El Santa Azul (The Blue Santa)

El Santa Azul (The Blue Santa)

The following is a true story told from my point of view. As we all know there are three sides to every story, hers, mine and the cold hard facts that probably lie somewhere in-between.

I met my second future ex-wife in the early 1980’s. She came into the car dealership where I used to work and purchased a new Chevrolet from me. My good friend and business manager Jimmy Wag’s happened to come out with her after she had signed the papers to take possession of the new car. I was lying in the back hatch entry scraping the window sticker off of the rear quarter window as they walked up. “Well Charlie, she’s all done with the paper work and ready to go” Wags’ said warmly. “Great Wags’” I replied, “I’ll only be a minute getting this thing off’ “Well Chuck since she was so nice to buy a car off of you the least you can do is buy her dinner” said Wags’. “I don’t think her boyfriend would like that Jimmy” I replied quickly’ “Who cares what he thinks” she quickly injected. Man I knew I was in trouble right then and there. I was smitten by her the moment I saw her as she was walking into the showroom and I was walking out to go to dinner that night. It was a vibe thing right from the start.

We fell in lust, we fell in love and we married within a couple of years. It was a good marriage at the start full of love, parties, picnics and excitement. I had been separated from my first ex-wife for about four year when we met and divorced shortly there after once we decided to marry. Our two children came within a couple of years of being married to each other; the children were spaced about two years apart.

I must admit that when it comes to being married I am a total failure. I am a man full of faults, misdirected desires, excessive wants and needs. At times I feel as though I have been emotionally short changed in some manner. It runs in my family. Maybe it’s genetic. Fully two thirds of my siblings (three brothers and five sisters) have been divorced at least once and a couple of us more than once. I also have two siblings who have been tragically widowed and both have remarried. So it appears that I am not alone although most of my siblings have gone on to happy marriages or long term relationships with someone else. Me, I have not been that lucky. I am in my early sixties, alone with my beagle dog and I am OK with that.

Someone (another man I am sure) told me a long time ago that when you are involved with a woman that “you will have forty different, distinct personalities to deal with at any given time” in that relationship. I fear they were right. Perhaps it’s just me though. I mean no offense to the ladies who may read this,. As I stated previously there are three sides to every story and this is mine, not yours.

Back to the Blue Santa.

My second future ex-wife is Polish. She is intelligent, a good mom and an even better grandmother. You may be asking why I bring her background up and it is simply because in Poland Santa or St. Nick or ŚWIĘTY MIKOŁAJ traditionally does not dress in red, he dresses in blue. She made me aware of that early in our marriage when she placed what appeared to be a Santa Claus statue on the mantle of our house on Christmas Eve. I looked at it rather suspiciously and asked “What the hell is that”? “It’s a Polish Santa” she replied. “Do you like him”?. I should have known better than to speak my mind at that time and simply said “He’s kind of weird, what’s with the blue suit”? She went on to explain to me all about Santa and the blue suit. I did not think much about it and probably feigned any interest that I showed at all in the Blue Santa. Actually I was pretty ambivalent about Blue Santa and his personal dress code. It really did not matter to me whether he wore red, blue or pink. It was just a statue of somebody who really didn’t exist anyway, so who really cared.

That ambivalence would come back to haunt me years later. I guess some women have a uncanny ability to interpret (whether rightly or wrongly) things like body language, voice tone and inflections, eye contact etc. during a conversation. They must also posses the ability to remember and recall these exact events years later with crystal clarity most savants would envy. These are things that I would have forgotten moments after the events occurred not unlike wedding anniversaries, our first kiss, the first movie we saw together, what we ate on our first date, what color her panties were. I am probably wrong about the last part of that statement but I don’t look at panties and tell so you will have to leave that up to your imagination. The Blue Santa would come back to haunt me in the last years of our marriage. Almost like a secret lover, he was probably one of the main causes. How might that be you are or should be asking yourself at this juncture of the conversation? It’s easy folks, one Christmas Blue Santa disappeared. He vanished like a ghost into thin air, like the pea in a shell game he disappeared. We did not know or realize this until the following year when we trekked to the third floor attic of our home and retrieved the boxes that we had packed 350 days before (according to my ex-wife’s precise calculations). That much time certainly gave Blue Santa a hell of lead on us. Tonto would have a heck of a time picking up his trail let alone an ambivalent fella like me.

My ex-wife unpacked all of the boxes in our living room carefully unwrapping all of the newspaper, bubble wrap and tissue paper from each ornament, knickknack and the like.
I can understand her need to pack things away safely. These things were currently family heirlooms or would be in the near future when our children were grown and raising their own children and perhaps beyond that time too. I always liked to unpack the items, look and smile at the ornament that represented the son’s first Christmas or a special ornament that recalled an event in the daughter’s life or my ex-wife’s and my first Christmas together. It always seemed to be a fun time but this year it was different. “where is the Blue Santa” she asked with a seriousness that would cause a hanging judge to tear up. “He was in one of the boxes” I assured her. “He’s not here” she snapped back. “Sure he is honey, we packed him up last year and put him away just like we always do” I said. “WELL!!! He’s not here” she huffed. “Did you look in all of the boxes” I queried. “Do you think I’m stupid” she snapped back again. “No honey, I am not questioning your intelligence or ability to unpack boxes but we do have a lot of stuff here maybe he just got set aside” I replied “I’ll help you look for him” “No need to, I already checked and he is not here” she snorted. I dared not ask are you sure. To do so would have meant the laser eyes of death, after all we’re talking Blue Santa here not some chump Santa in a red suit. I kept my quiet trying to avoid a holiday argument that served no good purpose and created little if any goodwill to anyone on earth.

I continued to help decorate the tree, hang garland etc and tried to keep to myself and avoid any confrontation about Mr. Blue Santa whose disappearance would have prolonged and profound implications in my marriage. As the evening passed and it was getting close to bedtime I happened to ask my future ex-wife if she had found the Blue Santa. Dumb move on my part, it just reignited what was a smoldering fire. Those words acted like oxygen being injected into a Bessemer Steel Furnace on our conversation. “I know where he is” she said with a terseness in her voice that reminded me of a trains’ steel wheels as it crosses an iron bridge on a August day, shrill and hot. “Really” I said to myself not wanting to escalate the situation. “Yes” she riled back at me “You threw him away, you never liked the Blue Santa” “Oh my God’ I thought this is a no win, get your gonads cut off situation and I am in very deep trouble. There are not words that I can say that will sooth this situation and for a moment I thought of just fleeing. But then the man in me came out, the testosterone started to rise from deep within my loins and I said “Now honey you know that’s not true”. All those words that I had so quietly spoken had done was to put another bullet in her gun to shoot me with. “Don’t try to placate me mister” she snarled “You always hated Blue Santa; you never wanted him here in our house”. There it was, I hated Blue Santa!!! I hated him as though he was my future ex-wife’s secret lover found out, exposed. I conspired about his demise both night and day planning a way that would allow me to get rid of him and not be found out. No habeas corpus, no crime, no time. Perhaps I should pulverize him into the chalk dust of which he was made and line the little league field. Maybe I could use him to draw sidewalk art of a snowstorm and use his whiteness all up. Blue Santa’s do not have DNA so I was good there. It was a tough choice but apparently according to my future ex-wife I had to have been guilty of doing something to Blue Santa because he was gone, disappeared, morta and it was at my hands. Thank God CSI wasn’t on TV back then or I am sure she would have found some way to solve the mystery of the missing Blue Santa. Each following Christmas I was to be reminded of what I had done to Blue Santa. I came to dread the mere thought of decorating. I never told her that, I just tried to shut my mouth and make nice. How would you react if every year on what was supposed to be a joyous occasion, you were reminded or accused of doing Blue Santa in. I am sure that the guys who made Hoffa disappear never had to put up with the grief that I did each Yuletide.

A few years later..

I walked to the third floor attic to bring down the Christmas items and take my whuppin’ like a man. I carried the boxes on many trips up and down the many steps that seemed to grow in number each year as my legs grew older. I started to unpack the boxes when I opened a box and unwrapped the white tissue and lo and behold who should appear? The Blue Santa!!! I called to my future ex-wife in an excited voice to come into the living room. I held Blue Santa behind my back as she entered the room. “Look what I found” I said excitedly “Blue Santa”. My future ex-wife looked at Blue Santa and then looked coldly at me and said “You bought another one” and she turned and walked out of the room.

“Bought another one”? Is that as good as it gets? Did my discovery of Blue Santa ruin the game that she was playing? Did his return destroy her Christmas misery power base? My instinct was to give Blue Santa a flying lesson right then and there. One flick of the wrist and his chalk ass would hit the wall and he would be turned into chunks of chalk, smithereens all busted and broke he would be, yes-siree!!! I thought better of it and placed Blue Santa on the mantle where he had sat years before and went about unpacking the rest of the things.

Oh by the way, her panties were blue