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“Solitude” (reprise)

Christmas 1979

By Charles Moon

     In June of 1977, I donned my cap and gown and left the hallowed halls of Auburn Senior High School. I had survived. As the years blended together, so did the Christmases. I had become comfortable with a lackluster holiday, year in and year out. I never expected much from Christmas and never went seeking its spirit any longer. It was just the separator between the fall and spring semesters.

      College was an exponential leap in intellectual stimulation and academic challenges. I acclimated quickly to this environment and thrived in the newly found anonymity of being just one of a thousand new faces, all starting without benefit of an established peer group.  It was a time to set aside the past and concentrate on the future.

      New beginnings always bring renewed hope.

      As the first semester of my sophomore year drew to a close, the rigors of a full class schedule had supplanted the foreboding of the upcoming holidays. My daily life revolved around textbooks, class notes and extended hours in the library with brief stops at the student center for a cold hamburger and bad coffee.

      My apartment, located a block from campus, was on the second floor of a 19th century converted Victorian house, overlooking Walnut Avenue. I had the unit facing Walnut Avenue that included an octagonal turret on one corner. The turret was a peaceful sanctuary in which to read a book, study my notes or type a term paper in the warmer months of the school year. Unfortunately it was also uninsulated and had poorly fitting and un-maintained floor-to-ceiling wood-framed windows. In the winter, the slightest breezes rattled the ever-loosening glass and the draft from the turret dropped the temperature in my apartment well below the comfort level the other tenants enjoyed. The previous occupant advised me that if I hung an old comforter on an expandable shower curtain rod over the opening, it provided enough insulation to keep the room livable. It was good advice.

      It was the middle of the second week in December when my last and most important mid-term exam was scheduled. It was for the required course “A History of Architecture 101” that served as the foundation for all subsequent courses on design and style and was taught by one of the most demanding and unsympathetic professors on Campus. Jack Bastian was notorious for flunking students and rarely gave a grade above “C-minus”. Still, every student in the Architectural program at Syracuse University had to successfully complete Mr. Bastian’s course. It was a rite of passage.

      I had heard horror stories from the upperclassmen about students who dropped out after discovering they had failed the course and needed to repeat it. I found his class fascinating, although his personality was a little gruff. He refused to concede any kind of grading curve when the rest of the faculty would apply pressure to him to be a little more forgiving to the underclassmen. His rebuke to his fellow professors was that he would not compromise the school’s reputation by asking for anything less than excellence from his students. I agreed with his sentiment, if not his practices.

      After embarrassing myself earlier in the semester with a ridiculous answer to an obvious question, and being suitably redressed in front of the class, I vowed to give him the excellence he demanded. This took most of my free time and made me a recognized denizen of the library archives.

      The test had me spooked. All I knew was that it was an essay type exam and that only 70% of the class would most likely pass, let alone get a decent grade. Monday overflowed into Tuesday. My apartment looked like the west annex for the University library, with all the books I had borrowed. I ate very little and slept less. Every ounce of cognitive effort went into cramming my head full of facts and ideas concerning architecture through history.

      Late Tuesday afternoon, my eyes burned from the constant strain of reading fuzzy black print against the yellowing pages of old textbooks, so I laid down on the bed for a brief interlude in my studies. It was dark outside when I woke up. Three hours had passed since I dozed off but it was enough of a rest to rejuvenate me for the remainder of the long night ahead. A few minutes before eleven o’clock I made the familiar walk down Walnut Avenue to Sammy’s, a little hole-in-the-wall convenience store frequented primarily by the student population, so I could grab something to eat before they closed. The store was swarming with like-minded late night scholars, all wandering around in their academically induced trances, including Victor Ianello, the guy who sat in front of me in Mr. Bastian’s class.

      “Hey, Vic.”

      Victor only grunted an acknowledgment of my presence. It was the most I could expect tonight. We were all much too busy trying to keep any facts from slipping out of our already overcrowded memories before spilling out on the mid term in the morning.

      I left with a Tasty Cake éclair, an extra large coffee and half a pack of cigarettes that I had split with Victor. [Yes, Beth, I smoked. We all smoked then.]

      The coffee ran out around three in the morning and the cigarettes shortly after. By daybreak I found myself reading and re-reading the same passage in a book that I had forgotten the significance of hours earlier. I was as prepared as I would ever be.

      My exam was the first of three that Mr. Bastian would be giving that day in Watson Hall. I was thankful to be getting it over with before I forgot everything, or I collapsed from the night’s studying. I was one of the first to arrive in the lobby of Watson Hall. I took a seat outside the lecture hall at a low round table surrounded by benches. Mr. Bastian kept the doors to the lecture hall locked until five minutes before the exam was to begin so we had to wait outside. Slowly the lobby began to fill up with the 120 students who daily sat with me fervently scribbling in their notebooks while Jack Bastian flashed slides of historically significant architecture.

      At precisely 8:55 a.m. Mr. Bastian stepped out of his office and proceeded to unlock the door. The students rose and somberly filed into the room and assumed their regular places. Mr. Bastian did not say a word or look at the class. When the last person was seated, he closed the door, pulled a stack of paper from his briefcase and began passing out blank pages. Each student got three sheets.

      “This will be an essay test. You may have more paper if you require it.”

      Mr. Bastian’s crackling voice was the only sound in the hall, other than the rustling of paper as 120 sophomores braced themselves for what they had come to believe was the defining moment of their college career.

      “The examination begins now. Define and discuss the history of architecture from the beginning of recorded history to the Renaissance. You have 90 minutes.”

      I froze. He was asking for everything. The sound of the other 119 students scribbling was deafening. They had already begun to turn their pages over and continue on the reverse side when I finally put my pencil point on the paper and let the last three months of lectures, class notes and studying come pouring out. I was still writing on the front of page five when Mr. Bastian stood and cleared his throat.

      “Pencils down. Now.”

      His instruction was clear and his voice authoritative. I stopped in mid-sentence and put my pencil on the edge of the desk. It rolled off onto the sloping floor of the lecture hall and continued its journey to the podium along with a few other pencils heading in the same destination from different desks. I didn’t make any effort to retrieve it. No one did. We left as orderly as we had entered, each placing their 90 minute discourse on the top of Jack Bastian’s closed briefcase as they passed by. No one had a clue to their success or failure, including me. There was no point in second-guessing, now. It was over and I was exhausted.

      I fell asleep on top of my bed, fully clothed, at 11:00 o’clock in the morning and woke to a different world. Where there was challenge and effort before was now only a mess of papers and overdue books. Where there was anticipation and achievement, I found only waiting and uneasiness.

      My room seemed darker than it had been the previous evening.  The old comforter hanging over the opening to the turret blocked the glow of the lights on Walnut Avenue. I pulled back the heavy quilted fabric and for the first time since the chilled winds began blowing in from Onondaga Lake and noticed that the Christmas displays in the store windows and the festive lights over the lampposts were brightly blazing. The icy air pouring out of the turret into my bedroom, which was now softly glowing from the holiday lights outside, reminded me it was December. Instead of relief at the completion of my semester, instead of anticipation of going home to my family, instead of feeling joyous and merry, my heart sank. All the old feelings came rushing back to me.

      Outside, a trio of musicians in Salvation Army uniforms assembled on the corner of Walnut Avenue and Madison Street, directly under my turret. They began playing the harmonious strains of the old Christmas carols I remembered my mother singing when I was a child. I hadn’t heard mom sing since we left Philadelphia.

      I sat down on a stuffed chair – the only piece of furniture in the turret – worn from age and use. The comforter swung closed behind me and I watched my breath condense in the holiday light while listening to the music wafting up from the street into the dark, cold isolation of my apartment. I flashed back to tenth grade and the last time I looked for Christmas spirit. This year I found it. It was lurking outside my window in blue uniforms holding a trumpet, coronet and French horn. Christmas was stalking me.

      A small crowd gathered around the trio. A few people began singing. I knew all the words to all the songs from my youth in the choir and hearing my mom sing them every year as a child. I ached to join them outside in the cold night air, the warmth of their spirits uplifting them beyond any physical discomfort. But, the spirit hung in the air below mocking me. It knew, as I did, that I didn’t belong. This was somebody else’s Christmas and there was no point in my pretending it could be mine.

      I packed my car and returned to my mother’s house in Auburn in the morning. One foot inside the door and I knew I was home. Andy was at his friend’s house, Terry had moved out last year and wasn’t expected to show up for the holidays and mom was napping on the couch. The plastic tree adorned with the same ornaments, minus the few that had broken over the years, stood in the same spot it had for the last 8 Christmases. My grandparents were too old to travel and my cousins had their own traditions now that did not include seeing their northern relatives. My few friends from high school that I had kept in contact with were with their own families or had gone to spend Christmas with a girlfriend.

      The day before Christmas Eve, I walked into town and picked up a few gifts from the department store with the little cash I had saved from my on-campus job. I was afraid Christmas would arrive and there would be nothing for mom. The last thing I wanted her to think was that we did not care about her – it was the holiday that had let us down, year after year. For some strange reason, mom had never lost hope in Christmas, even after all the hardships we had faced. I bought two gifts for her and wrapped one of them with Andy’s name on it.

      Good morning, Christmas. It was one tradition I would have like to have seen fade from our family and the one that we continued without variation. A fast gift exchange followed by everyone settling into solitary activities. The season closed with a stripped turkey carcass on the counter and my hands red from scouring the remnants of the once-a-year feast off the good china. The Salvation Army band kept encroaching into my thoughts as I rolled up the silver in their fabric pouches one more time. I wished I was one of “them” and not one of “us”, if only for Christmas day.

      The best thing I received that year came the day after Christmas. I slept late only to be unceremoniously disturbed by the postman slamming the lid of the metal mailbox screwed to the front of our house. Amid the bills and catalogs and year-end coupon clearance sale notices were my grades from College. I tore the envelope open with a mixed sense of accomplishment and fear. The corners of my mouth pulled tight in the biggest smile December had seen from David Branch in a decade. Jack Bastian gave me a “B+” on my mid-term even though I flunked Christmas.

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