When I was five, my grandmother took me to see The Nutcracker. She drove me all the way to Chicago, prattling the entire time about how magical the experience was going to be. I was a tomboy, more prone to climbing trees than watching ballet. The entire drive, my grandma kept rapping me on the shoulder with her gloved hand.
“Stop fidgeting!” she’d admonish.
I was not used to wearing a pretty dress with a frilly collar, and I felt as if I were being choked.
I pulled on her hand, trying to break free, the entire time we climbed the steps to the ballet and then down the stairs to our seats. I simultaneously rocked in my seat and kicked the back of the one in front of me until a very snooty usher warned my grandma we would be asked to leave unless “the demon child began to exhibit some manners.”
“Good!” I answered.
But when the lights went down and the ballet began, I was spellbound. I was no longer Debbie Hutchins. My grandma, wearing her dramatic red cape, was no longer my grandma. We were at a 1915 Christmas Eve party. I was Clara, the young girl given a magical nutcracker doll that came to life in her dreams, battled the evil King of the Mice, and took me to a Crystal Palace full of dancing.
On the ride home, I was the one who couldn’t stop prattling on about the ballet. I not only wanted to dance, right that very moment, but also collect those magical nutcrackers.
That Christmas, my grandmother—as usual—packed gifts underneath her silver tree heavy with Shiny Brite ornaments. I had three big packages that I rattled for days as well as one envelope perched in a branch that I unsuccessfully tried to steam open with my grandmother’s teapot. My parents, staunch Protestants, were not generous of emotion, gift or leisure time.
“Spare the rod, spoil the child,” was my father’s mantra.
My grandmother, however, didn’t listen.
“Pshaw!” she would say. “Children deserve to be spoiled.”
On Christmas Day, I ripped those packages open, tossing paper left and right. I received three German nutcrackers: a soldier, a king and—my favorite—a horseman on a real rocking horse.
I opened the envelope last, and my grandma’s gift reduced this tomboy to tears.
“One year of ballet classes,” my grandma announced to the room over my heaves.
I spun around the room clumsily, doing my best sugarplum fairy dance, kicking wrapping paper this way and that.
“Thank you, Grandma!” I said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
The next few Christmases, I collected more and more nutcrackers, and more years of dance classes.
And then one holiday as my grandma was putting up her silver tree, there was a crash. She had a heart attack reaching to adjust the star, and we found her lying on top of the tree.
Just like that, she was gone, along with my dreams.
My mom and dad boxed up her belongings and beloved decorations—the silver tree, ornaments, appliqué tree skirts, snow globes—and sold them off at an auction as if she’d never existed, as if she were a fantasy, just like Clara and The Nutcracker.
I watched the crowd come like a swarm of locusts and ravage my grandmother’s house until it was empty. I watched my parents count the cash on a calculator the size of a dinner plate.
Nothing was real anymore.
So I gathered my nutcrackers and sold them all that day to the highest bidder.