Sample from Upon a Midnight Clear: More Christmas Epiphanies

From “The Gift”

By Michael McLean

I put myself through school while working full time as a security guard. I attended classes by day and did an eight-hour shift until midnight at the mall.

I'd ditch the university with Burnaby in my rearview and Surrey in my sights. My ride was a gold 1980 Mazda 626. Not a spring chicken, but she held her own. No rust, no dents, engine purring like a kitten. She was my sanctuary for the forty-minute haul to the job. The speakers, a recent splurge, blasted my tunes, drowning out the world.

The Guildford Mall was a behemoth that sprawled over 500 hectares, a monolith, grey concrete and brick. It had windows, clouded with urban grime that all through the early part of the fall semester mirrored the harsh afternoon sun. The south entrance connected to the main artery and had the most foot traffic. Inside, the air was a cocktail of fast food and stale smoke, the ghosts of a thousand stories lingering in the sealed HVAC air.

The mall was so big it sprawled north across the street, joined by an overpass, to a quieter section. There was an inconspicuous door, tucked like a secret, that opened to a stairwell which led to a janitor’s closet that was converted to a security hub. It had the smell of a gym locker on a bad day. The guards used it as a refuge from the mall's crowds. The hub had a changing room, lunchroom, coffee break room, and a haven for tall tales, all crammed into a windowless, forty square feet under the stairs.

On the job as security, I wasn’t a patient person.

I often did not get a great night's sleep. I had submitted myself to such a demanding schedule. I thought back then I had something to prove not only to myself but to all those who claimed I was not smart enough or good enough. I was a survivor. I told my brothers time and again, “The shit that we lived through and came out the other side without criminal records and sane enough to participate in society is a badge of honour.”

I also had trouble accepting simple kindnesses, like when someone recognized my talents. If someone at school said, “I believe in you,” and the acknowledgement was biased, unprovoked, or not freely given, then I felt that that person was phony and the act was simply performed out of politeness.

I was proud, angry, and alone. I cared for myself. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte wrote, “The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” That was me. No one was going to hold me back from achieving and gaining a real sense of accomplishment, except me. All this would manifest in frustration not only with myself but with others.

A mall customer or shop owner would be explaining an incident and go into excruciating detail. Silently I would be saying, “Just get to the point.” I’m sure that the occasional eye-roll would occur, and as I would be taking notes, I would do the hand roll gesture as a way of demonstrating my impatience.

I should add that to the people I knew I also would be very direct and ask them to get to the point. I’d pretend to fall asleep or interject saying, “It all started when I was six,” or “Jesus wrote a shorter book, bro, cut to the chase.”

My tank was running empty in those times and I would throw myself the best pity party that you ever saw. That’s what I was feeling when the semester ended and I agreed to work the Christmas week.

Everywhere I looked there was a seasonal reminder of my inadequacy. I think everyone hopes “this Christmas will be better than the last one” and yet I always failed to prepare for it. Like it is supposed to happen spontaneously.

Growing up Christmas was always a tough time. My mother could barely afford to keep a roof over our heads let alone buy presents for seven children. A reality which I only understood at a later age when it is far too late to say it’s okay. I was never that person who would handcraft a snow globe out of a mason jar, acorns and unicorn tears. I saved money and did not buy gifts for people other than the Christmas cards. When I received them, I tossed them in the trash soon after Christmas was over.

So, at the mall I was apathetic toward Christmas. There were stores decorated with phony trees and wreaths. The scent of cinnamon was everywhere. There was a Christmas present-wrapping booth where people paid money to have their gifts professionally wrapped. I saw these as pretentious trappings and fake paraphernalia. Christmas was more or less just another day to me, or so I tried to convince myself.

I took a long look around that shopping mall at the people with their packages. I got angry, perhaps enough to save myself from the feeling of envy. I needed that little bit of righteous anger. I remember even muttering to myself how I hated this time of year.

Staring at Santa’s Castle in that mall didn’t help me much either. It was on a lower level at the center of the mall where all four halls converged.

The castle was a peaked house with windows on all four walls. There were Styrofoam candy canes and the usual decor over the red exterior. It was surrounded by reindeer statues in cotton snow. I found myself peering over the edge from the upper level. I saw people and their children milling in and out of it. Santa was heralded with “Here comes Santa Claus” playing over the music system because he was due to sit on his throne.

This Santa had a real beard and looked surprisingly like the advertisement on the Coke commercials. He acted just as jolly and friendly; he played the part well, I thought to myself. People scrambled to take a picture with him. I thought they were entitled and pretentious. Their children were spoiled, overly privileged brats. I thought that they were ignorant of what it was like to make something out of nothing.

That somehow made me feel superior to them because they would never know what I knew. When I was a child, I thought of Santa Claus as a savior who rescued children. Now he is just a portly man in a red suit paid to act the part created by an advertising agency. I stood amongst these people, my bad attitude firmly intact.

When I put on that security uniform it somehow emboldened me. I engaged in conversation with strangers, men, women, teenagers, and families. When I spoke to them there was no expectation. I never knew how they were going to respond or even if they were going to respond but they always felt compelled to because I was an employee of the mall. I would notice a certain shop that they just visited then say something like “I love that store, bought my last pair of shoes there, super comfortable.”

If they engaged sometimes that would lead to more conversation, sometimes not. Even though I really had no ulterior motive, other than to get an impression of who they were to either confirm or deny my first impression. l met all of the women that I dated this way, but like I said this was never my intention.

I struck up a conversation with an older woman. She was going to sit on the bench against the glass railing. She had several bags and when she put them down one of them tipped over and a can of spray snow rolled out and tapped my shoe. I reached down to pick it up and hand it to her. I said I remembered the days of real snow in Dawson Creek where the drifts were sometimes higher than the door of your house.

She said that she was a former farm girl and recalled similar days of real snow and that she’d come to the Lower Mainland to retire. I think that’s when I went into my rant about what Christmas was like when I was a kid. Filled with play and not presents. I said, “Christmas was taking my toboggan out to my favorite hill at the back of the Royal Canadian Legion in the small village of Pouce Coupe, BC, and we would slide until it was dark. The bonfire we built at the bottom made the slide even better. I would stay there until my jeans froze over top of my long underwear. We’d take turns pulling each other home and lie back on the toboggan staring at the star-filled skies through the zipped-up hood of our jackets looking for Santa Claus.”

The woman got up and said “that sounds about right” in a futile attempt to placate me before she walked away. I leaned over the railing again, looking at the castle. An old man next to me said “You’re from DC area?”

I said “Oh yes, spent many years in Dawson Creek before our family moved to Pouce Coupe.”

He shook head. “Yes, I used to live in Dawson Creek as well.”

His brown hair was short and parted on the side which matched his round, hairless white face. He was slightly overweight but not overly so. He had a dad bod as some people would call it nowadays. He wore a grey, waist-length Columbia jacket and a blue-collared shirt under it, blue jeans, and brown Docker shoes. He was shorter than I was. Most people are shorter than me. Back then I stood six feet, five inches, and weighed 190 pounds. He wore a little too much aftershave. His smile was open and friendly and he had a good solid handshake. The kind of handshake where you knew it was a practiced gesture.

I replied, “Really? Whereabouts did you live?”

He said that it was a hole in the wall on top of the hill.

I said, “Oh boy, yes, I am familiar with those places, we used to live there as well.”

Then he looked leaned in even closer, studying me. And I studied him.

He raised his arm slightly, finger pointing at my chest. He said, “Do you know a woman named Mary?”

I said, “Mary? That’s my mother’s name.”