shanenickerson.com

miracle

My four year old daughter, Lucy, is finally asleep tonight.  It is the first Christmas Eve that she really understands, and the first that my wife and I have actually had to prepare for.  Tonight, we surprised her with some flannel pajamas that "Santa made a special trip to deliver early" for her.  It's a tradition that my wife and I coincidentally both shared as children: new PJ's on Christmas Eve, from Santa.  Each moment of this season reminds me of my own childhood, and the excitement that she cannot contain is an echo of the excitement I still feel for a holiday that I keep thinking I've grown out of. 

I once wondered back in December, 2003:

"I'm a bit worried about telling Lucy about the whole Santa thing when she gets a little older. Isn't that just a giant lie that we'll be feeding her? Same with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and all of the other crazy magic things that deliver treats. Isn't it weird to lie to your kids? They're so trusting and you tell them these CRAZY stories. I'm sure we'll do it, but it sure seems twisted."

Tonight, I understand.  Kids want to believe in Santa Claus.   My parents kept Santa Claus alive for as long as we allowed them to.  Even when my brother and I knew; even when we'd found the "Walkie-Talkies" hidden in their closet, opened them, played with them for a couple of months, and then carefully replaced them in their original packaging a couple of nights before Christmas; even when all of my friends told me they knew FOR SURE that Santa was a lie, we believed.  We believed in the way that people believe that "everything happens for a reason."  We believed in the same way that people believe in Karma.  We believed because the fantasy of some kind of holiday magic was far more enticing than the reality of what was most obvious.

Tonight, as my wife and I wrapped presents, helped Lucy lay out some cookies and milk for Santa, carefully filled the space beneath our first Christmas Tree in our new house, and stuffed her stocking full of toys and treats, I felt a renewed love and admiration for my parents.  I have nothing but wonderful memories of all of our Christmases, and even though I can still remember staying awake long enough to hear my father hauling toys out of the attic to place beneath our tree, I can also remember convincing myself that Santa supplemented the presents with special ones that he delivered himself.  I believed it because I wanted to believe it.  It made more sense than trying to grow up faster than I was ready to.  Not believing in Santa meant seeing things I wasn't quite ready to see.  I opted for the fantasy instead of the more loaded reality.

Much has been written of Christmas and of Santa, and so often, people look for holes in the holiday, or ponder the "true spirit," or lament that we've lost the actual meaning of it all.  I choose to embrace the good inherent in the Christmas season.  It is love and family and memories of wonderful, magical things.  It is anticipation and reward, and belief in something bigger, whatever that may be. 

This Christmas, our first as a family of five (if you count the dog), I am complicit in the perpetuation of Santa Claus and all that he represents.  It is a lie, to be sure, but it is a lie that children want to be told; a lie they will remember fondly; a lie that I hope they one day tell.  My excitement for tomorrow is rekindled by the anticipation of seeing my daughter's eyes light up when she rounds the corner to see all of the presents under the tree.  After spending the night preparing for Christmas day, I am thankful that my parents let me believe for so long.  It is a belief I've never quite let go of, even as I eat the last bite of "Santa's" plate of cookies. 

I made sure to leave crumbs and a note as proof for Lucy. 

Hey...it worked on me. 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Ho Ho Ho to all.

news

As you may have noticed, there's not much happening here lately.  That's because most of my time is spent trying to make more episodes of funny television.  Season Two of Rob and Big premieres on MTV next Tuesday, May 22nd at 10:30pm EST. 

I know I'm slightly biased, but it's a really funny season.

In other, way different news, my wife and I will be adding a baby Nickerson boy to the family on or around November 19th. 

Woohoo!  I'm not doomed to a house filled with women for the rest of my life!  I think Elisa is equally excited because now we can "be done."

Babies and TV premieres.  Does it get any better?

an american dream

At some point, I became a creature of habit and routine.  I suppose I can trace the transformation back to the beginning of Lucy's life, when my own pursuits began to seem much less important and less precious than I long believed them to be.  I say this not to belittle my youthful plans and dreams, but merely to acknowledge that those plans and dreams were also youthfully arrogant and self-serving.  I resisted routine and stability.  I felt the need to starve as an artist to earn the reward I imagined at the other side of "paying dues."   There would be no nine to five for me, the lucky kid from New Hampshire, because I had higher aspirations.  I loathed the idea of an office job.

And now, as I settle comfortably into the second third of my life (if all goes really well), I'm slightly bemused to find myself squarely planted in an office for most of my week.  Although it is not quite a REAL corporate job, it's pretty close.  I have to choose a place to eat lunch every day, and I sit in meetings and have deadlines and deal with usual job crap.  It's the same kind of job crap you'd find at any office job in the world: conference calls you don't always have time for, unforeseen complications in workflow; compromising your opinions to allow healthy collaboration.  It definitely feels like a corpo job.   

At home, I take trash and recycling to the curb one day a week, and I live for weekends.   I've joined a softball league of thirty somethings, and I drive a car that is at the very least, a close relative of the dreaded minivan.  I come home at the end of my day and spend a couple of quality hours with my wife and daughter before they go to bed, and then I plunk myself in front of the television with a Sam Adams or an IPA to watch the shows I love.  Now that baseball season is upon us, I'll watch Baseball Tonight or the tail end of a West Coast game lingering on KCAL 9.

My life has changed more in the past three or four years than I ever thought possible.  I've somehow made the transition from college kid with a few post-college bells and whistles and life lessons mixed in, to something more like an actual adult.  I have at times lamented the passing of those carefree youthful days, but I've also settled into this new stage very comfortably.  I used to scoff at the people content to stay home on a Friday night watching "Deal or no Deal" on the couch with a beer and a bag of chips.  Now that I am one of those people, it doesn't seem so bad at all.

I'm content.  It's been a really hard place to get for me, and I'm relishing it.  I wouldn't trade my life for anyone else's right now.  The office job I have suits me just fine, and the family I come home to is better than anything I could have imagined as a naive young kid.

I may have lost some edginess and I may be a tiny bit more conservative at 35 than I was at 25, but I guess you kind of end up the person you were always meant to be, like it or not. 

The lucky ones are the ones who like it.

it's bamboo

max=beetle

There's something about dogs, isn't there?  Somehow, over the past couple of years, the dog we found at a pet rescue fair in Westchester has wormed his way into our family.  It was a tough gig for Max, coming in.  Both my wife and I were still a little raw about losing our beloved dog, Ali, the year before.  For Lucy's sake (with this excuse, we tricked ourselves), it made sense for us to eventually get another dog.  "Good for a kid to be around," we reckoned.  And a week later, Max came home to live with us, after we made a hasty decision in a dog fair full of an extremely wide variety of adoptable pets.

He looks like our old dog.  That was another reason he had a tough time winning us over.  "He looks enough like her, why doesn't he ACT like her?" we wondered, irrationally, for the first few months.  Poor Max lived in the shadow of another dog for the first year.  We were used to certain behaviors and methods of communication with Ali.  The new model, Max, didn't respond or vibe the same way that she used to.  He just wasn't HER.

And slowly, he is eclipsing her memory.  His youthful energy and pure love for us is at times annoying, but mostly welcome.  He's kind of high strung sometimes, but it's because he can't control his happiness.  He wags and runs himself into fits of sloppy panting as he bounces back and forth between the kitchen and the rugs and the hardwood floors that for him, feel more like an ice rink.

At night, when I'm sitting in my favorite spot on the couch, watching TV and on the laptop, Max lies right next to me.  Every now and then, he nudges his head under my typing arms to remind me that he's there.  He's an affectionate dog. 

He's also great with Lucy.  If you've ever seen a 3 1/2 year old around a dog, you'll appreciate how important that is.  She teases him, and tortures him with snacks that he'll never get, she pulls his hair and smacks him in the head, she chases him and then cries when he chases back.  He's never even nipped at her.  She calls him her "Little Beetle."  He loves everyone.

He's a pretty great dog (for a second-hander), and even though I was sure we made a mistake when we first got him, these days I'm pretty sure we didn't.

So now I seem to be stuck with a somewhat hyper, kinda-dumb-but-kinda-smart, skinny, white, whippet-mix as a best late night pal.  I guess there are worse things than that.