Dear O. Henry,
Do you mind if I call you Will?
William Sydney Porter is, after all, your real name.
I need to get this off my chest first thing. To be honest with you, Will, I didn't think that short story, The Gift of the Maji, was all that great. But when I read that O. Henry was actually one of more than a dozen pen names you used on account of the fact you were writing and submitting stories from prison, a certain respect bloomed. Then I read you published a story a week for the New York World Sunday Magazine for more than a year after getting out of the pokey.
Will, I know how challenging a weekly publication schedule can be.
Every week is the same thing for me. On Monday, I wake furious with myself for not having written a proper draft for the next installment of The Epistolary. I swear under my breath and pace around the house like a mean ol’ Erin devil wondering why in the hell I bother. Everything I write is stupid. I'm stupid. Stupid is stupid. stupid stupid stupid. And also, just … stupid because STUPID.
Then I hem and haw and write and take about five hundred big judgemental sighs and just keep going and editing and editing and going. Friday finally rolls around and my histrionics fade: I wrote a thing. Peeps read it. It’s fine.
I’ll bet you know exactly what I’m talking about.
All that said, Will, that Magi story could have used a little more work, but who the hell cares what I think? This is one of the most famous Christmas stories of all time. You’ve got two young marrieds. They’re poor and they adore each other. The chick (Della) cuts off and sells her beautiful hair to buy her hubs (Jim) a watch chain, and he sells that same watch to buy her bejeweled combs for her hair. That premise is sweet and sad and perfect. Also, three zillion people can’t be wrong. They LOVE this story.
I know a thing or two about hair and watches.
While my hair never quite reaches below my knees like Della’s, I know it's time to get it cut when, during the Goat's endless nocturnal activity that causes him to migrate out of his side of the bed (aka Goat Canyon), he will accidentally position himself such that I have to exclaim, YOU'RE ON MY HAIR!
Aside: one of my greatest pleasures is taking a thin tendril of my locks and tickling the Goat's nose with it even though I'm two feet away from him in the bed.
Anyhow, when the situation gets too ridiculous, I go to see Arlene down at the Markus Jacob salon.
"How much you want to take off?" she'll ask.
"As much as you need to make a donation," is always my response.
Hence, unlike Della, I don’t get any money for my copious tresses but I do get the quiet satisfaction of knowing someone somewhere is walking around wearing a wig made from my hair. Then as the days go by, my tickle-the-Goat's-nose reach will extend slowly but surely until my hair is so long I don't know what to do with it and the process starts again.
So when Della tells Jim not to worry, that her hair will grow back, I know from personal experience, she ain’t lying.
There has been just one notable timepiece in this family and it belonged to my brother. A person might assume a man who takes his own life doesn’t care about time. Not so. John’s Rolex was one of his most prized possessions. My brother valued time and the objects that track it so much that in his 1990 novel Leaving Las Vegas, his character Ben sells a similar watch in order to pay for the services of a high-end call girl. And just like that, John’s lovely Sera floated into the world like an unparalleled angel.
John bought his Rolex used (but certified) in 1988. After his 1994 suicide, it arrived here in Ohio in a cardboard box along with the other spartan relics of his life. Dad wore the watch until his death in 2002, when Mom passed it on to me.
What do you do with your dead brother's Rolex, Will?
I put it on a shelf, where it stayed for 16 years, which included this strangely frenetic episode.
At some point after the 1995 film version of John’s novel debuted, an internet rumor followed: the watch Nicholas Cage wears in Leaving Las Vegas actually belonged to John O'Brien.
This of course was demonstrably false. Dad or I had been in possession of his watch since shortly after John died and most certainly before filming began.
Nonetheless, the bogus report made its way to Wikipedia, along with some other falsehoods about John, which I tried to edit out. When I wrote about all of this in 2007 for the now-defunct Cleveland Free Times, an (ahem) enthusiastic wiki editor somehow found the resulting article and flipped his lid. How DARE I claim there was anything INACCURATE in the hallowed pages of Wikipedia!
He promptly landed on one of my feeds and called for a retraction and my termination. I forwarded his comments to my editor Frank Lewis, who published them in the next week’s paper and told him off. There was copious back-and-forth behind the scenes, but in the end, the guy apologized and I accepted.
Throughout the controversy and long after, the watch stayed up on the shelf. And Will, that made me so sad, but I didn’t know what to do about it. The watch wasn’t right for me. Where did it belong?
I have one daughter. And of all the things that fill me with a great billowing melancholy sadness, that John O’Brien never got to meet his only niece outweighs every last one of them. So in 2018 when Jessie turned 21, I took the watch down from the shelf and gave it to her. It's been on her wrist ever since.
A watch is just a watch; its only relevance resides in the hours it tracks. Hair is just hair, a lustrous tangle whose beauty unfurls over the years it takes to grow.
Time.
Laughter, tears, pain. Time has taught me about gifts, Will, but does it make me a Maji?
You don’t have to answer, just have a merry Christmas.
Love, Erin
🥰 this whole story. And that’s a phenomenal picture of you.
Your sleigh took me to many places before we landed for a lovely Christmas. Thank you, Erin. 🎄