Scary Mommy's Guide to Surviving the Holidays by Jill Smokler

when my four-year-oldwanted just one thing for Christmas. One thing. And it wasn’t an iPad or a Zoobie or a Squinky or whatever most four-year-olds were asking for. It was a tuba.
    â€œA real tuba, not a toy,” he emphasized, which was fine because as it turns out there are absolutely no toy tubas in the world. Trust me, I checked seven times, and by then I was really wishing he’d wanted an iPad.
    We had the following exchange approximately 476 times, and each time I hoped he’d magically change his mind:
    Me: Kostyn, what do you want for Christmas this year?
    Kostyn: A tuba!
    Me: Wow, a tuba! What else do you want?
    Kostyn: Nothing. I just want a tuba.
    It soon became apparent he was not going to waver from this wish. When I told him tubas were hard to play and only kids who were eight or nine or ten could play them, he said, “Well, I’m four, so I need a four tuba.”
    When I told him tubas were reeeeeally big and heavy and he probably couldn’t lift one, he stood on his chair, took a huge gulp of milk, and said, “I’m growing bigger every day, and I can stand like this and play it!”
    No joke, his letter to Santa included this heartbreaker: “I love tubas and I will miss it if you can’t bring me one.”
    Let me make clear that I understand the ridiculousness of a four-year-old owning, let alone attempting to hold, let alone attempting to play a tuba. Tubas are larger and heavier than most four-year-olds, and certainly larger and heavier than mine, who has consistently mystified pediatricians for being in the fourteenth percentile for height and weight. A tuba could crush myson.
    But not getting one for Christmas might crush him too.
    In desperation, I Googled “tuba.” The first result was $5,995. I immediately re-Googled “tuba,” adding the crucial adjective “used.” First result: $849, “With a case! And mouthpiece!” (Are mouthpieces usually not included? Because, hello . . .)
    I closed the laptop. And I sat there for a while, envisioning my son on Christmas morning unwrapping his new tuba mouthpiece, the only part we might be able to afford. (At least he’d be able to hold it.) I thought about how it was the first year he really “got” Santa, the first year he wrote a letter asking for his special Christmas wish, the first year he got a note back (from Jingles the Elf, who said, “Wow, a tuba! Those are pretty big and heavy, but I’ll let Santa know . . .” Thanks, Jingles, for the setup.) It was the first year he asked every morning, noon and night, “Is it Christmas yet?”
    To make things worse, his little brother, Evan, would be getting the only thing he kept asking for: a toy trumpet. How could Santa deliver on one wish but not the other? Especially when Evan’s gift would indicate Santa already had a pretty solid operation going in the horn department.
    Just when I had convinced myself that Kostyn would love his other presents—including a cool toy saxophone to match his brother’s trumpet—we ran into a friend who innocently asked the very holiday-appropriate question, “Kostyn, what did you ask Santa Claus for for Christmas?”
    â€œA tuba!” he exclaimed with a sureness in his voice that spelled disaster in my heart.
    So I did the only thing I could do: on December 20, I beseeched all of Facebook for a tuba. “Does anyone have an old, used tuba lying in a basement somewhere?” I begged. “Or know of someone who does? Or have any idea where can I get a used tuba for less than the cost of our monthly rent?”
    And do you know what happened? Facebook came through, TIMES TWO. By the end of that day I had not only one person offering to let us “indefinitely borrow” his old alto horn (which to a four-year-old would look, feel and sound just like a tuba) but another who’d quietly searched for, purchased, and given us a used