In 1954, when I was eight years old, I lost Christmas. At about noon of Christmas Eve that year, I went with some kids to the Nortown Theater on Western Avenue in Chicago to see a movie, Demetrius and the Gladiators, starring Victor Mature and Susan Hayward. My mother and I had until earlier that month been living in Florida and Cuba, and were in Chicago, where I was born and where we sometimes stayed, to spend the Christmas holidays with Nanny, my grandmother, my mother’s mother, who was bed-ridden because of a chronic heart condition. In fact, Nanny would die due to heart failure the following May, at the age of fifty-nine.
The ground was piled with fresh snow that Christmas Eve Day. The few cars that were moving snailed along the streets barely faster than we could walk. The first time I had come to Chicago as a human being old enough to be conscious of my surroundings was when I was five or six. Now that I was older, however, and was somewhat inured to the snow and ice—at least I knew what to expect—I could if not enjoy at least endure the weather, especially since I knew my situation was temporary.
I thought Demetrius and the Gladiators was a great movie, full of fighting with swords and shields and a sexy redhead, like my mother. I didn’t notice if Victor Mature’s breasts were larger than Susan Hayward’s—an earlier (1949) film, Samson and Delilah, had prompted the comment by a producer that Mature’s tits were bigger than co-star Hedy Lamarr’s—I was impressed only by the pageantry of goofy Hollywood ancient Rome. Walking home Christmas Eve afternoon, the leaden gray Chicago sky heading rapidly toward darkness, I suddenly was overcome by dizziness and very nearly collapsed to the now ice-hard sidewalk carapace. My companions had already turned off onto another street, so I was alone. I managed to steady myself against a brown brick wall and then slowly and carefully made my way the final block or two to my grandmother’s house.
The next thing I knew I was waking up in bed dressed in my yellow flannel pajamas decorated with drawings of football players. The first image I saw was a large-jawed fullback cradling a ball in the crook of his left arm while stiff-arming a would-be tackler with his right. I was very thirsty and looked up to see my mother and Nanny, who, miraculously, was out of her sickbed, leaning over me. According to my mother, I asked two questions: “Can I have a glass of water?” and “Is it Christmas yet?”
In fact, it was December 26th—I had lost consciousness almost as soon as I arrived home following the movie, and had been delirious with fever for most of the time since then. The fever broke and I woke up. My mother brought me a glass of water, which she cautioned me to sip slowly, as the doctor had ordered.
“Was the doctor here?” I asked. Nanny and my mother told me how worried they had been. A doctor friend of Nanny’s had come twice to see me, even on Christmas Day; he would come again later. Nanny and my mother laughed—in fact, both of them were crying tears of relief.
“This is the best gift of all,” said my mother, “getting my boy back.”
I’ve often wondered what I missed during my delirium, as if those twenty-four or so hours had been stolen from me. Once someone asked me if I had access to a time machine and could go forward or back anywhere in time, where would I go? I told him without hesitation that I would set the machine for Christmas Day of 1954. To paraphrase William Faulkner, that Christmas past is not dead, it’s not even past.