JULY 13, 2023 – (Cont.) I remember especially well the Christmas when I was five. I’d begged Mother to allow me to stay up until Uncle Bruce returned from his day of shopping in downtown Minneapolis, but he was unusually late, and Mother finally insisted that I go to bed. She promised that when Uncle Bruce came home, she’d send him up to my room to say good-night. I lay awake, wondering where Uncle Bruce could be. Expecting him at any moment, I trained my eyes on the sliver of hallway light that Mother allowed had into my room by leaving the door slightly ajar. After what seemed like two hours, I heard adult voices downstairs, then footsteps ascending the stairs—not Dad’s two-at-a-time footsteps, not Mother’s gradually accelerating footsteps, but Uncle Bruce’s heavy, steady footsteps. I sat up in my bed, just as the sliver of light widened into a burst of glory, revealing Uncle Bruce’s silhouette.
“Hey! You’re supposed to be asleep!” he said in an excited, half-whisper. “I spent all day at Santa’s workshop. He asked about you and your sisters, and I said, ‘The sisters are all good little girls—but Eric—well, he’s a good little boy when he’s asleep!” Uncle Bruce let out a soft laugh.
My eyes must have been as big as quarters, since I honestly believed all his words, and I could readily picture every detail of his exchange with Santa. I worried, though, that in his attempt to humor Santa, Uncle Bruce had forgotten to impart critical information about what I wanted for Christmas. Uncle Bruce was known for forgetting things, little things, like where his wallet was or where he’d left his pen, and he and Mother and Dad would laugh about such occurrences and in those contexts, I would hear the word, “absent-minded.” I worried that Uncle Bruce had been “absent-minded” when talking to Santa Claus.
But I needn’t have worried. “And then . . .” Uncle Bruce went on, “. . . and then Santa introduced me to some of his elves, and they offered me tea and we sat down right there in the workshop and had a wonderful visit, and I got to tell them all about you and things that you wanted and they took notes and they said, ‘We’ll get right to work on Eric’s order!’” Great relief swept over me, and close behind the relief was a wave of admiration for Uncle Bruce, who, unlike my parents, had proved that he had the will and the desire to go straight to Santa Claus, had the magic to gain access to Santa’s workshop and to meet him and his elves. No letters in the mail, no uncertain, non-committal, “I’ll see what I can pass on to Santa,” but action, pure and simple. Action that took our dear, reliable straight to the source of all Christmas goodness. After Uncle Bruce said, “Now it’s bedtime for you and time for me to eat some supper,” I plopped my head back down on my pillow. I stared up into the darkness and wondered, Why couldn’t this man, this uncle with the generous spirit move out to Minnesota and live near us, so that he could sustain Christmas for us the whole year round?
His departures from Minnesota were as predictable as his arrivals, but they were far more involved. They occurred on New Year’s Day, and late in the morning, when Uncle Bruce’s suitcase was packed and ready to go, we all piled into Dad’s Buick Super and drove down to a restaurant at a motel kiddy-corner from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. We’d meet Ga and Grandpa for a brunch at the restaurant, where the napkins were cloth and there was a single red rose in a vase on every table.
After the meal, all of us would cross the street and climb the mighty staircase of what in those days was the grand entrance to the art museum. The grown-ups walked very slowly through the museum and spent an interminable amount of time in front of this painting and that and talked among themselves about the art. I spent half my time tugging on someone’s hand and the other half walking up and down the corridors but never completely out of the sight of someone in the family. At the end of each tour, we crowded into the gift shop for a look, and then Uncle Bruce said good-bye to my grandparents, and he and our family would get in the car and drive to the airport.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
