Displaced

It’s Advent, as of last week, and, as usually directed in Advent sermons, I took a moment to pause and reflect. We are not regular church attendees but old habits die hard, especially when you’re not trying to rid yourself of them: I happen to like Advent.

Our holidays got off to a smooth start with Thanksgiving. We beat my basic criteria of, “No one died,” by quite a bit even though it involved me doing most of the cooking for eleven people. By all accounts it went very well. But, as most holidays are, it was a sprint to the finish, which left me not only tired but wondering, as Oprah and all the editors of women’s magazines do: how do you enjoy the holidays when they are such a project?

The obvious answer is that you make them less of a project. Reduce gift-giving, don’t decorate, attend fewer parties, skip family gatherings and book a hotel in Cabo instead. The thing is though, I like finding and giving gifts, decorating, throwing parties and making merry. I love Christmas.

So what else can be done so I don’t arrive at Christmas gasping for air and a glass of spiked egg nog?

Planning helps, and God and everyone who’s ever worked with me knows, I’m a planner. I’ve bought nearly all of our gifts already, and I’m wrapping them as they arrive so we can avoid the Christmas week blowout of express shipping charges and the Christmas Eve wrapping frenzy. Our tree is up and decorated as of last weekend. The outdoor lights are twinkling.

It’s good, the planning. The last-minute sprint has been removed (if I can define what “done” is and not just stretch out “almost done” till the 24th!), and we will definitely save some money on FedEx and panicked last-minute purchases. Plus, who doesn’t love checking things off a list? I am getting a sense of satisfaction from a job efficiently done. But I’m still feeling pretty frantic. It occurs to me that I may have accidentally just moved the stress forward on the calendar.

I know that clearing some space before the holiday to slow our momentum is a must. As with going on a beach holiday and screeching from 100 mph to 0 just at the edge of the sand, Christmas itself – one evening, one morning – will go by disappointingly quickly if you’ve been on line at UPS, worrying about your sister-in-law’s gift, and stuffing stockings until seconds before Christmas Eve dinner. We are not wired to shift gears from “frantic preparation” to “savoring the holiday” in the space of half an hour. Advent provides that space on the church calendar, and I think we’d do well to find it on our own schedules.

As I so often do, I have a theory. My theory is that the, “how,” not the, “what,” is the issue underlying holiday stress and the “what’s-the-point-itude” that occasionally creeps in as we rush through the weeks before Christmas, piling up packages and not cheer. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the journey, not the destination, matters most (especially when the destination is filled with fantastic Swedish carbohydrates and complicated ribbons), but yes, the journey deserves more of our focus and can be an enjoyable gradual climb to the peak where we enjoy the wonderful view rather than a gravely slide of increasing velocity that leaves us scraped up and exhausted at the bottom of the hill, back at our car, wondering why we went that way again.

Advent is about the “how,” it provides a stretch of time before Christmas to downshift gradually towards Christmas’ celebration so that we arrive intact and joyful. As the weather turns chilly and the air gets crisp, we’re supposed to slow down, have some cocoa and cinnamon toast, pause and consider. (OK, the toast isn’t in the gospels, but if they’d ever had my toast, they’d have put it in. Trust me: I make really good toast.) Advent is the season of reflection, anticipation and contemplation, a reminder to pause and think about the coming holiday.

Whatever your religious beliefs, the winter holidays mean something to you or you wouldn’t get all worked up about them. Whether it’s an opportunity to see friends, shower your sugar-addled child with gifts, celebrate the birth of your Savior, re-engage with family, or just show off your amazing ability not to electrocute yourself while installing a well-lit, over-fed elderly gentleman and his pet caribou on your roof, something is there at the core of your drive, and that’s worth thinking about so it rises to the top of your list.

Even if you consider the holidays a pain in the ass, Advent can be a time of constructive reflection, acceptance and planning. Own your desire to retreat from Aunt Ethel and her terrible fruitcake and plan a lovely, calm day at home with friends instead of booking through O’Hare with 4000 other people on Christmas Eve. Make the holidays your own. Once you accept that they aren’t your bag, you free up space to see what you do want rather than Grinch-ing it up and gnashing your teeth through another December.

Maybe the holidays are your thing but you’re just feeling low and lonely. It’s OK to be a little sad. Advent gives you some time to to acknowledge that and reach out in time to have some light in your window by Christmas. Ask for visits. Plan small outings. Take a short walk on a bright, chilly day. Find a Seattle’s Best Coffee and order the gingerbread latte: they’ll give you lots of whipped cream AND a tiny gingerbread man on top of it.

A couple of years ago, while planning a long-ish trip to New Zealand, we got some great “how” advice in amongst all the “whats”: find a quiet moment, think briefly about all the things you could do, and notice which three rise to the top. Not the Must Do things that everyone says are great: the three things you want to do the most, the ones you think you’ll enjoy, the ones you’ll regret not doing if you miss them. I chose swimming with dolphins, R. picked sailing through the fjords, and I can’t remember what the third thing was because the two we picked were so awesome. Literally awesome. They were the best things. THE BEST. Two of the most fun, most memorable, fantastic things we’ve ever done.

(Even if they hadn’t been the greatest things ever, it doesn’t matter: we knew wanted to do them and we did them. That in itself is a success. If they hadn’t turned out so well, it would have been good information for the next time we planned a trip as well as probably hilarious: fjord trips are pretty much limited to “majestic” or “Bob Saget in a dinghy” experiences, don’t you think?)

This is what I think Advent is for: finding a quiet moment to reflect on what matters to you in your holidays. Think small. Think specific. Think bright! Don’t judge them. It doesn’t matter: they’re yours. It’s your holiday too, not just your kids’ or Aunt Ethel’s. What matters to you? Be open to what some part of you already knows but which is hidden under a pile of candy cane boxes for Timmy’s class party. Prioritize those things. Put them on the list above finding the perfect #$(*&$#! Santa-shaped cake because last year’s fell to pieces and tasted like wet styrofoam.

Focus not just Christmas but the whole season on those. If you love being in touch, make Christmas phone calls throughout December when friends have more time to talk, not just on Christmas where it’s a three-minute chat before rushing off to the matinee showing of Sherlock Holmes (which is a super-great Christmas afternoon idea, by the way, thank you very much). If you love baking – actually love it, not must do it – book a Saturday with yourself and take your time doing it. If you like pleasing people with gifts, yeah sure, go shopping – but plan in it for a time when you can enjoy it and keep the volume to a level and cost that doesn’t stress you out, now or when your bills arrive in January. Or if that’s not working, think more broadly: make someone’s holiday by giving some of your amazing gifts to people in need like homeless kids, the gift-less, toy-less children, or lonely elderly people.

I know this is easier said than done. And checking boxes is a great, great thing. Trust me: I know. It’s just an Advent thought, a reminder that slowing down isn’t just an unrealistic principle that only people who can sit for hours with their legs crossed can manage. Step out of the tide for five minutes in the quiet before everyone else is up in the morning. This is your Advent, your Christmas, your time. What matters to you?

OK, seriously? A shotgun shell wreath? Really? REALLY??

I’m all up on the holiday decor thing and each to their own, but honest to God this is beyond me. Who in their right mind is going to put this up? And who is going to buy it except as a not-funny gift? The guys who don’t just snort the first time they trigger Big Mouth Billy Bass at Walgreens but think he’s a hilarious present? You know what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend? That I don’t know anyone who would give me this wreath.

Oh wait – I just read the full description: “Chamaecyparis, rose hips, and Pheasant Feathers (feathers not pictured in this wreath, but we will update the photo soon!)” Ah. I see why I hate it: it’s because the feathers aren’t in the picture. If it had feathers, it would be 100% awesome.

Lord Almighty. Wow.

I found it. It’s my Christmas present AND the most ridiculous thing the Williams-Sonoma, Inc., family has offered for sale since the Electric Vacuum Marinator. It might even be more ridiculous than the marinator because it costs $5000. Five. Thousand. Dollars. For something made by Pottery Barn. I would hope that for five thousand dollars I would actually get a pottery barn. I’m not 100% sure if that’s a barn that stores my pottery (of which I have very little – possibly because I don’t have enough dedicated pottery storage space) or a barn made of pottery. I don’t care which it is: at San Francisco real estate prices, $5K is a bargain for either.

But back to my Christmas present: it’s a car. A Bugatti, to be precise. But not an actual one, a miniature one. With no engine. So even if I were two feet tall, I couldn’t drive it around my house, which is a theoretical crying shame.

If it were an actual one, five thousand dollars would be the bargain of the century. But I probably still wouldn’t be able to drive it since it’d be a hundred years old and wildly unsafe, so I guess Pottery Barn hit the nail on the head: why buy the un-driveable real thing for an exorbitant sum when you can spend a slightly less exorbitant sum on an equally un-driveable but much smaller fake thing?

My Christmas present features, “hand-polished aluminum wheels,” which I’m assuming, since they use the present tense, means the car comes with someone to continue the hand-polishing. I’m starting to see where the cost started climbing.

Also, it has a nickel-plated, cast bronze radiator which sounds expensive and like maybe that’s what kind of engagement ring I should’ve held out for. Or what my next stove should have.

(I hate our current stove by the way. Maybe when my tiny car has it’s inevitable catastrophic accident, I will weld the nickel-plated, cast bronze radiator onto my stove, thereby improving it immensely.)

The web site says “…this car isn’t meant to be driven, but that won’t stop it from making your heart race.” I can only imagine. Between the price tag and the frustration at being unable to either fit into it or drive it if I could, my heart is already racing and the car hasn’t even arrived yet. I can’t imagine what kind of stroke/heart attack I’m setting myself up for on Christmas morning. Don’t not get it for me though because of that: this is all I’m asking for this year. Really. I have to have this car, health be damned.

Send me the shipping confirmation when it leaves the miniature Bugatti factory, OK? I need to know when I should go stand by the front window with my nose pressed against the glass.

It’s Christmas, and Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. From the time I got that circus truck with the plastic zoo animals in individual cages when I was five to wrapping up presents in a tearing hurry a couple of days ago so I could get them to the east coast in time, my enthusiasm for the holiday has rarely flagged.

2009 has been a difficult year, there’s no denying it. On the global (war, fraudulent elections), national (foreclosures, job loss, plus who can actually be against health care, for Pete’s sake?) and personal fronts, this has been a challenging, exhausting, and – let’s be honest – occasionally hopeless stretch.

But Christmas still comes like clockwork, regardless of surrounding circumstances, bringing with it little sparkling lights in the darkness, the opportunity to give generously to others even if we’re not sure we’re up to it, and – if we can look past the difficulties, the disappointments and the snarled traffic – the chance to see ourselves as part of a larger, hopeful whole in a world rife with small miracles.

That’s what I am going to be focusing on from inside my mountain of to-do lists, wrapping supplies and as-yet-unbaked baked goodies.

May your Christmas Eve and your Christmas Day be full of excitement and joy.

Merry Christmas everyone!

(Thank you jimsabis for the cardinal.)

I was lying awake at four AM, as I often am these days, thinking. My thoughts at that hour are, more often than not, anxious ones, my mind roving over the landscape of the past and future, making sure I didn’t leave any metaphorical windows ajar or doors unlatched.

I spoke with my father late last night and, as a result, this morning’s early thoughts were of his sister-in-law, my aunt, whose cancer, after a break, has returned. Her prognosis is not good: this will be her last Christmas.

Family matters being what they are on that side of my family, I have not known her well, have maybe met her six or seven times, but she has always been very nice to me and I know the outlines of what has always struck me as her difficult life. I am so sorry that she will not live to old age, to enjoy the smoothing out of those wrinkles.

Early this morning, I stuck on the “last Christmas” part of the sadness. Somehow, the stretch of illness, however inevitable its end, is not as hard to imagine as a stretch of “lasts.” How would I approach this Christmas if I knew it were my last? For what future would I be storing up memories or requesting gifts? Wouldn’t the terrible knowledge of my near and unavoidable demise undermine the acquisition and metabolism of anything, from knowledge of a nephew’s sock size to material I might use in my writing? How, without a future, would I store anything for use – emotional, mental or literal?

Four AM is not the time to consider these questions. The rainy pre-dawn does not lend itself to clarity of thought, (unless of course you’re one of those people who gets up at four all the time, in which case, I think you might need professional help). But I did have a thought and it was this: having things – slipper socks, successfully produced plays, time with grandchildren, memories – was never the point. Giving them – using them, handing them on – is.

The point of my aunt spending time with her new granddaughter goes beyond the joy of the moment: she is giving the child affection on which she will thrive and which she will go on to offer to the world around her. The reason you acquire knowledge – reading books, learning – is so that it is of use to others when you expand their thinking or fix their drain, not so you just “have it,” whatever that means. You take your slipper socks and…well, I’ve got nothing there. They’re slipper socks. Enjoy them.

When I’ve been uncomfortably confronted with mortality before, I’ve always thought of my work. What writer or artist doesn’t? We are, as a whole profession, looking to leave something of ourselves behind, hopefully something substantive and permanent. In the absence of understanding – or being able to value – what I have personally brought to my immediate world, there would be comfort and structure in knowing that, say, like Philip Roth, I had contributed a book a year (are you kidding me? the man is a machine), or like Salinger an influential masterwork, or like Tracy Letts a masterful production, or like Nora Ephron a career of rational perspectives. That knowledge would, I think, free me up, give me some peace: if nothing else, I had made good on my potential and would leave something concrete behind.

I took that road this morning again, but, when pushed, even that path ended in giving. Why, after all, do we publish or produce or show our work? Even the most egomaniacal artist is giving his work to the world. Perhaps charging them $125 a seat or $4 million a painting or $24.95 in hardback, but giving it to someone nonetheless. If the work goes unseen, un-given, it may still have value, yes, but its value is unrealized, its natural journey incomplete. It’s all a gift.

I am grateful that I do not know that this Christmas will be my last, that I have an unknown stretch of time ahead of me to give more, to create more to give, to see and shape what I do as a gift rather than just a thing. Or a slipper sock.

That, in itself, is an amazing present. Thank you, Aunt Julie, for that. And Merry Christmas.

I know you’ve been up all night wondering how the weekend baking went, so let’s get right to it and relieve your anxiety so you can get back to wrapping up the cat.

It’s hard to believe that as a.) a girl, and b.) a Swede, I have never torn open a packet of yeast. I’ve cooked and baked, but just in front of yeast is where I’ve drawn the line in my kitchen endeavors. It’s sat there my entire life in its deceptively innocent yellow packaging just across the DMZ behind the unfurled barbed wire. My reasoning has been this: if I can’t manage to keep myself, my kitchen and my loved ones free from sticky residue when I buy my dough from a store and only have to roll it out, what hope is there for any of us if I attempt to create said dough from scratch?

I’m just trying to make you aware of the risks. Emma + dough = umm….let’s say, “street luge.”

Yesterday, December 13, was the date I set to break my yeast embargo because it was Santa Lucia, an inexplicably Swedish celebration of an Italian saint whose eyes were gouged out with hot pokers before she was burned at the stake for converting to Christianity around 300 AD. Isn’t that a lovely and heartwarming story?

In Swedish households, the oldest girl gets up at some ungodly hour of the morning, bakes nice things, makes hot drinks, loads it all on a tray, puts a wreath of candles on her head and goes around the house in a white robe waking her family with songs and delivering tasty treats. She’s on the hook until she’s thirteen, at which point the next daughter in line takes over.

My Lucia career was pretty smooth until I was twelve and misjudged the under-construction curve of our stairs, dropping the tray of cocoa and toast down the stairwell as I barely prevented my hair and the house from catching on fire when my flaming head wreath slipped sideways. If the real target of Lucia is to get everyone in the house up and at ’em, mission accomplished.

Every year I try to get on the stick and make Lucia happen and every year toast is about as far as I get. This year, I was determined to beat that poor standard. I got up early (for a Sunday) and made the dough. So far, so good. No major mishaps except when I’d pre-read the recipe on Saturday I’d missed the part where I had to let the dough rise for two hours before turning it into spiral rolls, so we had to re-plan the first half of our day and “Lucia breakfast” became “Lucia midafternoon snack time.”

Start time: 7:30AM. By 10:00 the dough was supposed to have doubled in size but hadn’t. Maybe a third bigger. By 10:30, my patience had expired, so I rolled out the unpuffy dough and started distributing butter and sugar.

Put all the rolls in the pan. Took all the rolls out of the pan when I realized the nut and sugar coating was supposed to be making a diabetic bed for them in the bottom of the pan. Make the bed, reinsert the rolls.

At this point, the rolls are supposed to rise again for, according to the recipe, 35-45 minutes. Until they’re double their original size. Again with the double. After 2 hours and 15 minutes, which is a massive, massive miscalculation in the recipe if you ask me, the rolls were nearly big enough to be candidates for the oven. 25 minutes later – correction, six hours and 25 minutes later – voila, sticky buns!

They’re good too. The dough part is fluffy, thanks to the extra two hours of rising I’m sure, and the coating is appropriately coma-inducing, if a little on the burned side, but who’s counting? Nothing caught fire and no one’s missing a limb.

See? It’s all about how you set your expectations.

To close the day, we hopped over to the Swedish-American Hall (who knew we had one? Thanks for sorting that one out, R!) for pepparkakor and glögg and to watch a proper Santa Lucia procession and concert, complete with a blonde Lucia from Stockholm with flaming wreath, (poker not included). A young boy in a white wizard’s hat with silver stars on it joined the girls, which we thought was weird, but I guess an extra wizard here and there can’t hurt your chances for a successful outcome, right?

The whole event made me miss my Swedish grandmother awfully, but soon we’ll have a small daughter ourselves to carry on the family tradition and Vivy would have loved that, so here’s to Swedish girls and old ladies and traditions handed down far from the homeland.

It was our most successful Lucia Day ever and a lovely day overall. Hooray, Christmas!

Nothing says “Christmas” like a nut-covered cheese ball, right? RIGHT??

Well, maybe not for you, but my grandmother always scored one from somewhere and we had it with Ritz crackers and egg nog on Christmas Eve as a pre-dinner lactose tolerance test. Maybe it’s because I’m pregnant and seeking comfort food like a missile seeks a…well, some sort of sweet or savory target. If missiles do that, which they probably don’t. But it would be excellent if they did. Small missiles. Programmed to find macaroni and cheese. And Mallomars. Someone should get on that. I’m talking to you, Pentagon/Steve Jobs/Better Homes & Gardens.

Maybe it’s because it’s been a pretty daunting autumn and I’m determined to make Christmas feel like home. And by “home” I mean the parts of the holiday chaos that I enjoyed, not the yelling and the tube socks.

Has everyone had a difficult time these last few months? Divorce, career disruption, family issues, financial problems, unwelcome moves, relationship drama, you name it, someone in my inner circle is dealing with it. And, of course, I’m pregnant for the first time, which is not at all a bad thing but has become something of a private thing in the surrounding storm. So I’m turning to cheese balls for steadiness (they can get quite sturdy if you freeze them) and planning a low-key, carb-heavy, small Swedish Christmas in our little apartment away from the economic and metaphorical recession.

A key feature of that plan is items that involve risen dough, namely my grandmother’s sticky buns (sweet rolls with an extra coating of sugary goodness) and homemade bread. For those of you unfamiliar with my background in the kitchen, this is not a solid plan. Dough and I have a history, a history in which I have consistently been on the losing side, as have the walls of the kitchen. Dough and I, we’re like Afghanistan and anyone who’s invaded Afghanistan. It seems like I might be the destined-for-victory, well-intentioned exception when I come by with my troops of well-organized ingredients and clean counters and what not, but as soon as I get a toehold of control, the stuck-together insurgency creeps off into the tricky hills, taking any hope of smooth success with them. I’m left holding a bag of flour and staring at a pile of mess in some country where I don’t understand the rules or the language.

But Christmas isn’t just for winners, people! If the sticky buns come out like little nuggets of holiday cement covered in burned sugar, well, we’ll goddam well eat ’em anyway, because it’s Christmas and you weren’t raised in a barn, so show a little class and finish what’s in front of you.

Now that’s the Swedish Christmas spirit I remember!

Really though, I hope you’re taking a moment out of the chaos to score a tree, have some cocoa and listen to a little soothing Christmas music. Even with the chill and the drama, if you pause for a moment, Christmas is a lovely time of year, don’t you think?

To be clear, despite nearly ten years in San Francisco, New York is home. I mean, yes, of course, home is where R is and I do feel at home in our west coast apartment, but this city by the bay with its lack of drive, diners and dead of winter is discouraging come December.

Where are all the holiday markets and the Christmas buzz? Snow, please? Pretty please?

I need some tourists crowding in front of the Saks windows on 5th Avenue and snaking out of Radio City Music Hall so that I can look native and disdainful while secretly feeding off their excitement. I would like to be caught without gloves in Central Park so I can jam my hands in my pockets and dodge into an overpriced cafe on the Upper East Side for a cocoa to go so that I won’t lose my mind while I shop for boots and gifts at Bloomingdale’s. I need some weekday time on the street in SoHo to do some strike team snatching of holiday baubles before heading to the Angelika to catch some uplifting film on otter breeding that no one outside New York even knows was released. I want to wander the West Village in the winter chill and a long coat, thinking about the exciting year ahead, feeling the pull of Right Now! and What’s Next? I miss my Christmas market in Union Square with its red stalls and garland, and its mix of happy treasures and useless trinkets.

Home. Mmmm.

This happens every year and I usually dash off eastward in mid-December to get my pre-Christmas fix so everyone doesn’t have to listen to me whinge about the seasonally inappropriate sunny days and lack of aggressive Christmas cheer here in San Francisco. But this year we’ve been on the road for what feels like the better part of the last six months, plus my holiday heart is pumping an extra four quarts of shiny red Christmas blood around for this baby of ours, so I may be bound to the snowless slow lane for the time being.

If I were going to New York, here’s a list of what I’d do. If you’re there, you should too.

1. Hit as many holiday markets as possible. Key one: Union Square. I’m also really fond of St. Bartholomew’s on Park Ave. because I grew up going to that church. You can score a silk tie for dad, jewelry from Brooklyn for your best friend, and a ridiculous overpriced hat for yourself because your mama didn’t dress you warmly enough. Full listing of markets, here.
2. Check out Manhattan User’s Guide (MUG) listing of blogs covering holiday doings. Especially the events on the skint and Brooklyn Based.
3. Seriously consider schlepping up to St. John the Divine for one of their Christmas concerts (they got Sting – apparently dressed in a cowl, no less – this year). Dress warmly: that place is freeeeezing in the winter.
4. If it snows, take the A up to the Cloisters and wander about in the park a little before or after to get some winter stillness. Have tea. Maybe duck into a concert. Come to think of it, this is a good thing to do in January too. Maybe save the stillness for post-holidays.
5. Go see a non-Christmas show. Screw Scrooge and the Rockettes: get cozy at Joe’s Pub (Happy Endings reading series is tomorrow), catch theater divas Lynn Redgrave at MTC or Anna Deavere Smith at 2nd Stage, or any of MUG’s 5 Off-Broadway Shows to See (see bottom of page).
6. Get a good night’s sleep and head to midtown. Mind you, I never go to midtown unless I can help it, but the Grand Central Terminal shops, including the MTA store for New York-centric stocking stuffers (see also: New York Public Library gift shop), are a good place for gifts. And cheer. As long as you’ve had your coffee and not a lot of stress before you show up. Likewise wandering up 5th Avenue to furtively glance over the tourists’ shoulders at the windows at Saks and Barney’s and the tree at Rockefeller Center. If I’m feeling deranged with festive spirit, I might even go into FAO Schwarz for a few minutes. A word of caution: only brave this outing if you can feel happy window shopping and picking up the odd inspired gift. If you’re on a buying mission, the crowds and price tags could be your downfall.
7. Hit Wollman Skating Rink. Think ahead re: crowds and events, but yeah, skating outside in Central Park is excellent.

If you’re there, I’m jealous, so maybe don’t tell me about it. Or you can tell me about it but you have to bring/send me a gift to accompany your tales of joy. That seems fair.

In the meantime, I’m sorting through New York First to see if I can import everything I like and set up a mini Manhattan in our apartment. Wish me luck.

What my friend’s baby has: the ExerSaucer.
What I had: a Lego.

What my friend’s baby wants: to be held.
What I want: an ExerSaucer.

This Exersaucer is, in a word, awesome. There is nothing that it doesn’t have attached to it except a live pet. It’s the perfect environment for today’s ADD baby: colors, fuzzy bits, things that shake, rattle and roll. I want one sooooo much. And it’s my birthday tomorrow, so anyone who is stumped on what to get me, you can get cracking on sorting out an adult-size ExerSaucer.

It’s a done deal. I’m on Twitter. Follow me if you like. I’ll be sending dispatches from Vegas and from my birthday week until then! (It’s not too late to send large gifts, particularly ones I might need in Vegas. Like a golf cart. Or a trunk of cash.)