Christmas Past

I went to middle school with Grammy nominated country singer Tift Merritt. She was two years older than me. We both auditioned for the big winter musical, "A Christmas Carol," and at callbacks (which took place around a wooden piano next to cubby holes) we were up for the same choice part: the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Tift had the pixieness of Peter Pan coupled with the allure of that actress in Crocodile Dundee 2. Her voice sounded like fame, even then. I was a sixth grader. I cross-stitched. I wore head gear to sleep that left faint indentations in my cheeks. In my spare time, I prank called the 1-800-Elvis hotline, or wrote and recorded monologues in the voice of the Mennonite woman who pushed the school milk cart. I sold dog food door-to-door in my neighborhood -- dog food I'd won at an NC Fairgrounds expo and simply repackaged with Print Shop labels made on my father's PC -- and had a crush on Johnny Tremain from the 1943 book Johnny Tremain. He had a disfigured hand and joined the Whig party.

Basically, I suffered from crippling self-consciousness that manifested itself as an eye twitch. But I knew I could sing. Ms Moore, the language arts teacher, had told me so. Of course, she had also told Tift the same thing. I was desperate to get that part. At the audition, after perfectly coiffed Tift twanged out "The Lights of Long Ago," and I delivered my own successful-in-its-own-way rendition, I felt I had an actual shot. The Ghost of Christmas Past, after all, should be a little shy and maybe sound like Anne Murray and have a nervous tick.

I bet you know where this story is going. Well, you're wrong. Tift was cast, not me. I wasn't even a soot-faced lamp-lighting extra. At assembly I crowded into the gymnasium with the other students to endure a hard bleacher, hard like hate. I spent most of that performance thinking about how Tift's name sounded like the new vocabulary word I'd just learned, tiff, "a slight and petty quarrel." Yes: I was having a slight and petty quarrel (with myself) about her vocal merits. Tift Merrit. I completely ignored Michael C Hall as a be-stockinged Ebeneezer Scrooge. Or maybe he wasn't even in this show. I swear he went to my school.

Tift Merritt is super talented and friendly. This post isn't about a life-long grudge. I don't smash snow globes whenever "A Good Hearted Man" comes on. It's important for me to tell the Story of Tift Merritt because she became the Ghost of Becca's Past. Flash forward to 2006. Woody and I are sharing the ground floor of a house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Ainslie Street, two blocks from the L train. I spend most of my time writing shitty persona poems and booking other people's travel. One afternoon, I'm sitting on our front stoop drinking a cup of coffee from one of those cliche and kitschy NY coffee cups that say "We are happy to serve you" and reading Sophie's Choice when I happen to glance up and see a blond girl in vintage cowboy boots, leaning on our entrance gate, talking on her cell phone. I hear her say "Yeah, I'm lost." Instinctively, I know it's Tift Merritt. I just know. So I yell "Tift Merritt!" It's the wrong yell -- the kind reserved for people you spend a lot of time with, people who are equally as excited to see you. We're both surprised. "Do I know you?" she asks, sweetly.

Now folks, here's where I should have just stopped, dropped, and rolled. I mean, at this point, she'd been Grammy nominated. I should have played it cool. Tift and I were in an Honors fiction workshop together at UNC-Chapel Hill (she wrote beautiful short stories, too). That would have been an appropriate, viable, more recent reference. But what occurred to me in that moment -- me in tattered sweatpants, broke, reading a book about the Holocaust and hung-over after drinking too much Dessert Guinness (a kinda cocktail Woody and I invented at The Four Faced Liar circa 2005)-- was how much her presence felt like a divine visitation, an ethereal manifestation of middle school. I was totes seeing the lights of long ago. Also, maybe Tift Merritt was stalking me?

"You were the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Huh."

"We went to the same middle school. Ravenscroft. You were --"

I have no idea what happened next. There was warmth, an exchange of email addresses. I remember we talked about Doris Betts. I remember giving her directions. Then that was it. She disappeared around the corner. From a distance, she looked like any other cute hipster.

Today, I was thinking about this chance occurrence for several reasons. One, it's almost Christmas, according to those Gap cheerleading commercials. Two, I wonder if my life would be different if I had been the Ghost of Christmas Past. Three, as you all know from my last post, my mind is on the vagaries of fate.

I still can't understand what chooses to visit us, and why.