of gold, frankincense and myrrh

It is a Monday night in a fairly empty Moroccan restaurant in what is affectionately known by the locals as Upstate Manhattan, and I am eating by myself. I don’t often do this, dinner by myself in a restaurant. Breakfast and lunch, yes, but dinner by myself often feels – I don’t know – extravagant? like I may be such a social retard I can’t find a dining companion and all these coupled up people are silently judging me? I don’t know what it is, but I would usually rather sit at home eating left over mac & cheese (the sum total of what is in my refrigerator at the moment, coincidentally) than eat dinner in a restaurant where candlelight and mood lighting is prevalent.

Tonight is different, though. Drastic measures are called for when you find yourself on the train wanting to cry through a 40-minute commute because you feel alone, like you’re destined to feel that way forever. I could settle, I could be with just anybody - I’m afraid I’ve had my share of anybodys. But to be with just anybody is somehow worse, so it’s loneliness and the trip home, reading all the ads 50 times and feigning allergies. Every now and then this feeling rears its head, up from the bone marrow, and it’s godawful. So rather than drink myself into a stupor, I’ve found the better remedy is romance. Maybe you wouldn’t think it to look at me but girlfriend needs a lot of romance. I suspect I get this from my mother. I’m not talking sex - that’s where men get confused. Anything can be romantic if you do it right. It's about creativity, living in the present and being kind to yourself and others. It doesn't need to be some big production. The grocery store can be romantic. You need toilet paper. Fine, just get some Nutella while you're there. You're worth it. A walk down the block can be full of romance if you just pay attention to details while you do it. The way a kid is walking with his mother. The color of an old lady's hat. I've discovered that on a personal level I need music, I need art, I need environment. Candles are nice, Christmas lights are great, corny movies are welcome, small gestures are always appreciated, clean sheets are priceless and a really nice dinner, homemade or otherwise is worth its weight (I have, for the record, had a romantic taco-dinner-kit-from-the-box), even if the only company to be had on a night like this is my own.

So my heart requires some TLC tonight and the place I’ve chosen for dinner (all of two blocks from my apartment) does not kid around. I’ve got the sauvignon blanc going and the traditional Moroccan soup of Harina, a Chicken Tagine with green olives and preserved lemon peel, cous cous, baklava, mint tea – and not that stuff in teabags, either. I’m listening to locals who have never met before talk to one another. One of them has front row seats to the circus at Lincoln Center for New Year’s; she’s feeling iffy about it and a couple folks are trying to explain to her that that is going to be pretty memorable. It’s not nearly as ridiculous as standing in the human sardine can of Times Square in subzero temperatures waiting for a ball to drop (which strikes us all as being very South Dakota) and beats the hell out of watching TV, drinking mediocre champagne and passing out before midnight. One of these people is a copy editor. Another is dating a French architect and has a home in Denver. Someone’s going to Miami next week. It’s an interesting group, and I find myself smiling and nodding and listening.

Mostly I’m enjoying my meal. This conversation, these flavors, this lighting, taking in the ornamentation of the decor, the warmth of the room, the middle eastern tribal music that segues into Gypsy Kings, and suddenly I realize why I am so happy at this moment after such a horrid commute. It’s Christmas. And I don’t just mean, well duh, it’s December 12th. I mean, this is what Christmas was like for me growing up. My father would be back for a couple weeks from wherever he’d been sent that year – Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia – he would have picked up Turkish Delight from Herrod’s on his way home through London. Gooch and I would find ourselves with small and strange brass vessels he would have brought home, ornamental boxes, gold that was bright and strangely soft, middle eastern coins, frankincense and myrrh still in resin form. Hours and hours spent on a flight home to west Texas for Christmas, half a world away, and after all that Daddy just found himself back squarely in the desert, listening to romantic indigenous music that harkened to the middle east and the Moors as much as it did to the Navajo, with the classical Spanish guitar stylings of Ottmar Leibert and Lunanegra reminding us all of trips to Santa Fe. Delicious family meals hinting at foreign lands, lights dim, candles lit, a fire of pinion going in the clay chimenea on the porch, every star visible in the great expanse of sky over the Texas badlands.

I’m walking out of the restaurant back towards my apartment, and I pass in front of the Catholic church on the corner. It’s all lit up with Christmas lights. It must be time for the Spanish service to let out, because there’s a woman in front with a shopping cart selling churros, which you may have seen – they’re these long sticks of pastry cookies that look like they were piped through a bag with a flair tip and then fried and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. This, right here, is deep fried border goodness and I cannot even tell you how much these remind me of home – of Gooch and I standing in line somewhere on a three-hour errand for our mother to procure tamales during the holidays…but I’m fine, you know, just as long as we also stop at a Mexican bakery where I can get dairy milk and churros. And it strikes me, there in front of a shopping cart on a cold ass night on north Broadway, that I am home: as cornball as it may sound, I am home in my heart. It doesn’t matter if I am in New York, that stretch of desert between Mexico and New Mexico or the hill country of Texas - it wouldn't matter if I was in Egypt. Home is with me, it is inside of me right here and right now, the people dear to me, the things I love, that which reminds me who I am and the good of which I am capable. The lights on the church are beautiful and, adjusting my scarf, I know where I am, where I’ve come from, and for a moment I even know where I’m going.