New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Hugging that tree
It’s late Friday afternoon, and The Kid and I are driving through the storm to NYC to make sure we can bring Mom back home in time for Christmas.
There are many signs telling us not to do this. First, there’s that tree blocking the road. Then, there’s the second tree blocking the second road. There are the fender-benders ruining somebody’s Christmas every mile or so. The final signs are the signs themselves. The highways keep flashing “AVOID UNNECESSARY TRAVEL.”
At 11, The Kid declares bringing Mom home from an overnight trip to be necessary travel. I suspect he fears a feast of PB&J.
En route, my mind fist-bumps Ghosts of Christmas Past in Manhattan. Each memory involves the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree (yes, I’m aware this is my third column of the month about trees. Consider this a tree-qual … a treelogy … a promise there won’t be a fourth).
Our first stop is in 1975, when I was a Kid myself. My seventhgrade class took a tour of the Rockefeller Center area before catching a stage performance of “A Christmas Carol.” At Radio City Music Hall, then facing bankruptcy, we got to take in the view from the other side of the movie screen. At 12, it did not escape my attention that the screen was blocking the view of the Rockettes.
Since I was attending a Catholic school, Radio City took second billing to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But what caught my eye was the massive tree in front of what I took to be its biggest ornament (the golden Prometheus statue).
My friend Anthony and I were so enthralled that we lost the rest of our group. Yup, it was the buddy picture version of “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” a mere 17 years before that flick came out. We hadn’t been here before and we didn’t know anybody (I knew we should have made friends with some Rockettes). Our script lacked everything that made “Home Alone 2” a Christmas classic: dopey parents, sadism worthy of a “Death Wish” chapter (’70s appropriate reference) and a stupefying Donald Trump cameo. In the film (30year-old spoiler alert) Macaulay Culkin’s screen mom found him at the tree. We got lost there.
I wish I could reveal some childhood hijinks worthy of “Home Alone 2,” or even “Home Alone 8: This Time No One Loses Their Kid,” but we wound up doing exactly what you’d expect 12-year-old Catholic boys to do in 1975 — we went back to St. Patrick’s.
There, we found the other half of our tour group. We failed in our stealth efforts to blend in. Again, as this was 1975, the boys were in one group and the girls were in the other. So we took the rest of the tour with the girls.
Five decades on, it’s just sinking in that no one was looking for us. It should have been a life lesson about avoiding tour groups. Alas, my wife and I joined one on the first day of our first trip to Paris in 2011. While circling Notre Dame Cathedral, they left without us (no more church tours for me). These tour guides never noticed my absence either (an ability to count should be a job requirement).
A different Ghost of Christmas Past delivers my memories to the 1980s, when I was spending my first year in a newsroom in northern Bergen County (that’s just the kind of tour guide I am: Manhattan! … Paris! … Jersey). Three colleagues and I were filing our stories one December weeknight when we decided to take a break — and jumped in my car to drive 25 miles to see the Rockefeller Center tree. We crossed the George Washington Bridge, jumped out of the car, saw said tree, and drove back to finish our stories. I need to grill this Ghost of Christmas Past about how I found a parking space.
My frosty Friday journey has delivered me to the Bronx, where a glimpse in the rearview mirror reveals absolutely zero cars behind us. This is my secret: I knew traffic would be light. Sure, every Caraluzzi’s, Grade A and Stew Leonard’s in Connecticut is packed like Times Square on 12/31, but no one from the Burbs bothers with Manhattan just before Christmas.
I learned this about 15 years ago, when I took the evening train from Stamford to a Dec. 24 dinner in the city with my wife and mother-in-law. As we climbed aboard the 5:29, the conductor welcomed us to the “Ghost Train,” which he explained is reliably vacant each Christmas Eve. It was the perfect trip. After a peaceful dinner, we took in the spectacle of foreign tourists around The Tree. This time, I was the tour guide and knew how to count to two.
After The Kid’s arrival, we thought we’d cheat and take him to see The Tree on Dec. 29, 2013 (he was 2, how would he know it wasn’t Christmas?). Again, I drove into the city. The heavy rain never relented, yet we walked from FAO Schwarz to Rockefeller Center (I was confused by the rules about putting toddlers in cabs). We took shelter from the storm at St. Patrick’s. The Kid was soggy, but at least I didn’t lose him.
He seemed meh about The Tree but has come to love Christmas even more than Mrs. Claus (she finally gets a night to herself ). Back on Oct. 30, a pocket between his birthday and Halloween, his thoughts were already drifting to Dec. 25.
“Only 56 days until Christmas!” he exclaimed.
“How do you know that?” “I have a countdown on my computer at school.”
At least they teach him math. When we arrive at our destination on Riverside Drive near the GW, it seems to be about 120 degrees colder in New York than in Connecticut. We pick Mom up from a friend’s apartment and the four of us brave the worst frost Mister Snow Miser can hurl to go out for a cozy dinner.
Afterward, because it’s Dec. 23 and we’re in New York … well, you know the rest. The weather outside is frightful, but the inside of our Subaru in toastier than a Channel 11 Yule Log. We drive 11 miles to try to catch a glimpse of The Tree. We never leave the car, so that’s exactly what we get: a cameo as we drive down Fifth Avenue.
And, somehow, that’s enough.