The Christmas Pageant
Stephen Mosher
School play productions are the worst, aren’t they? Well, to be fair, I don’t know what they are like these days, but when I was a kid, they were the worst. They were even more awful when going to small private schools in Europe, where the budgetary restrictions were considerable. And when you have had delusions of grandeur all your life and a desire to be a rich and famous movie star, doing Christmas pageants at a small Catholic school run by Irish nuns did not, quite, match the Florenz Ziegfeld visions running around inside your little gay brain.
Nevertheless, I was put in the Christmas pageant at St. Dominic’s, a school that I attended for most of my sixth grade experience, until Me Father decided to pull me and move me to St. Columban’s because he felt I wasn’t getting enough masculine influence (all those nuns, doncha know). I was happy to be moved because those nuns were hateful and the students were dreadful bullies, the boys, the girls, everyone - dreadful bullies. I was one of the punching bags there, but there were some girls in my grade who got it even worse than me, from the other girls, naturally. There I was, though, cast as one of the three wise men in the Christmas pageant and I told My Mam that I just had to have the best costume possible.
Juana Mosher was not the daughter of Marjorie Blanco for nothing.
In the Sixties and the Seventies my Mother wore hats. Mama loved her hats, and she loved them devotedly. One of her favorites was a black velvet turban, long since lost (otherwise it would, currently reside by me and Pat), and I watched, during the days leading up to the Christmas pageant, as Mama turned that black velvet turban into the most sumptuous garment I had ever seen. Mommy was also a wearer of scarves, and she took my favorite of her scarves, a white scarf filled with swirl after swirl after swirl in varying shades of blue - navy blue, sky blue, sea blue - and she wrapped the scarf around the turban, delicately and meticulously forming the garment over the plush black so that it fit like a second skin - there were no wrinkles, there were no creases, only a blue and white turban fit for a King. Then, Mama took her pearls ( a long strand that she often looped around her neck but that she also knotted and wore in one long length) and she adorned the turban with them, making perfectly even, symmetrical drapes of the pearls, all the way around the headpiece. Finally, Mama took her silver brooch and fastened it dead center in the front of the hat, shining from the forehead as pearls dripped on either side of the pin. She fitted the turban to my ten-year-old head and showed me the effect in a mirror. I looked beautiful. I looked beautiful because I looked like her. It was the most glamorous and sophisticated I had ever felt. It was the most visible and important I had ever felt. I knew that I would be the prettiest student in the school during that Christmas pageant.
But that wasn’t all.
The three wise men brought gifts. I would need something to make me look like a right and proper gift-bearing wise man. Mama went to her china hutch and took out her butter dish, the fancy, shiny silver one that she used on special occasions. This would be the receptacle in which my wise man would present his offering to the Baby Jesus. I couldn’t believe that Me Mother would be letting me take this precious piece of her dining ware to school to be in a class play … but she did. And on the day of the pageant not only did I feel pretty, visible, elegant, and important but people told me I looked amazing, paying me many compliments. Mama did that. Mama made me pretty. Mama made me visible.
Starting about twenty years ago (maybe fifteen but it feels like twenty), every time I went to visit Me Mother and Father, each of them took an opportunity to say to me, “We have started working on our wills and our bequests, so be sure to tell us what you want.” This being a discussion no loving child wants to have with their parents, often I demurred. However, as time passed, as years passed, as these discussions became of growing importance to them, I decided to respect their wishes and participate in the talk. I didn’t want anything valuable - I only wanted the sentimental objects to which I had personal associations from my youth. I wanted the butter dish. I wanted the butter dish and I said so, and Mama strode directly to the china hutch, removed it and said, “Here, take it right now. We never use it and you should have it, now.”
During one of my last trips home, Me Father asked me if there was anything I wanted to take home to New York and I went to Mama’s jewelry chest. She now lives, permanently, in a Memory Care Facility, where jewelry is a mistake because things get misplaced, things get moved, things get taken. Her treasured jewelry collection is in the Master Bedroom of the Mosher family homestead, in her jewelry chest. I don’t want the valuables. I don’t want the pearls. They are valuable. They should be with one of the women of the family, perhaps my sister, maybe a granddaughter, but they should not be with me. I went to Me Father with the brooch enclosed in my hand. As I approached him, I opened up my hand, the fingers unfurling before him. He saw the brooch and he nodded yes.
The turban? Long gone. And the scarf… the scarf had a sad but loving resting place that will be detailed in a future story - suffice it to say, it is also long gone.
But the butter dish and the brooch live with me and Pat at Two-A… and they get used. They are loved, they are shown, they are given life. We have trotted out the butter dish for especially fancy luncheons, and any time there is an occasion for dressing up (like the Vanessa Williams show), the brooch adorns the lapel of my jacket, and there are always compliments, which I proudly and graciously accept, on behalf of my Mother.
There are no photos of me in the Christmas Pageant… except for the photos in my memory. But they are clear, as clear as the pride I have for my creative, artistic, and ingenious Mama, the best costumer ever.
