My Christmas Story
After 21 years of celebrating all the Jewish holidays, two weeks ago, I was privileged to be welcomed into a Christmas celebration of a family that embodies all of what I think the holiday was meant to be.
Ever since my home was destroyed in the Glass Fire, the community of Santa Rosa has held me in their arms and helped me get back on my feet. The care and empathy that friends, neighbors, and strangers have shown me in the last 3 months has been overwhelming.
One of the kindest and most generous of those who has helped me has been my new friend Linda. Linda is an antique dealer who has lived in Sonoma County for over 50 years but whose entire life has been full of remarkable adventures and stories that make her profession just an interesting sidebar to who she is as a person. Fortunately, she is always willing to share her stories with anyone who has the time to listen. And I always have time to listen to a good story, especially when it is told firsthand by someone as interesting as Linda.
Having run away at age 12 from her mother’s Sacramento home (her parents divorced when she was a toddler), Linda found her way to Haight Ashbury in 1966, where she found refuge with some hippies who lived on the same block as the Grateful Dead. She shortly became a fixture in the neighborhood and lived there for almost 4 years until she decided to head out on the road again at the age of 15. Her parents only discovered her whereabouts when her aunt saw her being interviewed on National TV along with Jimmy Hendrix as they were both “hanging out” at the Atlanta Pop Festival in 1970.
Linda eventually settled down to a more stable, if not traditional, lifestyle, marrying twice and raising 3 kids and 2 grandchildren, all of whom remain close and connected. She and her second husband, who passed away over 20 years ago collected and sold treasures from the past. For many years, Linda ran the “Nothin New” antique bazaar off of route 116 (on “Antique Row”) in Sebastopol with its infamous “Area 51” – an outdoor area where Linda had placed a variety of truly bizarre antiques guarded by some very scary “Flying Monkeys” imported directly from the Land of Oz.
I got to know Linda because Leo my 71 year old ex Deadhead hippie gardener who was helping my contractor and I renovate my place said that his friend Linda had a barn full of cool old stuff including vintage doors and fixtures that we might want for the new bathroom we were adding to one of the out buildings on my property. Not only did she have several perfectly preserved 1940’s light fixtures which we bought on the spot but Linda soon became a frequent visitor to my property where she used to bring the occasional psychedelic era relic to show us along with even more entertaining stories from her time living at ground zero for the hippie movement of the late 60’s.
When the Glass Fire came and destroyed my property, Leo’s nearby apartment also burned down and he lost everything he had as well. Linda gave him shelter at her house while he put his life together and in the weeks that followed the two of them had me over for many dinners including one to celebrate my birthday as well as a not so traditional Thanksgiving meal eaten to a late 60’s soundtrack featuring Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant emanating from the a blue tooth speaker strategically placed next to an old wrought iron glass topped picnic table in her hopelessly cluttered back yard where we ate wonderful Turkey from Victorian china plates using some great grandmother’s best silverware.
Thanksgiving was memorable but when Linda invited me over for Christmas dinner and told me there would only be 3 or 4 people there because of the pandemic, I knew I was being welcomed to a unique event and so I jumped at the chance feeling extremely lucky to be invited.
The day began at 3pm with food preparations for which Linda’s friend Cheryl Ann, another “orphan” friend who had no place to go on the holiday and I provided some unskilled labor to support Linda’s kitchen artistry. Leo was having Christmas with two of his sons, so it was just the three of us in the kitchen, though I was kicked out pretty quickly due to my incompetence and sent to the living room to start a fire in the wood burning stove.
Before the festivities began, Linda took time out to call her 89 year old father and his 85 year old step mother who are living in an assisted living community in Arizona. Cheryl Ann finished up in the kitchen and then came into the living room where we talked for about 10-15 minutes. That was the extent of my exposure to her, but it was also an opportunity to get to know her a little better. She is an “essential worker” working brutal hours for O’Reilly Auto Parts delivering car parts to all their retail stores in the Bay area and like many in the community has lived in Santa Rosa her whole life. She is also struggling economically as she was recently evicted by the owners of the house she had been renting for 20 years (the owners moved back in to wait out the pandemic) and doesn’t earn enough to live anywhere except in a tiny house in Penngrove 15 miles from town. So for her too Christmas at Linda’s was a godsend.
Even though all three of us arrived healthy and apparently COVID free, 2 days after Christmas Cheryl Ann developed a fever and on 12/29 she was admitted to the hospital with a serious case of the virus.
It had been pouring rain, so we had had to be indoors the whole time. Fortunately only a few other people stopped by during the day including Linda’s daughter, a couple of grandkids and the grandfather of one of Linda’s grandkids who was sheltering in place at her home in Ukiah. There were never more than 7-1/2 people (along with 3-4 dogs) in the house at any one time and Linda’s living room was big enough (or so we thought) so that we could keep our distance. Everyone of the subsequent visitors were completely healthy when they showed up and as far as anyone knows COVID free as well. Still it was quite a menagerie and the gift giving, eating (ham, side dishes and 3 kinds of home baked pies) and storytelling was prolific and lasted until almost 9pm.
Among the visitors was “Grandpa Joe”, the patriarch of the family and a dead ringer for Wilfred Brimley. Joe owns the house that Linda lives in (she pays him nominal rent so they can both feel good about the situation) and less than two years ago Joe lost his wife of 28 years to cancer. So for him too, Christmas at Linda’s was shelter from the storm – both figuratively and literally ( the weather on Christmas was pretty terrible).
Joe knows the detailed history of the city and is an extremely kind man even though he is very much “old school” with respect to how things (including the country) should be run. Among other things he and Linda shared with me the full story of the 3 wisemen’s visit to Jesus in the manger and how that story holds the key to why gift giving is such an integral part of the holiday. I had never paid much attention to the story and it shed and entirely new light on the meaning of Christmas for me.
Joe also told me some stories about the “old days” in Santa Rosa including some stories about the neighborhood where I was temporarily living and the oldest cemetery in Santa Rosa just a few hundred yards away from my apartment. It was those stories that was the impetus for the “field trip” I will talk about shortly.
But before I get there I want to finish by saying that the most amazing thing about the day was the way I was treated. I was warned there would be gift giving, so I brought a bunch of copies of my first book to sign and give away. My publisher had just sent me 200 more copies to replace the ones that were destroyed in the fire, and being Jewish and unfamiliar with the Christmas protocols, I hadn’t done any Christmas shopping, though even if I had considered doing so, my lack of time and fear of COVID would have kept me from going into the Mall and navigating through the crowds of people who seemed far more intent on buying gifts for friends and families than staying safe.
People were appreciative of the books I brought, but what I received in return touched me deeply. Linda had filled a giant stocking full of little antique treasures she handpicked out for me– a 1950’s mechanical pencil in mint condition, an owl’s head paperweight, a 19th century letter opener and more. In addition both she and Cheryl Ann had gotten me other “real” presents as well. It was an overwhelming and eye opening day that gave me a deeper understanding of both what Christmas and the Christmas spirit was all about.
It almost brought tears to my eyes and was a day I will never forget. And yet the disastrous aftermath of the day has been almost too much to bear in a year filled with disasters. But like most of the events of this year I am trying my best to adapt and in this case to use my time in quarantine as productively as I know how.