CARE AND FEEDING

Hugh has a hip operation.

- BY DAVID SEDARIS

The year my sister Amy was invited to play Mrs. Claus in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was the same year Hugh had his hip replaced.

“It somehow makes sense that these two things are happening within a week of each other,” I said.

“Except I’m not doing it,” Amy told me.

It was nearly midnight, and we were in my apartment in New York, gathered in the living room. The view from the window looked like the backdrop of a talk show—a jumble of tall buildings with thousands of lit windows, some of them winking. “How can you not play Mrs. Claus?” I asked.

Amy ticked the reasons off on her fingers. “One: they want me there at 3 A.M. Two: it’s supposed to rain. And three: they're not paying me anything.”

“Macy's doesn't pay Mrs. Claus?” I asked, surprised in the same way I'd be if I'd learned that she—Mrs. Claus—had been married before, maybe to another woman, like, “What? That can't be true!”

With us in the living room were two Frenchmen whom Hugh and I know from Normandy: Olivier, who owns a donkey and had been teaching himself English with Duolingo, and David, who also has a donkey but spoke no English whatsoever. Still, he could understand by my tone that something outrageous was happening.

“Qu'est-ce qui se passe?” he asked.

“The department store that calls itself the House of Macy will not give money to the bride of Father Christmas,” I said in French. “For us, this is unacceptable!”