Wednesday, December 15, 2004:
Matt comes home from his Nutcracker Suite field trip. I’m prepared to commiserate with and comfort him about being subjected to the world’s most ostensibly cultural, actually commercially compulsory and gratuitous and empty of Christmas rituals. Just as I start to clear my throat, he starts to hold forth. He loved it!
He’s got the details down, in sequence and in proliferation. He tells us breathlessly of this “Err Drosselmeyer.” Not long afterwards we put the music on, and the boys dance and dance and dance. Me in the wrong, whatever gratuitousness there may be. The receiver can have the last say.