Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes
Lay away
Lay away
It's that time of year again. When I was a child, there were Christmases when there were wonderful presents under the Christmas tree for me. Things I'd dream
about for months before Christmas actually arrived. Things I thought I'd never get like the candy-apple-red, three speed English racer bike with chrome so bright it
would make your eyes hurt to look directly at it. Or the Lionel diesel train set (that I still have) with the barrel-unloading car and electronic track section that made
the cars decouple. Then there was the Christmas when my mother secretly lugged home a huge sled — that turned out to be the longest in the Jacob Riis
Housing Projects — on the cross-town bus when she was six months pregnant with my sister and somehow managed to hide it so I wouldn't find it before
Christmas. Then there were Christmases when I only pretended to like what I got or the horrible Christmas when I got a U.S. Savings Bond. You can't show off a
savings bond to your friends. I wish I had it now, though. That was one of the Christmases when the space between what parents wanted to give and what they
were able to give was wider than the Grand Canyon.
And merchants were happy to help us bridge the gap between practicality and survival and living large. One way to do it was lay-away. All the stores had lay-
away. Just set your eye on that new sofa or bicycle or coat or whatever and reserve it with a modest down payment and pay a little every pay day until the thing
was yours. Delayed gratification. Of course the thing would be obsolete by the time you finished paying for it but obsolescence happened much more slowly
then. And couches were always pretty much in style because the practice of the day was to mummify them in plastic. You'd stick to them in the summer and
sitting on them in winter was like putting an ice cube down your shorts, but plastic covers made furniture last forever, partly because they preserved the material
and partly because no one really wanted to sit on plasticized furniture.
There were some other unique traditions that kicked in around November. Sure. I knew that there were people who didn't consider Christ to be the son of
God. I didn't have any problem with that. This knowledge did not, however, prompt me to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Even at a very young
age and despite the practical explanations I was given in science class, life was still a mystery to me. The fact that I could think or raise my hand or walk or
smell or breathe was quite magical to me. Still is. No matter. All I knew was that Christmas had a special significance. It was a time to remember the importance
of connecting to something larger than our little, individual selves. There were smells associated with it. Tastes connected to it. A velvet-lined chest of memories
filled with Christmases past. Christmas was a time when the world was filled with magic.
One Christmas Eve I was lying awake in my mother and father's bed while they were in the living room listening to Mahalia Jackson sing Silent Night for the
fortieth time that day on the old Victrola that deftly spun then changed the stack of Christmas 78 RPM records like I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by Brenda
Lee, Hark the Herald Angels Sing by Nat King Cole, and Ave Maria by Perry Como. I swore -and swear to this day - that I saw the silhouette of Santa in his sleigh
being pulled by reindeer just on the other side of the bedroom window shade. The experience may have been slightly influenced by Burl Ives singing Rudolf the
Red Nose Reindeer in the living room, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Santa was in the projects and all I had to do was go to sleep for him to
squeeze through the chimney, crawl down the incinerator and knock on the doors of all the apartments so parents could open them to let Santa leave presents
under the trees.
But much of that went away. Lay-away went the way of the then ubiquitous Christmas tune Away in a Manger. Neither has much to do with Christmas
anymore. The Christmas Eve pageants disappeared. Grandma stopped sleeping over on Christmas Eve when her grandkids moved to another state. Cousins used
to be like brothers and sisters, now we don't know who they are. Everybody is too busy. Too busy trying to survive or get ahead. Too busy putting gifts on charge
cards that, with minimum payments, will likely be paid off years after the gifts are forgotten. Do any of us remember what we got last Christmas? But lay-away is
coming back. Not for nostalgic reasons. Not to soothe a frantic season with a little relative calmness from the past. And certainly not to gently pull us back from
the insane plastic credit pit. But because our credit cards are maxed out and the economy sucks and we are giving second, third and fourth thoughts before
buying stuff. Lay-away can make us think a little about what we really want. But buying addictions resemble others in that when one avenue dries up another
opens. When large heroin shipments are seized, other addictive white powders become the drugs of choice. When credit cards blow up, lay-away rushes in to
save the day. I don't pretend to be above any of this. I'm going shopping now. I still have a little left on a couple of my credit cards. But please don't forget to
look for the silhouettes just on the other side of bedroom window shades.
Maybe it all has something to do with this poem I wrote a few years ago:
LAY AWAY
The red patent leather boots
called to her
from high on the shelf
in the shoe aisle
How Secunda would love them
But of course
she would need a little purse to match
and that shiny red rain slicker in the coat aisle
would top off the look
even though she could not wear it until spring
But spring was so far away
and she could only handle
One season at a time
One holiday at a time
One week at a time
One day at a time
Her life was a 365-Step Program
with infinite relapses
Then the light came on for the Blue Light Special
And the light came on in her soul
to show her the way
as if the skies had opened up
to uncover a blinding light
that illuminated the path
to the Lay Away Department
She knew the people in line there
Mrs. Williams and her band
of screaming grandchildren
who had been left with her temporarily
by her strung-out daughter
The kids now called her Mama now
Guess you could say they were on lay-away too
She knew the people in line there
Poor old Mr. Jenkins
who stood in line babbling to himself
and anyone who would listen
Something about how he used to be the
Golden Gloves champ
and had a wife and kids
who moved away
a long time ago
whose names he can't remember
whose faces are rubbed white and featureless
from pulling their photos from
an old wallet
too many times
to show people
who didn't even see him
She knew the people in line
who stood holding separate conversations
that all flowed together
like seven thousand drips
from seven thousand broken bathroom faucets
in seven hundred project buildings
sounded like a steady stream of water
and the words poured together like:
You know them bastards arrested Tyrone again and he wasn't even at that party where that man was beat half to death and my baby's daddy told the judge that
Jamel ain't his and Aunt Essie broke her hip and I don't know who's gonna pay her rent and take care of her business while she's in the hospital 'cause she don't
let nobody in that house and she don't tell nobody where her important papers be and it's a damn shame about Mildred's house burnin' down 'cause she loved
that raggedy-ass little place with them fake tulips outside but they sure were kind of nice to look at in the winter time.
Oh
The flowers are still there?
Well then
The red patent leather boots
called to her
from high on the shelf
in the shoe aisle
at K-Mart that pre-Christmas season
Maybe she would pick them up some day
Maybe there's a Law-Away Dream Department
Someplace
Maybe she'll pick one up
Some day
Maybe today
about for months before Christmas actually arrived. Things I thought I'd never get like the candy-apple-red, three speed English racer bike with chrome so bright it
would make your eyes hurt to look directly at it. Or the Lionel diesel train set (that I still have) with the barrel-unloading car and electronic track section that made
the cars decouple. Then there was the Christmas when my mother secretly lugged home a huge sled — that turned out to be the longest in the Jacob Riis
Housing Projects — on the cross-town bus when she was six months pregnant with my sister and somehow managed to hide it so I wouldn't find it before
Christmas. Then there were Christmases when I only pretended to like what I got or the horrible Christmas when I got a U.S. Savings Bond. You can't show off a
savings bond to your friends. I wish I had it now, though. That was one of the Christmases when the space between what parents wanted to give and what they
were able to give was wider than the Grand Canyon.
And merchants were happy to help us bridge the gap between practicality and survival and living large. One way to do it was lay-away. All the stores had lay-
away. Just set your eye on that new sofa or bicycle or coat or whatever and reserve it with a modest down payment and pay a little every pay day until the thing
was yours. Delayed gratification. Of course the thing would be obsolete by the time you finished paying for it but obsolescence happened much more slowly
then. And couches were always pretty much in style because the practice of the day was to mummify them in plastic. You'd stick to them in the summer and
sitting on them in winter was like putting an ice cube down your shorts, but plastic covers made furniture last forever, partly because they preserved the material
and partly because no one really wanted to sit on plasticized furniture.
There were some other unique traditions that kicked in around November. Sure. I knew that there were people who didn't consider Christ to be the son of
God. I didn't have any problem with that. This knowledge did not, however, prompt me to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Even at a very young
age and despite the practical explanations I was given in science class, life was still a mystery to me. The fact that I could think or raise my hand or walk or
smell or breathe was quite magical to me. Still is. No matter. All I knew was that Christmas had a special significance. It was a time to remember the importance
of connecting to something larger than our little, individual selves. There were smells associated with it. Tastes connected to it. A velvet-lined chest of memories
filled with Christmases past. Christmas was a time when the world was filled with magic.
One Christmas Eve I was lying awake in my mother and father's bed while they were in the living room listening to Mahalia Jackson sing Silent Night for the
fortieth time that day on the old Victrola that deftly spun then changed the stack of Christmas 78 RPM records like I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus by Brenda
Lee, Hark the Herald Angels Sing by Nat King Cole, and Ave Maria by Perry Como. I swore -and swear to this day - that I saw the silhouette of Santa in his sleigh
being pulled by reindeer just on the other side of the bedroom window shade. The experience may have been slightly influenced by Burl Ives singing Rudolf the
Red Nose Reindeer in the living room, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Santa was in the projects and all I had to do was go to sleep for him to
squeeze through the chimney, crawl down the incinerator and knock on the doors of all the apartments so parents could open them to let Santa leave presents
under the trees.
But much of that went away. Lay-away went the way of the then ubiquitous Christmas tune Away in a Manger. Neither has much to do with Christmas
anymore. The Christmas Eve pageants disappeared. Grandma stopped sleeping over on Christmas Eve when her grandkids moved to another state. Cousins used
to be like brothers and sisters, now we don't know who they are. Everybody is too busy. Too busy trying to survive or get ahead. Too busy putting gifts on charge
cards that, with minimum payments, will likely be paid off years after the gifts are forgotten. Do any of us remember what we got last Christmas? But lay-away is
coming back. Not for nostalgic reasons. Not to soothe a frantic season with a little relative calmness from the past. And certainly not to gently pull us back from
the insane plastic credit pit. But because our credit cards are maxed out and the economy sucks and we are giving second, third and fourth thoughts before
buying stuff. Lay-away can make us think a little about what we really want. But buying addictions resemble others in that when one avenue dries up another
opens. When large heroin shipments are seized, other addictive white powders become the drugs of choice. When credit cards blow up, lay-away rushes in to
save the day. I don't pretend to be above any of this. I'm going shopping now. I still have a little left on a couple of my credit cards. But please don't forget to
look for the silhouettes just on the other side of bedroom window shades.
Maybe it all has something to do with this poem I wrote a few years ago:
LAY AWAY
The red patent leather boots
called to her
from high on the shelf
in the shoe aisle
How Secunda would love them
But of course
she would need a little purse to match
and that shiny red rain slicker in the coat aisle
would top off the look
even though she could not wear it until spring
But spring was so far away
and she could only handle
One season at a time
One holiday at a time
One week at a time
One day at a time
Her life was a 365-Step Program
with infinite relapses
Then the light came on for the Blue Light Special
And the light came on in her soul
to show her the way
as if the skies had opened up
to uncover a blinding light
that illuminated the path
to the Lay Away Department
She knew the people in line there
Mrs. Williams and her band
of screaming grandchildren
who had been left with her temporarily
by her strung-out daughter
The kids now called her Mama now
Guess you could say they were on lay-away too
She knew the people in line there
Poor old Mr. Jenkins
who stood in line babbling to himself
and anyone who would listen
Something about how he used to be the
Golden Gloves champ
and had a wife and kids
who moved away
a long time ago
whose names he can't remember
whose faces are rubbed white and featureless
from pulling their photos from
an old wallet
too many times
to show people
who didn't even see him
She knew the people in line
who stood holding separate conversations
that all flowed together
like seven thousand drips
from seven thousand broken bathroom faucets
in seven hundred project buildings
sounded like a steady stream of water
and the words poured together like:
You know them bastards arrested Tyrone again and he wasn't even at that party where that man was beat half to death and my baby's daddy told the judge that
Jamel ain't his and Aunt Essie broke her hip and I don't know who's gonna pay her rent and take care of her business while she's in the hospital 'cause she don't
let nobody in that house and she don't tell nobody where her important papers be and it's a damn shame about Mildred's house burnin' down 'cause she loved
that raggedy-ass little place with them fake tulips outside but they sure were kind of nice to look at in the winter time.
Oh
The flowers are still there?
Well then
The red patent leather boots
called to her
from high on the shelf
in the shoe aisle
at K-Mart that pre-Christmas season
Maybe she would pick them up some day
Maybe there's a Law-Away Dream Department
Someplace
Maybe she'll pick one up
Some day
Maybe today