12 Days ‘til Christmas
On the first day ‘til Christmas, my lovebirds gave
to me: 1 thing they’d save if the house was on fire…
Aaron—his grandfather’s
baseball cap.
Aaron’s grandfather was a huge Red Sox fan and he
took Aaron to see his first game when Aaron was seven. For his grandfather’s
next birthday after that, Aaron picked out a Red Sox hat for his gift,
intensely proud of himself for choosing it all on his own. Aaron’s grandfather
wore that hat everywhere except church after that; Aaron’s grandmother joking
that he slept and showered in it too. The hat eventually became so worn and
faded the logo was barely visible. In Aaron’s mind, that hat is synonymous with
his mental picture of his grandfather. After his grandfather passed away, his
grandmother gave Aaron the hat. He never wears it, but it sits in a place of
pride on his mantle next to a framed picture of the two of them from that first
ballgame, and he carts it lovingly back and forth from his apartment in LA, to his
condo in Toronto for filming, to his parents’ house for holidays. He never
travels without it.
Liam—his cell
phone
As an actor, Liam’s cell phone is his lifeline. He’s
got hundreds of industry contacts stored there that he wouldn’t even know where
to begin gathering again should he lose them. But more importantly, he’s still
got the two hundred thirty-seven pictures from his family’s vacation to Greece
stored there. Right after Liam’s first role in a movie, as soon as the check
had cleared, he’d taken his family to Greece. His mother’s parents had emigrated
from there only a year before his mother was born, and since she was the
youngest, she was the only one of her siblings to be born on US soil. She’d
talked since she was a little girl about visiting the place where her parents
grew up and her siblings were born, and Liam had known since he was little that
a trip to Greece was the first thing he’d spend his money on once he was
famous. Only, he’d been so caught up in surprising his family, ambushing them
only hours before the flight and harassing them into packing without knowing
where they were going and hurrying them through the airport to make it on time that
no one had thought to bring a camera. The only pictures from that trip, the
only time he can ever remember truly feeling free before he met Aaron, are saved on his phone.