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I am escaped with the skin of my teeth

Call me a contrarian if you must, but there are moments when I relish upsets: when effects trade places with causes; when things ‘fall apart; the center cannot hold and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,’ to borrow a thought from William Butler Yeats. It’s not a hidden anarchy which occasionally bubbles into my consciousness; more a delight in discovering that long held beliefs are occasionally misconstruable; that certainty has cracks.

Take, for example, the truism that the way our skin looks is an indication of our lifestyles, that it is decadence, or whatever, that makes us look like Oscar Wilde’s famous Picture of Dorian Gray in which it is his portrait, not him, that exhibits the terrible changes. Wilde takes it as a given that dissolute behaviour has consequences. But is healthy skin the result, or the cause, of inner health? Can you judge anything by its wrapping? The question seems almost to answer itself, and yet it needs to be asked.

Of course it still seems obvious that there are external circumstances which remain causes of poor skin such as lack of attention to detail and pride in external appearance; excessive and unmitigated UV light from a dissolute life on the beach comes to mind, as well as perhaps does old age, poverty, poor diet, and consumption of too many sugar-rich soft drinks while sitting on the couch eating chips and overdosing on late night TV movies… have I forgotten anything? After all, those are just the wayward thoughts of an old man already wrapped in unplanned wrinkled skin.

But you take my point, eh? Sometimes -dare I say often?- the outer layer is not entirely powerless. After all, it is a huge organ when you compare it to its contents like, say, a pancreas. And as does the Mafia, it has powerful connections, tendrils which reach far beneath its unassuming surface. It’s not above resorting to retributive justice if provoked; it’s not simply a duvet cover; it’s not just a once-pretty envelope. Ignore a wrapper at your peril!

But I suppose it boils down to not taking any envelope for granted, though: treat the cover of something with disdain, and you risk damaging whatever it contains. I learned about the importance of wrappings one Christmas morning when I was too young to know any better.

I was maybe four years old, and there were a lot of presents under the tree as usual that year. I had always bemoaned the proximity of my December birthday to Christmas. Even though both Beethoven and I shared the date, I was pretty sure that being assured we’d get a bigger present at Christmas to compensate, never brought much comfort to either of us.

I mean come on! Most of my friends had their birthdays at decent intervals from Christmas and that meant commensurately larger gifts -not to mention a party in the back yard or a day at the amusement park to celebrate. December in Winnipeg did not lend itself to those sorts of things; snow is fun for making forts and having snowball fights, but too cold to barbecue on the lawn -even if you could find it. I had to take whatever solace I could find in promises of a summer trip to Grand Beach or maybe Gimli, a million miles away on Lake Winnipeg. Let’s face it, in childhood, now is the only thing that matters… okay, to me at the time, anyway.

Looking back at that Christmas now, though, it seems incredibly selfish of me, but I suspect that we come late to the idea of appreciating wrappings, no matter how much thought went into their design, no matter how much effort into their creation. My father specialized in wrapping presents, I remember. He would crease and fold each corner carefully so the paper’s pattern matched exactly. Even now, I could not even approach his patient skills… especially knowing that my own wrappings are now terminally wrinkled.

At any rate, that year, I wanted a special Roy Rogers colouring book with Dale Evans crayons (I hope I’m remembering correctly: I went through a Lone Ranger and Tonto period as well…). I already had opened the carefully wrapped cowboy bandana that went with my recent birthday cowboy hat, and torn through the assortment of other readily reachable offerings, but I just knew that the most wanted gifts were those that were especially well wrapped and hidden at the back of the tree. I spotted the immaculately coiffed gift, and realized it was the precious one, the much anticipated colouring book and accoutrements.

I ripped into it with a gusto my parents both said they’d never witnessed before. Forget the neatly-tied ribbons; who cared if the lines on the patterns matched on the folds? What was pattern to excited fingers? Symmetry was a concept I had yet to understand anyway; content, not covering, was king!

Unfortunately, in my uncaring zeal to disclose, I tore the paper indiscriminately; my father had wrapped it too tightly around the fragile contents for my lightening fingers to discriminate, and both wrapping and wrapped were one. Before I knew it, the gift inside was torn; even skin cannot always be relied upon to protect what lies beneath, and I found the shredded pieces of the colouring book among the remnants of its wrapping. And there wasn’t even a box of Dale Evans crayons, for goodness sakes…

The disappointment was immediate and I began to cry -to howl, if I can believe my mother’s recollection of the event so many years later. My father sifted through the wreckage and shook his head. “You were a little hasty on this one, G,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “I spent a lot of time wrapping it nicely for you…” he added, seeming to add insult to injury. “I didn’t realize those colouring books were so fragile, did you, Mom?” he said as an afterthought as he surveyed the damage.

My mother shook her head. “I hope you learned something about appreciating the time and effort your father put into making the present so nice looking for you, G…”

I think I sniffled at that, unsure how to appreciate a spoiled Christmas and an irretrievably torn Roy Rogers colouring book. Still, I suppose I had my bandanna that I could wear with my Roy Rogers cowboy hat, and I got slowly to my feet to go to my room to get it.

Then, I noticed something: another beautifully wrapped gift lying hidden under a chair beside the tree. I glanced at my mother and then quickly at my father and they both nodded simultaneously.

“That’s yours as well, G,” my mother said. “But…”

“I’ll be more careful this time,” I whispered, hoping against hope.

And yes, mission accomplished: it was the Roy Rogers colouring book, complete with the coveted crayons; my parents were smiling ear to ear at the lesson they hoped they’d taught me.

“We bought two colouring books, G,” my mother later explained, while I was spread out on the floor colouring the pattern on Roy Rogers shirt. “We just removed the cover and a few pages, and your father wrapped it up carefully, to show you just how much it matters how you unwrap a gift… You can have the rest of those pages if you want to colour anything differently,” she added, as she unsuccessfully tried to separate me from my crayons to hug me.

A wrapping is as much the gift as its contents; in many ways, like skin, their identities are co-dependent -a lesson best learned early…

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