Holiday Wish List

This year my family has a long list of “wants” for the holidays: Dom wants an Indy raceway; Jason wants a lob wedge; Joey wants some golf shirts.

I’ve got them, though. My list is much longer and more impossible, but they’ll understand because what I want is as much for them as it is for me.

I want a piece of the crunch cake my sister’s godfather Mr. Pelenyczka brought to our holiday table every year. He was a baker at the Morris Avenue Bakery on Chicago's north side. I want to remember the indigo number tattooed on his forearm and that he began his baking career at Auschwitz.

I want the nasal twang of his wife Irena’s voice and the mole on her nose that cast a giant shadow. Mr. P met her in Munich in a displaced persons camp and found her ravishing. I want her to uncurl my hand again and run her soft fingers down the calloused ridge across my palm. I want to hear her shout to my mother in the kitchen, “Och, Musya, she is more boy zan girl. Vat kind of mah-zzer are you?”

I want to see my Estonian mother roll her eyes from one shoulder to the ceiling to the other shoulder as she brings plates from the pantry to the table. I want to feel the strength of her young hand on my arm pulling me to her and saying playfully, “Don’t pay any attention to Irena. She’s from Odessa!” as though that made everything clear.

I want the crisp collar of my grandpa Dida’s shirt and how it looked ready to burst around his thick bull neck. I want to smell the VO5 on his hair and feel the rough of his hands on my face. His hands tore open wooden crates like paper in his job as a railroad inspector after he immigrated to the US from the Ukraine via several displaced persons camps. I want to hear him talk again and know what all his words mean because I never learned to speak Ukrainian and he never spoke English.

I want the mist of my grandma Oma’s eyes and how she seemed to bloom as she stood us around the Christmas tree. We all sang Oh Christmas Tree and then she would sing in Estonian, her native tongue. Her eyes would become oceans. I could almost see her heart unmooring, casting off, returning to Tallin or Riga, dirt roads, hollyhocks and her yard full of chickens.

Falling into the rhythm and song of her mother tongue she would completely desert us. For those few moments every holiday season, my Oma, a grateful new American, would let herself go home.