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Show 0 , ,.. lSmi byTcpIGomes A tale of Christmas past Christmas magic can come in the most unexpected ways at the most needed times. I know. The first Christmas after I was divorced, I was determined deter-mined not to need anyone and not to deny my children, then 6 and 4, a single thing. So the annual trip from our home at Tahoe to drop off gifts at my mother's home near San Francisco was scheduled in spite of the fact that I had little money and a car that had serious internal inter-nal problems. I took off that Friday morning in December in a full blizzard with packages in the back and two small children wrapped in sleeping bags. I had gone no more than 25 miles of my 250-mile trip when the heater in my car gave out. Having just read an article on hypothermia, hypother-mia, I knew it was dangerous to let the children fall asleep. So we sang Christmas carols, put the car in four-wheel-drive and spent two hours going the next 25 miles. By the time we hit our halfway point, the Nut Tree just outside Sacramento, the car had had it and started billowing smoke from under the hood. I pulled off into the nearest gas station and we spent an unscheduled hour while the attendant finally decided the car needed a new hose and some kind of fluid. Somehow, in the process, pro-cess, the heater got fixed. And I had just dropped 60 of the precious few dollars I had with me. By the time we got to my mother's, there was nardly time for my son, Randy, and I to change clothes for the theater. In my zeal to overprovide that year, I had bought, months in advance, two tickets to the American Conservatory Theatre's production of "A Christmas carol."- . . My son and I would have a night out in San Francisco. He got dressed in his little suit with his terrific English wool topcoat and I put on my best high heels and the white rabbit fur coat my mother had given me in high school. . ' . ' , , We were quite the pair. ' !. We drove back into San Francisco, parked at the Union Square garage and walked down to the theater. Things like that always made my mother nervous. She hated being out at night in The City. I loved it and was determined Randy should love it, too.' Once inside, we were both spellbound as, from our balcony seats, we watched Scrooge go through a wonderful wonder-ful fog to Christmas Past. The chains rattled and the old theater sent the sounds in a startling way up to our seats. Now, at age 14, my son swears he still remembers that performance. Show over, we walked back to the car in the cold night air and no sooner did we get out of the garage than the red trouble light in the car popped on. Randy pointed it out. So I began to search for a gas station. Even today, when I drive in The City, I can easily get turned around because of all the one-way streets. That's what happened that night. Before I knew it, my clunky Wagoneer Ruffle (with the license plate that was part of the name of my children's clothing shop, Ruffles and Ruff necks) was spewing smoke in the Castro District. The Castro is San Francisco's gay neighborhood and that Friday night in December around 11 p.m., the boys were celebrating something. The traffic slowed to a crawl and my son, who had just seen live theater within walls, now was seeing theater of the absurd on the" street. "Why is that man wearing a tutu?" Randy asked, pointing to a bearded blond in tights and net skirt on the corner. OK, what would you say to a 6-year-old boy? "Remember last year when we saw 'The Nutcracker?'" Nut-cracker?'" I asked him. "Well, I think this man saw it, too, and he's just trying to be the Sugarplum Fairy." " Wow !" was his reply . I made a turn as soon as I could and got on Bush Street, headed uphill. That's when the red light came on and the car died. In the car next to me, a young man was motioning me to pull over. Randy pointed him out. So I rolled my car over to the sidewalk and I put on the brake. The young man in the white Mustang followed suit, came over and asked me what the problem was. I tried very hard not to act like my mother would, tried very hard not to let on I was really afraid. "I had some car trouble earlier today," I told the man. "I just need to get to a gas station and get another hose, I'm sure." . "Hop in," he said. "I have a friend who works the night shift at a station on Union." I looked at my sleepy son in his brown English coat. And then at myself in my bunny fur coat and heels. We were quite the pair, all right. I grabbed Randy's arm too -tight, "No," I said. "We'll be fine." "What will you do?" he said. The thought of calling my mother, who was at home with my now-sleeping 4-year-old daughter, of asking her to come out in the middle of night to a part of San Francisco Fran-cisco she wouldn't want to be in during daylight and listening to her say, "I told you so," was more than I could bear. But it was more than 30 miles home and I didn't have enough money for that kind of cab fare. Randy asked, "What are we going to do?" So, I summoned all the faith I had in the inherent goodness of people and we got into the young man's car. True to his word, he took us to that gas station on Union, but his friend had the night off. The only guy on duty couldn't leave and my driver thought he really should get his friend to look at the car. He told the attendant atten-dant to "keep an eye on us" and he'd be back. Then he drove off to find his friend. I called mother. But as soon as I heard her sleepy voice, I told her we'd had a little car trouble, were running runn-ing late and just to go on to bed. Then I bought Randy a soft drink and the attendant struck up a conversation with my son, asking him where he'd been, all dressed up. Randy, with great pride, told him he'd been to the theater to see "A Christmas Carol." That gas station attendant suddenly became all the characters in the play while he scrubbed the station floor. Turns out he had been in. the production in better days. Randy was amazed and for a few moments, I was taken in by the whole scene. But it was now nearly midnight. mid-night. The young man in the white Mustang was nowhere to be found and I had a sick car smoking up on Bush. "Look," I pleaded, "I'm sure the car just needs a new hose. When your relief man comes in at midnight, could you just take a hose up there and could we see if that would work?" He agreed and, in minutes, we were at the car, putting on the new hose. "I don't think that's going to do the trick," he honestly told me. "So why don't you head down to the gas station on Pine and have them look at the car for you?" I thanked him, parted with $30 more and started the car up. I hadn't gone more than a block when the damn thing started to smoke again. So I drove to the station on Pine. The night shift there consisted of one Oriental man who spoke very broken English. He told me he could ' 'no look at car for 30 minutes, very busy night," which I could see. Randy started to cry. "I'm hungry, Mommy," he said. And I realized that, even though we had treats at the theater and a soda at the last station, in my rush he'd had no dinner. " I left the car and marched him across the street to the Holiday Inn, where I asked the night clerk where the coffee cof-fee shop was. She said it had closed 30 minutes ago. I didn't panic. "Then could you just order a hamburger from room service and I'll pay you?" I suggested. "Room service closed when the coffee shop closed," she said politely, but I started to cry anyway. "Don't you understand this little boy has to eat something? My car broke down at 7 p.m. and we've been on the road with problems since then. And this is his first Christmas without his father and..." I had clearly lost it. The wonderful woman told me to "sit down, honey." She went downstairs where there had been a group meeting hours before and she brought Randy a salami-and-cheese sandwich on crackers and a piece of sheet cake. Randy ate. I tried to pay her, but she just said, "Consider it a Christmas present." I took Randy back out into the cold night air and he looked up at me with those big blue eyes and said, "You know, Mommy, I think we must have Christmas magic. I think that's why everyone has been so nice to us tonight." .. I had thought I was scarring my baby for life and here the kid was talking about Christmas magic. I picked him up in the middle of the crosswalk and kissed him and " carried him in those dumb high heels back to the station. That's when, in broken English, the man told me, "Car very bad. No can fix 'til morning, lady." So much for magic. It was 1:30 in the morning, I was alone with less than $10 in my purse and a little boy who still believed in a lot more than I did during the holidays. I felt the stinging tears on my cheeks when Randy tugged tugg-ed at my sleeve. "Look Mom! "he said. And there, driving into the station, was the man in the white Mustang. Turns out he couldn't find his mechanic friend so he drove 10 miles out of the city to his own home to get some tools. The attendant at the station on Union told him he had taken me back to my car and told me if I had trouble I should go to the station on Pine. Anyway, that's how the young man said he found us. After talking to the Oriental man, the man in the Mustang said the best thing was to leave the car there until morning and where did we need a ride to? Randy piped up, "Grandma Jean's" and, while I protested, he said, "Hop in. No problem." He then drove us 30 miles to my mother's home. He never would tell me his name and he refused to take any money. When we got to my mother's home, he walked us to the door, made certain we got in all right and drove away. My mother, upon driving us into The City the next day, could hardly believe our story. She shuddered to think what might have happened to us. Randy thought it was the neatest Christmas he'd ever spent at Grandma's and it struck a vein with me that I had a lot to learn about cars, about being a single parent and about faith. Randy is 14 now and he still has nearly total recall of that night. And now, as a big fan of "The Twilight Zone," he likes to speculate about the stranger in the white . Mustang. I like to remember the night my son taught me Christmas magic comes when we least expect it. |