nudged her in the ribs with my elbow. “You should have led with coffee. It would have helped.”
Asher peered up at me. “Can we go down now? Please?”
“All right, Ash, go ahead. Watch your step. Don’t go too fast.”
Asher took off full speed down the stairs. Lina and I were hot on his heels as he spun himself around with one hand on the final banister. His socked feet slid on the hardwood as he turned to the tree, and he let out a shrill shriek followed by a deep, awe-filled gasp.
“Look, Dad! Look!”
Lina and I feigned surprise as we turned in a wide circle in the middle of the room. The stockings were overflowing. The gifts under the tree shimmered under the lights and spread outward like a snow bank.
My father appeared from the kitchen with a tray of coffees, creamers, and sugar, and a cup of chocolate milk for Asher. We grabbed our drinks and picked our spots on the sofa as Asher flitted from tree to stockings, gushing all the while and talking a mile a minute.
“All right, Ash,” I said. “Do you want to play Santa and hand out everyone’s stocking stuffers? One at a time?”
Asher nodded. He darted to the stockings, picked up a wrapped parcel from each of our piles, and then handed them out to us. I watched Lina hold her parcel, which was wrapped in gold wrapping. It wasn’t much. Just a bar of soap that smelled like lavender—a scent I knew was her favorite. I hoped it would help her remember but doubted it would.
We set to opening the first round after my father confirmed that breakfast was in the oven.
Lina’s memory wasn’t stirred by any of her stocking stuffers. Not the soap or the bottle of pink nail polish that used to be her favorite color to rock when we were together. Not the box of her favorite candies or the Wilson Phillips CD.
I did my best to hide my disappointment. Today was about Asher.
And it was a good day for him.
He tore through the stocking stuffers like a Tasmanian devil, and by the time we had unwrapped everything, we had massive piles of wrapping paper all over the place. The timer for breakfast went off, and Asher let out a loud groan as he sat on the carpet on his knees. “Can I open one present before breakfast?”
“One,” I told him. “But that’s it. And you don’t get to pick it. I do.” I went to the tree and picked up a box near the outskirts of the pile. It was wrapped in red paper with little snowmen on it. Lina had wrapped this one. It was tied with a beautiful ribbon with curled ends.
Asher tore into it to reveal a new winter jacket. He lifted it up, pretended to love it, and be excited about it, and then left it on the sofa as we all went and cut into the breakfast soufflé.
We brought our plates and fresh cups of coffee back into the living room to eat under the glow of the Christmas tree. My father laughed and joked about the silly things he had opened in his stocking: dental floss, shaving cream, new socks, and a near lifetime supply of gum, among other things.
After breakfast, we cleaned up our plates, got a big garbage bag, and collected the first big mess of the morning. Asher ran around wadding up balls of wrapping paper, and I held open the bag for him to throw them in. This became a game rather quickly, and soon, everyone was shooting rolled-up pieces of paper at me, rather than at the bag. Naturally, I joined in the fun and used the balls that actually landed in the bag.
This, of course, only made the clean up take longer. But it was fun.
