It was the night before I went to San Francisco for Christmas. I was “thinking about packing” (which is my version of packing) while neighbors assembled in the plaza.  It was an inexact scene. If it were a party, the modest stage where some had gathered would have been the bar, or the kitchen, maybe the television at a critical juncture of the game; the green iron benches where lovers lingered and elders rested would have been reserved for the first comers, perhaps the hosts’ most reliable friends, or at the very least those with intuition or a working knowledge of the layout in the apartment; the satellite spaces circling the fountain would have been inhabited by the newly arrived, or on this night, unleashed dogs, their owners, and kids too young to take notice of the nearby piñatas stuffed with candy. The plaza taking shape before me was a not-yet-crowded room awaiting an announcement. The announcement came in the form of a tape-deck loop and a searing one-man band’s version of “White Christmas.” I stood there with the windows open, recorder in hand, thinking about snow-fallen Christmas eves in Chicago, my “Christmas” outfits, someone else’s presents in the trunk, the cold back seat of the car, frosted windows, snowflakes passing arced street lamps, the sound of winter driving as the heater warms and slush slides away from the tires, Christmas songs all along the dial, a lit-up church across a distant field, a cemetery where nobody I knew was buried, my father’s extra concentration when crossing bridges, the by-now-ordinary passing of my family’s old workplaces, city colleges and hometown, the loneliness I felt for truckers on the expressway and solitary drivers in depressed cars, the last minute stops at Walgreens or Osco, the reassessment of whether we “had everything,” that sudden blast of cold air, those first steps in the snow on the way to the door, and the embrace of someone who no longer lives to read this. I can remember white Christmases and there was something sad about the fact that there was no chance of experiencing one this year. White Xmas (click to listen)