The Nutcracker: Christmas with the Dragons

Christmas was a wonderful time for the Dragons, before we spread out across the country and put down roots of our own.  These days when we go back East for Christmas the destination is grandma's house in Boston and a two day Italian feast of cannoli and handmade ravioli.

In the last days before we left Long Island for good,  the Christmas gathering only needed music and dancers to pass for the opening scenes of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.  My cousin Peter played the host, Dr. Stahlbaum.   His home was filled with golden laughing children. 

The Dragons had come a long way after arriving in New York City and settling on the waterfront near the notorious Five Points neighborhood.   They moved uptown to Carnegie Hill after accumulating a fortune trading iron and steel, then to Long Island.  The Dragon's had backed Wagner and labor during Roosevelt's campaign for social justice.  They did very well by doing good.  Peter's father started a law firm with railroad unions for clients.  The railroad business was very lucrative.  Their labor contracts pretty much specified that the railroad was always at fault if there was an accident, so all the lawyers had to do was negotiate how much the settlement would be.

Peter's Long Island home was on land sold by the Secatogue Indians (relatives of the Mohegans) to a local school teacher in 1708 for "several eel spears."  For a while the village was named Sodom.  The land passed through the hands of ever more prosperous owners until the United Fruit Company built mansions on it for its executives.  After the United Fruit Company was long gone, Peter acquired one of the decaying mansions and rehabilitated it.  He traded repairs for letting a guy live in one end of the big house.   The property had a dock with room for four big boats when you parked them stern in.

Peter's wife was the beautiful Jane, a smiling Irish selkie who'd attended an expensive small Catholic women's college near Boston run by the sisters of the Sacred Heart.   As soon as she escaped the convent, the selkie headed for Mexico and the artist colony at San Miguel de Allende where she married a Latin man and had two children.   Jane's mother was related to Burt Lancaster and her father's father had made a fortune finding oil in Venezuela and sent his sons to Holy Cross College and Fordham Law School.  Jane's father parlayed the oil money into Long Island real estate and banks.  He was a very wealthy man and not happy with the selkie's Latin adventures, a guy who'd invite you to lunch at his club and then ask you to split the bill.

Jane's cousin was just as wild and had had a son by a black man.  The boy was twelve by Christmastime of this story.   He was a handsome young man with milk chocolate skin.  He played ice hockey so Jane wanted me to meet him and give him a few pointers.  With all the boy and girl cousins running around the house,  I can't for the life of me understand why she thought the boy would want to talk hockey with a guy more than twice his age.  I think her real agenda was fixing me up with her cousin who was a real looker like Jane, but very geographically impractical since she lived in New Jersey and I lived in Houston.  

When Jane announced she'd invited her cousin for Christmas, her father went ballistic:
"If she brings that child [the black son she'd had out of wedlock], I'm not coming!" 
The selkie merrily replied: 
"That's so sad, father."
"Where will you be having Christmas dinner this year."

Jane's dad and mom showed up despite the blarney, bluster and threats, which possibly proved who wore the pants in that family.  Jane's mother was as tough as Uncle Burt.  And we all had a real good time.