Last Train Out with Mamie Morgan: Holiday spirit ... and shoes

This morning I woke before six to my husband Alan singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.  

Then, taking a break, he said, “We should make one of those paper chains that counts down the days of December. Or maybe we could get those posters where it’s like a house and when you open each door there’s a chocolate inside. What are those called?” 

“Advent calendars.” 

“Do you think they might make Advent calendars with dog treats behind the doors instead of chocolates?” By this point he looked very hopeful.  

“Dog Advent calendars? What kind of question is that? No way.” I was sitting up in bed by this point. Needless to say, I haven’t set an alarm clock since we met. 

Later that day, I spoke with our friends Jozie and Sangeeta and Emily and Katie and other Katie, all of whom informed me that, yes, in fact, they do make dog Advent calendars. They carry them -- AND cat Advent calendars —at more grocery stores than anyone on this green earth might think.   

I wasted no time driving to ALDI, feeling absolutely ridiculous, and purchasing two.    

'Todd and Margo'

For those who don’t know us, I should get the following out of your way. We are those people who have dogs instead of human children. The older is Retta Modine, and the younger is Wednesday Stewart. We refer to them, collectively, as the girls. We say to each other, roughly six million times a day, some version of: Have you picked up the girls’ medications? Have you noticed that the girls seem less jazzed by the peanut butter treats than the chicken flavored ones? Have you checked to see who can keep the girls that week in June, 2943? I am choosing to ignore the girls. May we put the new Taylor Swift album on the Sonos? It calms the girls.  

My sister refers to Alan and me affectionately (is it affectionate? I’d like to think it’s affectionate) as Todd and Margo, you know, from Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation.  

We put the ages of our dogs, who are both rescue pit bull mixes, on our annual holiday cards. Maybe that’s the one detail you need to know. 

'What time?'

What’s abnormal about my husband singing holiday carols before 6 a.m. is that today is Nov. 8. We’ve just set our clocks back an hour, Hobby Lobby hasn’t even unveiled their Christmas paper yet. Daylight’s savings affects your toddler about as much as it affects my husband. Two days ago I woke in the middle of the night to Alan getting into his running clothes, readying to take the dogs for their morning walk.  

More Mamie:From November TALK, Lightning Strikes

“What time is it?” I wondered. 

“11:50pm,” he discovered, staring at his Apple watch, climbing back into bed. 

Maybe what’s even more strange about Alan singing carols and wanting something called a dog Advent calendar has less to do with the date and more to do with this: When we met, seven years ago, Alan didn’t celebrate Christmas. I’m certain he’d shared a few gifts in the pass, but he’d never put up a tree, lined it with gifts, sung the songs.  

'Where's the Tree?'

We celebrated Christmas our first year together at my family’s house, where everyone bestowed roughly four million presents onto each other. We prayed a million prayers. We sat in each other’s literal laps. At some point Alan excused himself to take a walk.  

A day later I returned home to find that our own tree, ornaments and all, had disappeared. 

“Where’d the tree go?” I asked. 

“It’s not Christmas anymore, so I took it down.”  

More Mamie:From October, An Exercise in Beauty

“That’s perfectly reasonable,” I said, trying to meet his logic where it was. “Maybe next year we can allow it to stick around a few more days.” 

This seemed to confuse him.  

New Shoes

In those days, Christmas overwhelmed Alan. Likely because Christmas is in fact overwhelming, particularly if you’ve not done it before. Fortunately for me, Alan doesn’t care about receiving presents. That first year I had about twenty dollars to my name, and presented him only with some biography of Theodore Roosevelt.  

What I cherish most about that initial holiday together is what he gave to me. Upon opening the gift card to a famous shoe store, I was initially confused.  

But then I remembered. Months earlier I’d told him the story of how I’d adopted Retta, years before meeting Alan. I could barely pay rent, let alone afford a dog, but some buddies had found a mange-riddled puppy on a riverbank while fishing and would I take her. So I took her.  

In those early days of dog training between three jobs, she managed to chew on every single pair of shoes I owned save for my black waitressing sneakers. I couldn’t afford to buy any new ones for months.  

“The thought of you with no shoes breaks my heart,” he said when I looked up from the gift. “I promise I’ll never let you go without shoes again.”   

For someone who’s new to the game, Alan embodies the holiday spirit as well as anyone I know. Hope, acceptance, attention paid to love, listening, the possible gift of being made whole again.