IF ONLY IN MY DREAMS; or, ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES, part II

the mailwoman knocked on my door this morning early -- early enough, at least, that it could only have been someone like the mailman, even though i've never lived anywhere else that the mail came so early. i was awake and getting ready to leave the apartment, so the timing wasn't inopportune beyond my having to race back to the bathroom sink to spit out the toothpaste and rinse. dear ms. mailwoman: i will wait for your knock on every of your postal carrying mornings if you are delivering cookies.

a box of cookies. certain of the sheet varieties were uncut and packed in slabs, so i ate a four by sixer (that's about ten by fifteen, winnipeg) for breakfast. it was the kind with the graham cracker base that's held together with butter and a half dozen (that's a half dozen, winnipeg) other delectables glued on with condensed milk. we'll be looking good in control top pantyhose at the holiday formal tomorrow night.

it doesn't hurt that it hasn't yet rained today -- there's even some sunshine -- but it's for certain that cookie box is behind my re-lifted holiday spirits, and my second attempt at seasonal joviality has me remembering tender moments from holidays past.

i've been struggling to finish a final essay on tokyo, but she and i haven't been on speaking terms since thanksgiving, and, not for lack of desire or planning, the whole thing has been frustratingly slow going. however, in deciding not to use a particular japanese word to describe some of the areas of the city through which i'd walked, i landed upon a memory of december with the extended family. in japanese, the word "shitamachi" (下町) captures a collective nostalgia for a tokyo of yore in which merchants and artisans bustled among closely huddled wooden buildings and a thriving popular art scene. the term means "low town" or "low city" and names the lower lying areas of tokyo to the east of the imperial palace, contrasting them with the hillier, higher lying "yamanote" (山の手) section to the west (and, literally, "toward the mountain"). as much as some of the neighborhoods i walked seemed shitamachi-ish in comparison to others, i was rarely ever outside the west side, and when i was, i was changing stations.

in abandoning the word, however, i thought for the first time about its etymology and for the first time associated its naming with a state of relative under-privilege, a distinction that is masked at places like the shitamachi museum in ueno which "focuses on the history of the downtown [emphasis added] area and the way of life in this community," and where "visitors can see reproductions of downtown spaces, such as tenement houses or well sides surrounded by alleys and stores."

and then the flood of nostalgia. (names have been omitted to spurn the egos of the guilty.) speaking of franklinton, the area of columbus, ohio west across the river from downtown where the aunts and uncle were raised, [aunt] (who was alive before there were alternative lifestyles, by the way) insisted against [uncle] that they called it the bottoms because it was at the bottom of the hill (bonus: it's also a floodplain).

"they called it the bottoms because we were poor, [aunt]."

"don't argue with me, thomas [uncle]."

"we were poor, maria, WE. WERE. POOR."

"THOMAS, don't argue with me. WE HAD A MAID!"

if only grandma were still around to experience the legacy. instead of the nativity pageant, at christmas my family interprets scenes from "who's afraid of virginia woolf."

happy holidays.