美国国家公共电台 NPR Is Santa Real? A Doubting Brother And The Gift Of A Mother's Voice

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

So let's say Santa and his helpers have settled on all the gifts - hopefully, good ones - and made it down the chimney or however he gets there. Most of us will have our cameras ready to capture the moment. But, not so long ago, the past had to be recreated from fragments, a shoebox of old photos or even the sound of a voice on a fragile, old cassette tape. Many years ago, NPR's Bruce Auster captured a holiday moment by chance and brings us this story.

BRUCE AUSTER, BYLINE 1: When I was a child in junior high school, I owned a cassette deck, a big brick of a recorder. I would hide it on a chair at the dinner table, push the red record button...

(SOUNDBITE OF TAPE NOISE)

AUSTER: ...And listen back later to hear what I'd captured. No one but me knew it was there.

(LAUGHTER)

GORDON AUSTER: What a slop.

AUSTER: One December night at dinner, in the early 1970s, I happened to record the instant when my younger brother began to doubt whether Santa Claus was real. And, for a little more than six minutes, we tried to convince him that Santa is real.

AUSTER: That is so babies...

SYLVIA: But you watch it every year.

AUSTER: Magical junk.

SYLVIA: You've been watching Santa Claus stuff all week...

AUSTER: I know...

SYLVIA: ...For the past week, and you've been watching it. And your face is glowing with thrills watching that. And then, you say, how could it be? And just listen to yourself. Say what you said just a second ago. Now look at your face.

AUSTER: This whole little debate is kind of funny because we were Jewish, but we celebrated 2 Christmas. My mom - she grew up in Brooklyn. My dad - he grew up in the Bronx. They both worked at Macy's in Manhattan in the 1950s. It's where they began dating, our own little miracle on 34th Street. They laughed together. They could make fun of each other.

STANLEY AUSTER: Who?

SYLVIA: You.

AUSTER: Me?

SYLVIA: I didn't eat strawberry shortcake.

AUSTER: She was a stay-at-home mom. Dad worked, came home, then dinner in the kitchen together every night. We lived in our own little cocoon 3. Doubting Santa Claus? A first hint at lost innocence 4.

AUSTER: It can't be real. There's no such thing as flying reindeer 5. There's no such thing as elves, making toys.

SYLVIA: What? What made you think of that just now? And what made you seem so sad?

AUSTER: What made you seem so sad? That's what she said there. Hearing her voice now makes me not sad, but it does take me back. You have to understand. I hadn't heard that voice in 45 years. When I recorded this moment, I couldn't know everything was about to change. My mom - her name was Sylvia - lived about three years after this talk. She died of cancer. She fought it. I was 12 when she first got sick, and I was 16 when cancer and chemo finally wore her down.

The pain stole her energy, her humor, her personality. Her suffering stole my memory of what she was like before she got sick. Of course, there are old snapshots, Polaroids curled at the edges. I remember her cat-eye glasses, the sweaters she wore. Each detail is a part of the puzzle, how I reimagine her and try to erase 6 the bad memories from the months before she died.

SYLVIA: If there were no such thing, it would not be a tradition for so many hundreds of years. And nobody would bother. You see what's been going on for days now?

AUSTER: This tape is another fragment bringing her back, the only hint I have about what it was like to sit down to dinner each night as a child - music in the background, knives and forks clinking. Her voice - she sounds like she's in the room now.

SYLVIA: When you watched the lovely little drummer boy and all that, you were all glowing.

AUSTER: Santa Claus wasn't in that.

SYLVIA: And the Grinch and all stories. And you were gleaning 7 into the set. Now, if you didn't believe it, why did you watch it? Why did you watch those things?

AUSTER: There are four voices on the old cassette. My mother's - I'd forgotten that strong New York accent. I'm on the tape, the 12-year-old version of me. I don't remember sounding like that. My brother's Gordon. He's over 50 years old now. That soft high-pitched voice only exists on this tape.

AUSTER: There's no such thing as Santa Claus.

SYLVIA: You sound like Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol."

AUSTER: The next thing you're going to do is say, bah, humbug 8.

AUSTER: And that last voice is my dad, Stanley, the only one I could call today and who would sound pretty much like he did 45 years ago. He's a bit dramatic, even now at 91. He's still built like a boxer 9, but he moves a little slowly now, walks with a cane 10. I went to see him and my brother not long ago to play this tape for them.

SYLVIA: Who's that man in the red coat that everybody's talking about?

AUSTER: There's many men in the red coat.

SYLVIA: They're representatives, real representatives.

AUSTER: Dad, what'd you think?

AUSTER: I'm afraid my ears are not quite up to it, nothing I could really discern.

AUSTER: All right. So we're going to pause then. Hold on.

Like I said, he's 91. But, having rediscovered my mother's voice, it never occurred to me that my dad wouldn't be able to hear it. My brother - he could hear the tape when I played it for him.

AUSTER: I was probably 9, and I do remember pretty vividly 11 when I was putting up my big protest against Santa Claus. It's nice to hear that baby voice again. But my mother's voice is beautiful. It's like that is - there's a memory for you.

AUSTER: A memory my dad still hadn't been able to share. He was willing, so I tried again. I played the tape as loud as I could on an iPhone pressed to his ear. He couldn't quite follow the conversation.

AUSTER: But I did hear one voice that I won't remember. What else can I say?

AUSTER: Have you ever heard that before?

AUSTER: No, have not heard it before. But I was taken by your mother's voice. That brought back memories. I almost felt like crying, been too long ago.

AUSTER: Forty-five years. It was a long time ago. For my father, he's lived a whole second life. For me, these six minutes of tape have become a big part of how I remember my mother. It's almost all I have of her that's real. So, at this time of year, with Christmas upon us, I'll let her explain why Santa is real.

SYLVIA: Santa Claus is a spirit, a spirit of a feeling.

AUSTER: A spirit. That's about right. Don't you think? So, yes. I believe I can hear her again, a gift from Santa all because I happened to push the button on a tape recorder and caught the exact moment a young child began to doubt and a mother tried to keep him innocent a little while longer.

Bruce Auster, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS MEADOWS SONG, "XMAS ARRIVES")