When PeeWee was age 8, her Mama announced "You are getting older. It's time for you to learn about Quality."
Mama pointed to the bedroom floor. She frowned at the heaps of nicked leggo blocks, the dolls with scuffed cheeks and dust-darkened hair, the stuffed toys with mangy hot-pink fur.
"All plastic, I hate plastic. Nothing of value, nothing which endures," Mama shook her head in disapproval., "Nothing here teaches anything; there's nothing here which you can carry with you into later life. You do want to own things of quality, don't you?"
PeeWee nodded. PeeWee really wasn't sure what Mama was talking about, but she knew that Mama always required a nod. The Sunday school books portrayed God as an old man with a long white beard and bulging muscles, but PeeWee knew that God really was a 5 foot 5 inch tall, stocky matron with all-knowing eyes and a screech audible throughout the universe. God even liked to wear cameo brooches and 18 karat gold watches.
"Christmas is coming in two months, " Mama continued, "So it's time for you to start thinking about what you'll ask Santa for."
PeeWee recalled the conversation about Santa from the Christmas before. Father and Uncle Billy had sunk into the embracing cushions, sleepy from overeating and staring hypnotized at one of those cartoon Christmas specials on the big TV.
"When I look at that Santa guy," Billy had drawled, "I don't feel so fat. And he's been around what? - 400 years, morbidly obese with no doctor and no history of heart attacks. And I bet he doesn't get excercise either. Bet he doesn't go hunting polar bear with his trusty Remington. The real miracle of Christmas is Santa's longevity; someone should study the dude's DNA. And Macys might send Ole Blubberybelly a new outfit. That fake ermine on red velvet's really tacky, makes him look like a fat French king with no taste."
"Well," Father had muttered, "All this nonsense keeps the economy going. I was doing some calculations: The number of dollars spent between Halloween and Christmas in America just about equals the defense budget."
"Talking about commercialism," Billy'd continued, "I was reading where the church got really angry at some chain store in Mexico. They were selling crucified Santas; plug it in, the plastic Santa glowed and little bulbs all around the cross blinked on and off. Those crucified Santas were selling like hotcakes from hell, until the church issued an edict. And they were selling reindeer nativity scenes, with Rudolf kneeling by baby Jesus while a red bulb in his nose flickered. Of course, whenever I see Rudolf, I think 'Where else do we see shiny red noses? On drunks! If Rudolf tries to drive that sleigh, the cops should haul him over for a sobriety test and let him belch in jail."
"What the heck," Father had shrugged, "Pine trees don't even grow in the area where Christ was born; if we were going to do this thing right, we'd hang balls from cactus needles. Heck, the only reason I do it all is because of Jackie. She's gotta have her tree every year."
"Like Margie and her freak magazines; if she doesn't read about one alien abduction or one baby born with three heads each week, she thinks the world's coming to an end. Oh well, people gotta have something to look forward to."
PeeWee recalled that conversation and nodded to Mama.
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The next day was "Quality Initiation Day".
"It's time to focus on Quality," Mama intoned, as she drove down the oak lined roads which led to her favorite shopping hang-outs. "Stuffed toys fall apart in a year. You'll get bored with that doll in two weeks and throw it in the closet. You know that, don't you? So now it's time to focus on something which will have value in the future - like a silverware set, or mahogany lowboy for your bedroom. You should start a collection which you'll add to throughout life."
PeeWee stared out at distant houses as tiny as leggo blocks, at oak leaves glowing overhead like a twilight sky. The car stopped in a small lot, in front of Edgewater Antiques.
"Santa can't afford to buy you antigues," Mama declared, "He has to buy gifts for all those starving kids in India. But they sell quality reproductions here too - Kittinger, Stickley, which all go up in value over time. Queen Anne and Chippendale. I already called the storeowner; there are several lowboys for you to look at." Mama marched towards the store; PeeWee followed, like a puppy trotting behind its owner.
"Now feel here, how smoothly these scrolls are carved; compare this to the sharp edges on the lowboy over there, Look at how the grain of the wood follows the contour of the leg," Mama lectured, while the shopkeeper watched from a safe distance. "That's better workmanship. Quality. When you choose furniture, you should always go for good workmanship; quality endures."
PeeWee knelt on the carpet, holding back a sneeze at the dry mustiness which wafted up from its fibers. She ran her forefinger along the inner curve of the leg, feeling the smoothness, then noticing the black ellipse of grime which had adhered to her skin. She peered closely at this leg and that, at this drawer facing and that table top, trying to see the flow of the grain through a dust glaze.
"She's deciding what she's going to ask Santa for," Mother confided to the stopkeeper. "She's decided that she wants to invest in the future, for when she has a home of her own. I told her that was a smart move."
"Have you decided which one you want?", Mother called out a few minutes later.
The store smelled of dusty desolation; its tables were covered with the grimy veneer of timelessness, of values too ancient to be personally relevant. Tarnish meant sterling underneath; irregularities in grain meant real wood instead of veneer. Quality was like Beauty and Goodness and Truth, a ghost seen by only a few and a mystery to everyone else. PeeWee wasn't a connoisseur, would never understand Quality. But Mama, the expert, had repeatedly praised the smooth scrolls of the lowboy beside the yellow taffetta chair; Mama's praise was the clue.
"I like this one best," PeeWee piped, standing erect before Mother's favorite.
"I'm glad that you have good taste, like your mother; you didn't inherit that from your father's side," Mama muttered on the drive home."Right after Thanksgiving, we'll take you to see Santa; he has to put in his order early, for such a big item".
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The Ford Bronco, filled with three people and a pile of mandatory gifts, rumbled towards the Christmas house.
"I wonder what she's going to dump on us this year? That woman's taste is up her ass--"
"Sam!", Mother exclaimed, then jerked her chin to indicate the child in the back seat.
"Her taste is up the whazoo," Father muttered, "I wonder where she finds that stuff. What did you ever do with last year's monstrosity?"
Margie had given Mother a four foot tall brown candle carved to resemble an owl; it reportedly could burn nonstop for a month.
"Janie has it".
"Who, that retarded lady from your watering hole?"
"It's not a watering hole; it's a coffee counter in a luncheonette," Mother retorted. "And Janie's not retarded, she's just a little girl. She's afraid of doing anything on her own, but that's what happens when you're 45 and have always lived with your mother. She's whiny and can't cope, which makes her look stupid. When I heard her raving about all the stuffed toys and Disney dolls she's collected, I knew she was the solution to the ugly gift problem. Of course, I didn't tell her it was a cast off. She was thrilled with the owl, was going to put it next to her Cinderella doll".
"At least Margie can take care of herself. But I wonder about them - your brother with his toy trains upstairs, Margie with the downstairs and the lawn."
"Those trains are Lionel collectibles," Mother snapped, "Do you know how much he could get for each one? And the lawn's.....unique. You can't miss the house."
The house was one of several hundred identical, prefabricated, clapboard and brick split levels set on a barbered green slab. Over the years, residents had added shutters, planted bushes and colored the clapboard, so that their homes could be distinguished by more than the number over the door. Locally, Aunt Margie's house had become a landmark; when giving directions, people would say "It's four driveways past the elf house" or "Hang a right just after the house with the elves". Fat cement elves in red vests prepared to strut, their chubby fingers twisted around painted suspenders. Lean elves in green lederhosen pranced in foursomes under the spruce. Ruddy cheeked elves in bright yellow caps squinted at the sky. Grinning pot-bellied elves sat cross-legged on the hard soil, welcoming visitors with plump outstretched arms.
"There they are!", Uncle Billy sang out.
"Jackie! Sammy!," Aunt Margie trilled, "Come in! Let me take our coats! Here, Jackie, open your present!"
"Good to see you," Father mumbled.
"Here, PeeWee, tell your aunt what Santa brought you"
A Betsy-Wetsy doll that really peas in its pants and really neato walkie-talkies, PeeWee almost blurted, recalling the line she'd rehearsed for the schoolyard. "A lowboy", she grunted.
"She's investing in her future ---"
"Here, Jackie, this one's yours." Margie chirped, flitting back from the Christmas tree and propping a tall foil-wrapped box before Mother. "This is for you!", she exclaimed, "I saw it and instantly thought of you. And Sam, this one's your's".
Father gazed expressionlessly at the men's after-shave lotion, in a dark green bottle shaped like a squirrel.
"We wanted to get you something you could use," Billy explained. " Margie bought it but I figured, a man can always use this. And you're supposed to save the bottle, they're collector's items; in twenty years, you'll get some money for that bottle. It was a choice between this and a pen set, but Margie wasn't sure how you felt about fountain pens."
"Thank you," Father muttered, "It was very thoughtful of you." Later, he would add it to the other, unopened, glass aftershave bottles gathered at one corner of his basement desk; there, beside a sprinkling of rusty nails and above dented drawers, a mouse, a rabbit, a moose and a woodchuck waited patiently to become collectibles.
Mother winced briefly when she saw the words "Toy World" in looping red script, then pursed her lips into a thin smile as she opened the box to see a 3 foot tall panda bear wearing a Coolie hat.
"He's from China," Aunt Margie chirped. "Now pull the string under his chin! See? Look at all those little lights flashing at the edge of his hat? And if you push the button on his back, he sings 'Jingle Bells' and claps his paws!"
"Well, Margie," Mother warbled in falsetto, "It's very....different. I'm sure I'll find the perfect place for it."
"Well, now that the nonsense is over," Uncle Billy mumbled to Father, "I bought some good red wine----"
"PeeWee! We almost forgot PeeWee!", Aunt Margie shrieked. "Bill, get that envelope from under the tree. And don't knock down the tiger!"
Twenty stuffed grizzlies, giraffes, lions, hippos, parrots and other animals paraded along the back of the sofa, each wearing an original "Authenticity of Purchase" tag around its neck, proclaiming it a "genuine Steiffer toy". A giant white polar bear lounged in a wing chair; a waist high tiger, sitting erect with vigilent glass eyes, guarded the bay window. A plastic, spotted cow's head groaned "moo" when someone tugged at the ring looping through its nostrils. Three brightly painted cuckoo clocks squawked simultaneously. Spotlessly clean, pink glass piglets posed beside wind-up music box roosters on the shelves. Wolf skins draped over chair backs. The living room was, according to Uncle Billy, "Margie's place, she does what makes her happy".
"We didn't know what to get a child," Aunt Margie panted, as she handed over the envelope. "So, we got you money. We aren't used to shopping for kids."
"She knows that the pieces will add up," Mother asserted as she followed Aunt Margie towards the kitchen nook. "A lowboy now, a pair of candle sticks at birthday time. And she knows to pick quality, quality lasts. Eh, what did Santa say when you asked him for a lowboy?"
"That's one way to furnish your house," Uncle Billy chortled as he flicked through stations on the big TV. "Maybe there's some use for that Santa bloke after all. Sam, reach in that bucket and get me the bottle opener".
"If I had my way," Father growled as he handed over the opener, "I'd get up at noon, maybe eat a grilled cheese sandwhich for dinner. None of this 'tree up, then tree down; wreath up, then wreath down' business. It's a ritual of spending lots of energy to go nowhere, and people everywhere seem addicted to the ritual. Thank God it keeps the economy going. Eh, who knows, maybe people would go insane if they didn't have these rituals telling them what to think about."
"Jackie, Jackie, look, you've got to see this!" Aunt Margie squealed as she rustled pages of the National Enquirer. "Look, it says 'Arizona octuplets proven to have father from Alpha Centuri. Scientists discovered chemical compounds unlike any seen on earth when they examined blood from the green babies who, in addition to glowing in the dark, seemingly can move objects at will. Their mother, who manifests no pyschic ability herself, states that the father simply vanished one night from their bed. Astrobiologist Lulu Frenzy, of the California Institute of Paranormal Research, hypothesizes that he may have been a shapeshifting alien capable of transforming himself into a noncorporeal entity and wonders if the infants will show a similar talent for self transformation'. Ooh, and look at this one, Jackie - 'Archeologists find 2000 year old shroud, identical to the one found in Turin, under Navaho ruins'"
"She has a natural knack for recognizing quality," Mama interrupted. "PeeWee - how about if you set the table for dinner."
Outside, colored lights twinkled below moonlit clouds and an oak spread out its gnarled branches like tentacles. PeeWee set the table, then sat at her usual place, ready for the slice of stringy oversalted ham, the spoonful of liberally peppered potato salad, the sauerkraut that dripped nose-tingling vinegar, and the Bavarian chocolate cake imported from New Jersey.
