the kids and the Clauses take a coffee break
“Can we just talk about how this is NOT a Dairy Queen?” It’s one of my favorite quotes of all time, from a visit to a local burger ice cream shack in small town Nebraska that everyone referred to as the Dairy Queen. It was not. It wasn’t even in an old Dairy Queen building. But it was a special memory. And the phrase fits any awkward situation.
The Kohler brochure was titled “Winter Wonderland”—horse drawn carriage rides! real reindeer! and Santa!
The reindeer were 20 bucks to photograph. Also, mange.
The horse drawn carriage was indeed a carriage and had real live very nice horses, but its path was around the parking lot. And around again. The parking lot.
The shops are an outside mall, no central interior. It was cold. Windy. Cold. I lost Mom. Walking from store to store, looking for a lost woman who looks like me only deafer, I was also looking for the promised Santa.
No Santa by the carriages, no Santa by the reindeer, no Santa in any shop. No signs for Santa, no freakin Santa! I found Mom.
Fuck it, come on Mom, let’s go in to the grocery store and get a hot coffee and wait for Paul and the kids.
Paul and the kids…were inside the grocery store getting coffee! Warm, rosy cheeked, smiling. Paul wasn’t getting a coffee for me. Until he saw my face…make that a double mocha.
It was chaotic, the grocery store and coffee counter had no defined spaces, we were flustered, the lighting was weirdly dark….I make my way to a tiled area of plastic tables and chairs, the “cafe”. I’m making my big-ass-winter-coated way through to a table for us when I realize that the occupants of the neighboring chairs are Santa and Mrs Claus…on break?
This is it, this is The Winter Wonderland.
No music, no special chairs, hardly any decorations, no elves. Only two chairs, the dear sweet volunteers and a cheap ass black plastic Halloween bowl of mini candy canes.
I had a complete meltdown. Just out of frame is me, the middle-aged woman, overwhelmed mama, head down on a plastic table, sandwiched between aging parents and growing kids, with a maxed out credit card and maxed out senses, sobbing. Which, when you think about it, really is the TRUE sign of the season.