Shredded Paper

It was the twenty-sixth of December, a day in which the world runs on rusted gears. There are certain requirements for this day: the wind must pick up, and the snow that painted a portrait white Christmas must begin to melt. There will be too many cars on the roads—lots of traffic, and shouting, and honking that affirms the holiday spirit has been packed away with the boxes of garlands and wreaths. December twenty-sixth is the holiday of stilled hope.

Howard Reed closed his front door with a forceful tug. He turned the key in the lock, stuffed his wrinkly hands into his deep coat pockets, and exhaled a foggy breath that inflated before him like a smoky balloon. The man squinted up at the cloudy sky, glad the snow had stopped, before beginning his trek down the slight slope of his driveway—as if it was a mountain. He kept his eyes on the wet brown pavement, avoiding the warm sparkle of Christmas lights kept during the day. They winked at him from every direction, as if they were all playing some joke on him.

It now seemed to Howard that the whole vicinity was dressed for the wrong occasion. As he reached his mailbox, he didn’t check for any mail but stood by it, finally squinting around at each neighboring house in their arrays of human-sized gingerbread figures and inflatable snowmen. Christmas was done; now Howard felt embarrassed for the houses, as if he was watching a teenager arrive at a pool party in a long dress, or a wedding guest to the venue in white, or a nurse in pajamas to work.

Howard, for one, was glad the holiday had passed. He didn’t like Christmas, not because he was bitter or ungrateful, or some old “Scrooge,” as the kids on scooters liked to call out. Howard had his reasons.

When someone asked him why, like some Cindy Lou Who, he usually just told them, “My favorite shirt is red. That means I either can’t wear it in December, or I have to shave my beard.” What he hated more than anything was when a stranger made the joke that he looked like Santa Claus.

Howard liked his big, white beard, and so the red shirt stayed in the drawer. Today, he wore it again. It felt larger than it had in November.

He turned off of his driveway and onto the sidewalk path that ran along both sides of Willow Creek Drive. His small, one-story house sat like a clump of coal amongst the sputtering embers of the season. All the houses on the street looked the same yet completely different. The Coleman family down the road had candles in their windows and a nativity scene in the yard. The Jones family placed plastic candy canes in a line along the driveway. The Morrises across the street, a young couple with two golden retrievers and two young kids, projected flashing red and green dots on their house, for goodness' sake, and had an inflatable Santa Claus on the roof. The roof! Howard couldn’t get up on his roof if he tried. To be young again.

Howard’s house was much more practical. He had purchased a cheap wreath from the dollar store, the size of his hand, and taped it to the front door so as to not be one of those old grumps who don’t celebrate Christmas. He would have done more, he told himself, if he was ten years younger. Now, his stroll around the neighborhood hurt his knees and sent an ache along his back.

Christmas had fallen on a Sunday this year. It was Monday morning, and everyone had lugged their blue, identical trash cans to the edge of the road for collection. All those Amazon boxes, just delivered a couple days ago, sat in flattened stacks in recycling bins. Deflated, like everything else.

Howard was nearing the end of the sidewalk now, where he would have to turn around and take the same path home. The last house on the line belonged to a family he did not know, who had just moved to the area in October. They had gathered a litany of trash, such a copious amount that it could not fit in the blue bin. Instead, two stuffed trash bags leaned against each other at the base of the driveway.

This collection irritated Howard, and as he began to form judgments about how a family could produce so much trash, whether more of it could be recycled, that bitter post-Christmas wind stirred up and sent a biting pulse that rustled all the trees, and all the stringed lights, and shoved over some of the yard inflatables. Howard buried his face in the neck of his coat until it passed, and when he looked up, he was disgruntled to observe that the force had blown open one of the trash bags. Its contents now spilled over onto the ground.

Howard made up his mind that this was not his problem, but as he continued his stagger of a walk past the mess, the discarded inventory caught his eye. This was no ordinary collection of trash—of used paper towels, bottles, and fruit tags. The trash bag was filled almost entirely with shredded paper.

He blinked at the sudden nostalgia. The flimsy white plastic held it all like the fragile coating of an eggshell. Blowing gently towards the curb was a clump of red wrapping paper with silver bells arranged in an intricate design. It had been compressed tightly, probably by the father in his attempt to maintain some sense of organization in the bustling setting of a living room on Christmas morning. But what had it held? A new watch for Uncle John? A necklace for his wife? Surely, in the vibrant green paper, with Rudolph heads like polka-dots, there was a gift for a child. A new doll? A toy race car? Something cheap that meant a fortune. This paper was not gently clumped; it had been ripped into with the impatience of a little girl or boy with high hopes. There—to the left—were some sheets of tissue. Had they covered a ring case like one had in Howard’s household fifty years back? What was the expression on her face when she pulled back the layers with excited fingers. Did they share a hug? Did she thank him? Or did it hang in the air like an ornament—a simple “I love you?”

The shredded paper was like a bouquet of flowers. Each bushel, a different color and equally beautiful, surmounting together into an encapsulation of care.

A deep sadness settled in.

Howard thought of what his trash bag might contain if that lively couple across the street, with the golden retrievers and the babies, looked through it. An empty beer bottle, last week’s newspaper with the crossword half-done. Two Christmas cards, not even from his son but from old coworkers, and two boxes of microwaveable dinners. Where was his shredded paper?

Howard had once had people in his life who were worth buying paper just to rip it up. Relationships once formed like the wrapping of a gift, until shredded by the greedy hands of death, of argument, of separation and pride. But gifts, like Christmas itself, were never meant to last forever. There will always be trash in the aftermath of treasure.

Maybe December twenty-sixth had some other criteria, more so than the wind and the melting snow: kids with big smiles riding around on shiny bicycles and skateboards, families driving home together after spending time with relatives, leftover turkey and snickerdoodle cookies—and most precious of all, colorful shredded paper in every trash can down the street. Remnants of mornings well-spent. Proofs that people are cherished. All but the trashcan at 1453 Willow Creek Drive, where old Howard Reed spent the rest of the morning grieving his lack of shredded paper, and wishing it might just snow, and really come down, one more time that year—that it would cover his whole driveway, and that he would need to have it shoveled before his doctor’s appointment on Friday. But of course, he would be too old to shovel the driveway himself. And so, he prayed that it would snow just one more time—so that he might have an excuse to call his son.