I was working on my sister’s Christmas present when I remembered to tell Melanie that we had plans coming up. This was because my gift to Stephanie (baby sister) was a 2021 planner, filled with tabs, stickers, and places to write notes. Stephanie has two daughters who are two and four. Her life runs by their schedules, so I thought it would help to get her something where she could write down all the doctor visits, birthday parties, and such. But I was adding my own special touch to it.

In my immediate family we pull names for Secret Santa so that we don’t have to spend too much money. The holiday get together then becomes more about seeing each other than presents. But this year, because we’re all being frugal and trying not to die, we weren’t going to gather. Stephanie suggested that instead of buying our person a gift we could do something special for them. I drew her name, and I wanted to write a list of positive affirmations just for her but when I saw the planner in Barnes & Noble I had to get it. Thus, I was writing positive affirmations on every month of the planner. And because it’s a planner I remembered to tell Melanie that we had plans coming up.

Something I’ve had to practice in my marriage is letting my wife know when we have plans. Since I haven’t been married in eleven years, sometimes I forget that I can’t just plan things and not tell her. If I don’t, things like this happen:

Melanie calls me from work. “Man,” she says. “I can’t wait to come home and change into my pajamas.”

Though she might not fall asleep until 1:00 in the morning, the girl likes throw on her jammies at 4:30 in the afternoon.

“Before you do that, can you help me light the grill?” I ask. “We’ve got friends coming over.”

“We do?”

“Oh, did I not tell you?”

“No. How many?”

“Not many. Just Kathy and Kristen. And Morgan. And Desi. And Charly and Tricia.”

“Um.”

“And Dad.”

I have also found it helpful when I ask if she minds before I invite ten people over.

Anyway, I start most days by going over our schedule and making sure that we are both aware of what we’ve agreed to do with other people and whether or not those events allow pajamas. Usually Melanie consents to these plans, as they are few and far between lately. But around the middle of December she started to double check the exact days of things without explaining why.

“I got us tickets to go on the Christmas lights driving tour on the 14th,” I said, during dinner on a day that was not the 14th.

“Cool,” she said. Then she squinted in that I’m-thinking-very-hard kind of way. “What day of the week is that?”

“A Monday.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Why, have you got something going on?”

“Not that you need to know about.”

At that moment I needed to know about it. “What is it?”

“Nothin.'”

“But it’s so clearly something.”

“Shush,” she said.

I did not shush as instructed. I bugged her about it whenever I could, but she wouldn’t say when she had something planned, what it was, or why I couldn’t know about it.

I wondered if she was my Secret Santa, but chucked the idea because she had just made a gift for her person. Besides, she wasn’t my Secret Santa, she my Obvious Santa who made no secret about getting me stuff.

I figured that it had to be a fancy date. In my mind, it was the only logical conclusion. A fancy, dancy Christmas date with just the two of us. I kept imagining a horse drawn carriage ride with pretty white lights all around us. I didn’t know what to wear, but I figured she would come up with some reason to suggest that we dress posh one night.

Three days before Christmas she sent me a text that said, “Hey can you cook dinner early today?”

“For sure!” I wrote back. “How early? Like, before I pick you up?”

“Yes please, ma’am.”

We’ve been sharing a car lately, and I’m on winter break at work so I’ve been dropping her off and picking her up at the zoo. The information provided, “Can you cook dinner early?” translated it to, “Feed the teens before you leave because when you pick me up we’re going straight to a fantastically romantic evening, and it likely involves horses.”

I wrote back, “Okey dokey. Should I not ask why?”

And she said, “I predict a powerful hunger! That’s all you need to know madam!”

So…were we going out to dinner? Were the horses going to take us to a candlelit picnic? We hadn’t eaten inside of a restaurant in nine months, so I assumed it would be something outside.

And I didn’t notice until I started writing this to you guys exactly how much horses played a part in my fantasy. On paper, I’m a cheap date who is cool with coffee and window shopping or tossing a frisbee, but in my Christmas date fantasy dreams I’m a princess in a horse-drawn carriage eating candlelit dinners in the park.

I asked Claire before I left if she knew what her stepmother had planned. She smiled and said, “Yes.” I got more excited. My brain jumped up and down singing, “Fancy date, fancy date, fancy date!” Since Melanie didn’t specify what I should wear (her powerful hunger being the only thing I needed to know, thank you very much) I got into the car without changing into some kind of princess frock. No, I don’t own a princess frock, but if she had instructed me to find one I would have done so with great enthusiasm.

Melanie was walking out of one of the side gates at the zoo when I pulled up. She carried a small giftbag with a reindeer on it and a Tupperware container of cookie dough. She set the giftbag in the backseat and offered me the the cookie dough, which her coworker had made and given to her saying that we could either bake it or eat it straight out the tub.

“What’s this?” I asked, reaching for the bag in the backseat.

“No, no,” she said. “You can’t just go digging inside giftbags at Christmas time, silly lady.”

MORE suspicious behavior. I figured that it had to be for me. She asked if we could stop at a craft store before we went home so that she could pick up something for a project she was making. Weird, but okay, it also probably had something to do with whatever was in the gift bag, which was connected to the horse-drawn carriage ride, leading to silver candle stick lit dinner in the park with a string quartet. So I trembled in silent anticipation as we drove to the craft shop eating cookie dough from the plastic tub.

She went into the shop and came back out fifteen minutes later. She tossed a small bag onto the backseat. Then she turned to me and declared, “Now we will go home where we will eat dinner in the living room, then I will take your plate, and we will adjourn to our bedroom to snuggle.”

“Snuggle?”

“Yes. I would like to snuggle with my wife. Don’t you want to snuggle?”

“Well, yeah. But why are you announcing it so aggressively? And why are you taking my plate?”

“I’m not taking your plate.”

“You’re not doing it right now, but you will. You decreed it.”

“Damn right,” she affirmed. “And then we shall snuggle. As you are my wife, it is court-mandated.”

“A,” I said. “Court-mandated snuggle?”

“Yes. We snuggle all the time. Why are you being weird about this? “

“I’m being weird?“

Of all the ways I imagined this night going, gas lighting was not part of the plan. But I said something like, “Okay, crazy. So we’re going home, then?”

“Yes.”

In my mind the horses galloped away, but that was okay. We’re a writer and a zoo curator, we don’t have a whole lot of money for such things. I was still excited about the possibility of something. She was just acting too strange.

When we got home, she said that I should sit in the nice, cozy chair while she fixed me a plate of dinner. I was not to go into the kitchen at all. Christopher asked me if I would play a a new game with him in his room after we ate.

“Ask Melanie, I guess,” I told him. “She has something planned.”

When he asked Melanie she said thought about it and said to me, in that “court-mandated” kind of voice, “Yes, you may game. But stay in his room and don’t go in the kitchen. When you’re finished playing, we will go into our room to snuggle.”

“You’re freaking me out,” I said.

I would think that she was trying to kill me, but didn’t know why she would announce it to the room. After I ate she dutifully took my plate and I went to go play a Mortal-Kombat-like fighting game with Christopher. I asked him, “Are you in on whatever this is?”

“The plot against you?” he asked. “Yes. I’ve only recently been informed.”

“Can you inform me?”

“No.”

It was worth a shot.

Then Melanie proclaimed, “It is now time to come to our room.”

Maybe there was a gift waiting in the room? Maybe the tiny reindeer bag was sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the room bearing a golden tiara (because I was still a princess at this point)? But when I got to our room, nothing was out of the ordinary. Melanie stretched herself out on the bed and patted my usual spot next to her. I laid down. She texted something and then turned to me and said, “How was your day?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I just want to know how your day was.”

“You’re REALLY freaking me out.”

This back and forth of me asking her what was going on and her saying “nothing” went on until I finally got fed up and said, “let’s watch the news.”

So she got out her laptop and as Joy Reid talked to us about something important I thought, “This is it? The big build up of the day?”

Then Melanie put her phone down, shoved the computer aside and said, “Okay, let’s go into the kitchen.”

I followed her across the hall and when she reached the kitchen’s threshold she suddenly stopped. I’m six feet, but Melanie is two inches taller than me, broad shouldered, and muscular. So when she stopped short it was like walking into a wall. She spun around and said, “Sorry, not time. Go back, go back.”

“What?” I said, not moving. “Why?”

She spun me around. “Sorry. Not yet.”

“Melanie, this is weird.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she said, urging me back to our room.

We went back to the news, where I couldn’t help but notice that we weren’t snuggling as mandated by the courts. She spent much of the time on her phone, which I’m sure I must have said something about. A few minutes later she set her phone down again and said, “Okay. It’s time.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, not moving.

She said that she was sure. I followed her to the kitchen again, and this time we made it past the doorway.

The first thing I noticed was a glimmer in the back window. Someone had lit the fire pit in the yard. Then I heard singing. Melanie opened the door. Stephanie, her husband Tim, my nieces, and Claire and Christopher sang, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” on the back patio. Claire held up her phone where Emma was on a video call from Portland singing along.

Stephanie was my Secret Santa. She had texted Melanie and the kids two weeks before asking if they would distract me the night of the 22nd so that she could set up the yard for an evening of Christmas carols with a cozy fire and hot cocoa for everyone. Melanie had kept me out of the kitchen because there are too many windows and I definitely would have noticed something happening in the backyard.

“You and I always sang carols together,” Stephanie said. “I thought maybe you’d like this.”

I did. It was even better than horses.

Tim poured the cocoa and the nine of us (including Emma’s face on the phone) gathered around the fire singing from a song list that Stephanie had put together and emailed everyone the lyrics to. When the little ones got restless Christopher gamed with them inside. After we sang, we talked until it was my nieces’ bedtimes. Then me, Claire, and Melanie stared into the fire for a while. Christopher walked back out and said, “So mother. Did you enjoy the plot against you?”

“Very much,” I said.

He dropped into a chair and the four of us talked for another hour. Christopher doesn’t just sit down and talk to us. To get him talking, we have to be doing something else like playing a game or going on a walk. It requires motion. That night he sat in a chair and chatted. It was one of the little gifts that Stephanie didn’t plan, but happened.

That night before we went to sleep I thanked Melanie for being a part of it. Then I said, “Court-mandated snuggling?”

“It was my job to distract you!” she said.

“Why didn’t you just say ‘hey we haven’t had a lot of alone time lately, do you mind if we watch a movie in our room?'”

“Huh. I guess that could have worked too.”

The next morning I finished writing Stephanie’s affirmations in her planner. I added to it, “Your big sister loves you,” which might not exactly be an affirmation about herself as a person, but I wanted her to know. And also because she’d REALLY raised the bar by giving me an evening that I’ll never forget. Sheesh.

I might give Melanie a planner too. I’ll fill it out for her. “January 1st…court mandated horse ride…”