Santa

Two days after his fifth birthday I told Vern that Santa Claus is real. That was the end of December in the finished rec-room basement of his Minneapolis home where he likes to assemble the dinosaur, Spiderman and Batman Lego kits, following the directions, one bag at a time. Me, of all people, just told him that Santa Claus is real.  He took me by surprise, but what is this? He took me by surprise. “Grandpa,” he said, “Is Santa Clause real?” With no time to think, I only felt the need to protect him, I suppose, but from what? What is this?  And so I said, “Yeah he’s real,” the way love or beauty or American exceptionalism or God is real, I rationalized in an instant, a necessary concept for the preservation of our sanity in a cruel world. Yeah, that’s what I mean, I’m not lying. I’m emphasizing the abstract nature of a higher order of reality. To a five-year-old.

In my quick-thinking recovery I said, “Is Spiderman real? Is Batman real?” 

Gotcha, little buddy. I’ll save God for later.

But without my need to come up with the right answer he gave his grandpa the right answer. 

“They’re superheroes,” he said. “They aren’t real,” adding, quietly, mostly to himself, “So Santa Claus is a superhero.” (pause)

“Can you find the piece that looks like this?” I said then, pointing at the bag 3 directions and  looking at the bag 3 lego pieces spilled out onto a cafeteria tray.

If he’s old enough to ask, he’s old enough to know the truth, I think now and I had lied to the most precious fellow in the whole world like another agent of the corporate state media that have dragged us into this mess.

I was trying to make him comfortable in this world, but he knows about death already; he’s asked about my parents, so in what sense am I making him more comfortable by lying to him about something he already knows. I’ve only made myself look like a fool in his eyes and my only out now is the hope that he forgets.

Maybe he’ll forget we had the conversation, but I remember like yesterday getting no response from the Methodist preacher in Point Isabel when I was an eight-year-old asking whether or not there were insects marched two-by-two into Noah’s Ark.  At least I’d answered. But it was a lie nonetheless, designed to protect the order of things as they are even though things as they are are pretty messed up. I’m on record now, the adult in the room, another adult hiding the difficult truth from a child who only wants to assert what is true. I’m part of the problem, not the solution. 

Ten days later and eight minutes away from Vern’s home at 39th Street, on the other side of the interstate, masked agents of the federal government engaged in a roundup of people who are also wise enough to know that there is no Santa Claus murdered the mother of a six-year-old who was trying to stand between their evil and her neighbors in front of a house with a whimsical blow-up dinosaur in the yard. Now, Minneapolis has another red line on the GPS travel map and Vern has said, “Grandma, Grandma, look at the dinosaur,” from the back seat as we drive down Portland Avenue between 33rd and 34th for the last time. 

If he asks why, I’ll probably lie, thinking that I have to protect him, but I’m only protecting myself. 

I’m an American and in America the only way we protect five-year-olds from guns is by lying to them. 

I’ll probably lie, thinking that I have to protect him, but I’m only protecting myself.