(9/15) “Every Santa gets a handler: to walk him to his chair, to...

(9/15) “Every Santa gets a handler: to walk him to his chair, to bring him water, to give him Tic Tacs. But nothing in Santaland is called by its actual name. Santa handlers are called straw bosses. It’s an old circus term, for people who handle the elephants. I made sure that my straw boss knew: when the Tammaro family arrives, bring them straight to my house. My son came bounding in first. He was four years old. He jumped in my lap and started telling me his list. But in the middle he stops, and says: ‘Hey! You sound like my Daddy!’ I started to panic. That’s when my brother Steve stepped in. He said: ‘It doesn’t sound like your Daddy, Jack.’ And I made it through the rest of the visit. But I never risked it again. I didn’t want to ruin the magic. Jack would write these letters to Santa. He never went straight to the toys. He’d write things like: ‘How is your wife? Are the reindeer OK? Did you go on vacation?’ Only then would he get to the list. He had such empathy. I like to think we had something to do with it. The way we are at home. We don’t like to argue. We keep it calm, cool, and collected. We have this thing called ‘Family Sandwich.’ One day Tabatha and I were hugging in the kitchen, and Jack came running up behind us, and hugged us both. He screamed ‘family sandwich!’ And it stuck. We still do it today. I was never a sports dad. But that’s ok, because he wasn’t a sports kid. We loved doing legos. In the beginning he’d just watch me do them. But as he got a little older, we started doing them together. The holidays were always rough for me. It was the busiest time a year at both my jobs, so I’d barely be home. Jack and I would be watching a holiday movie on the couch, his head on my chest, and I’d have to get up to go to work. He’d pull me down by the shirt and say: ‘Don’t go.’ He knew that I worked at Macy’s during Christmastime. But I told him that I worked in Men’s shoes. I told him that I needed the extra money to buy everyone presents. Every day when I started my shift at Santaland, I’d take a little lego Santa that we’d built together, and I’d place it on the shelf. All the elves knew. The lego Santa, that was Jack. It was to remind me of my boy.”