Holidays | LeeWords

September 14, 2017
by Lee Eiferman
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Window Display

For as long as he can remember, Johnny has been vacationing in Upstate New York. He owns a window shop and has found out the hard way that setting up an eye-catching display is vital to his business. It’s a window shop, after all. His latest purchase was an American flag hanging from the extended ladder off a toy fire truck, an appropriate 9/11 marker. Luckily his wife Nancy has the patience of a saint, except when she’s around a fresh water lake. She gets mean when the temperature slides past 80.

February 20, 2015
by Lee Eiferman
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Belated President’s Day Story

There’s a part of the story that you never hear. You know the tree? The cherry tree? The one he chopped down? It wasn’t even on his property. That’s the part they never tell you.

He saw the tree. Something about the tree got under his skin. Made him itch with annoyance. So, he chopped it down. I always pictured him doing the fateful (and, to judge it by contemporary standards, illegal/nasty) in February because that’s the time of the year I think about him. President’s Day, right?

Was he pissed at his neighbor? Had there been some infraction? A slight at a party perhaps, or unintentional lapse in civility? Rumor has it that it had something to do with a blue-ribbon hog and a long rotting fence that ran the perimeter of the barn. Words were exchanged. Heated words that tipped beyond the balance towards…If he was truthful with himself, he’d have to admit, in retrospect, that this “friction” with his neighbor took up way to too much of his time. At night, listening to the crickets, he’d pick at this memory till it hardened like a scab.

And was the next event, the next salvo the chopping of the cherry tree? The President to be and the Farmer had two kids. As luck would have it there was a son and a daughter who grew fond of each other and shared long walks to school. That got longer. And later, lingering deep into the night.

One night the daughter didn’t come home. The President to be, let’s call him “George” went to the Farmer to see what’s what. Sure enough, the Farmer’s son didn’t come home either.

After two months of waiting, George chopped down the cherry tree.

And that’s the real story.

April 18, 2014
by Lee Eiferman
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Real Estate

They met not in the first blush of youth, nor even in its sigh. They were both well into their forties, with clear ideas of who they were and what they wanted. And yet, when they met, when they hooked up for the first time, it was explosive. Smitten, he told her that he’d build her a palace, a grand home, nestled on a sweet suburban street. She smiled sweetly, tried to tell him that a grand home on a suburban street wasn’t really her thing. But a few weeks later, eyes sparkling, he unfurled the blueprints. The house was huge just as he had promised. Even to her unpracticed eye it seemed that the term “nestled” in reference to how the house squatted on the lot was putting it too kindly. To be accurate, the house was more crammed than nestled on the quarter acre. On the same day they got married they broke ground. They posed for pictures, she in her white wedding gown, he in his tuxedo. They framed their favorite picture of the two of them, one foot each resting gently on a brand new spade shovel, the tip of which dug into the compacted dirt. There were delays in construction. Their friends chuckled as one angry story after another commandeered the conversation and told the newlyweds it was to be expected. And while the sex was still hot they seemed to have lost their way. Finally, the house was ready. A house she had never wanted and he had come to hate. They lasted in their perfectly appointed new home through Christmas and then abandoned the house to the hungry realtors, to move back to her cramped, rent controlled studio apartment to try again.

February 19, 2014
by Lee Eiferman
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Take the Devil by the Hindmost

Throughout this brutal winter, Eli went diligently first thing in the morning to shovel out his car. It was generally understood on his friendly little block that this spot in front of his townhouse was his. Good manners prevailed through the end of January, right before the last Nor’easter, when suddenly, without warning, the rules changed. Just like every other snow day, Eli was out first thing shoveling. He shoveled as the snow accumulated and the plow trucks undid his hard work. He shoveled and salted so that when he came home that evening he could park, pour himself a stiff drink and call it a day. But when he arrived home that night, another car, a candy-colored Kia to be specific, was backing into his spot. Eli pulled up behind the offending car, jumped out and slapped the other car’s trunk. The other driver, twice Eli’s size, emerged from his car ready to rumble. He wasn’t exactly swinging a golf club; in fact he wasn’t swinging anything other than his square jaw, which seemed to glide back and forth in rhythm with Eli’s pounding heart. Visions of being beat up in Middle School flooded Eli’s imagination as he stood there poised, ready for battle. Having just renewed his health insurance policy, Eli felt bold, furious, and reckless. Crazy like a fox.

(Photo: Dow Sumney)

December 22, 2013
by Lee Eiferman
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A Sense of Permanance

Todd doesn’t have a rebellious bone in his body. Never has. He loves the ebb and flow of the year marked by holidays and traditions. In the weeks leading up to his high school graduation, at a public school no less, albeit in the suburbs where a bit more effort is spent fostering the importance of community and continuity, Todd lived in a state of high awareness. Every moment was laced with significance marking the “end of an era”, Todd liked to crow with a faux reverb. The tears however were real. “The last time we’ll cut out of school to wolf down kimchi in Flushing, the last time we’ll do detention together, the last graduation party.” Todd was sure these friendships would last forever. Five years later, Todd found himself alone, with not a friend in sight. Unsure of where he might find what he needed, namely a sense of permanence, Todd secured a lowly position at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, an institution chosen because of its rich and august history. Now Todd delights in taking young couples on tour of the galleries, helping them to identify the perfect place to propose and then tie the knot a few months hence. In this way, Todd is certain that the love he pours into the Met will be reciprocated. Young, sparkly couples wave to him as he passes through the Egyptian wing, a favorite spot for popping the question but hard on the knees for the one doing the asking. Tonight there is the tree lighting ceremony. Todd, for one, can’t wait.

December 4, 2013
by Lee Eiferman
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Annual Review

In the days leading up to her annual review, Cindy shuts down in a very specific sequence. First, she stops watering her plants. Then she eliminates her daily shower. Years ago, she did this and her annual review was nearly stellar which is how these behaviors became part of her early December ritual. On the final days leading up to the dreaded appointment, sleep evades her and her appetite wanes until all she can tolerate is cottage cheese on Melba toast. Mind you, Cindy has never received a negative annual review. She is in some sense the ideal employee. Conscientious. Personable. Always willing to stay late. But, it’s those ill-considered corrections that get to her. Where is it written, she wonders, that there’s always room for improvement? What if I’m perfect just the way I am, she wants to ask at the end of the interview. But she never does, because then she’d be accused of demanding the last word. And next year, she’d be told that she tends to hog the spotlight or something equally inane.

October 31, 2013
by Lee Eiferman
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Hung Up On Halloween

Worse than a rainy Halloween night is a cold rainy Halloween night. But even worse than that, Alex has recently discovered, is a perfectly clear night where all you have as cold comfort are the lush memories of trick or treating from childhood. Alex stocks up on candy, keeps his pharmacy open late, trying to catch a bit of the Halloween juju. With every box of Junior Mints and Reese’s Pieces he deposits in the bag of a vampire, a witch or Michael Jackson, Alex feels the tug of the past. Sometimes the feelings come on so strongly that Alex, in between waves of kids riding surges of sugar, stands, stamps his foot to bring himself willfully forward, into the present, where he is husband, bread-winner, father, on the cusp of becoming a father-in-law. Maybe at some point a Grandfather, the kind that would happily take his grandchild trick or treating even on a cold, rainy Halloween.

October 30, 2013
by Lee Eiferman
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Staying Busy

Some people love love love being busy. The more stuff on their calendar, the happier they grow. Monday straight through Sunday without a break leaves them purring. Whereas Stacy, is just the opposite. She accepts invitations to dinner, to the movies, an outing with friends only when she must and with the greatest reluctance. In the days leading up to the appointment, Stacy’s sense of forward momentum sputters. Time is marked strictly as a before and after the scheduled event ordeal. She recognizes that her shrinking appetite for what others might call adventure dampens her outsized ambition. So she makes deals with herself to ensure that her social calendar maintains a feeble pulse. Instead of all the busy toing and froing from restaurant to museum, Stacy would rather watch a film made before the advent of color, preferably something featuring wise guys with snappy come backs. With her cat in her lap and her fingers dancing between the bowl of Jiffy Pop and her mouth, Stacy couldn’t be happier. Naturally, her perfect bliss won’t last, what with her cat’s kidneys failing and her old box TV on its last tubes.

February 15, 2013
by Lee Eiferman
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Good at Pretend

It shouldn’t have been easy for Sasha and Becky to pretend there was nothing going on, but it was. They both excelled at the game or so they thought. Not for a second was anyone fooled. Sasha had a habit of heading over to the espresso machine at an island in the middle of the vast and silent office where everyone wore headphones and the only sound was the click of the keyboards. Moments later, Becky sauntered over. Honestly, that’s all it took. Without comparing notes or gossiping about the pair, people in the office just assumed the two were a secret item. On Valentine’s Day, Becky received a delivery of two dozen red roses from her alleged boyfriend pursuing an MBA at Indiana State. Poor Becky, embarrassed, dutifully put the roses in a vase and parked them by the receptionist rather than at her desk. That night, Sasha arrived at her door with a feeble bouquet of ratty chrysanthemums explaining as he stood there, that they were all that remained at the local bodega. Becky, having walked across town for lunch and seen minions of men bearing bouquets, believed him. Did Becky find Sasha’s last minute flakiness endearing or was it the nail in the coffin? Feigning indifference at the office is, after all, a powerful aphrodisiac.

January 21, 2013
by Lee Eiferman
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Should

It is an historic day, Sheryl observes from afar, without a quickening in her pulse or a sense of strange euphoria washing over her as it did four years ago. Then, her history teacher, pausing in her headlong rush towards prepping the kids for their AP exams, wheeled a TV into the classroom and had everyone watch Obama’s 2009 inaugural. In exchange for this fleeting moment of ease, the teacher didn’t issue an assignment to write a paper, a poem or even a statement that would be pinned to the board. Her simple instructions were to “take it in” as if this positive mutuality between citizen and state was so fleeting that it would never occur again. Today, Sheryl sips soup on her parent’s couch while watching the proceedings. Hillary in glasses. Bill clutching her hand as they make their way up the stairs. Sasha playing with her purple woolen gloves that don’t seem nearly warm enough. Sheryl should be at school, at college. Instead, feeling a deep dislike for the “shoulds” that have ruled her life thus far, Sheryl informed her parents when they picked her up at JFK for winter break, that she would not be going back to school. Ever. Throughout the holiday period her parents bombarded her with questions, jaded comments, but Sheryl stood firm. Now, her parents are worn down, seceding their control and will over their daughter’s life to her. Maybe she’ll get a job at the local bakery or publish a literary magazine or visit a friend in Dharamsala or Shanghai. After Richard Blanco’s poem which adds a bit of well, poetry to the ritual, Sheryl heads to the kitchen, grabs a knife and carves herself a generous hunk of dark chocolate. She probably shouldn’t do that and that’s why she does.

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Category Archives: Holidays