I woke up in a familiar bed in a strange room. Senses rushed in--I remembered that my parents had converted my former bedroom in an office and moved my bed into my sister's former room. Next thought was (crap) it's Christmas. Months of planning and waiting come down to one day. Every gift for someone feels somehow wrong. Then after all the presents are opened that post-anticipation melancholy floods in. Some combat this with eggnog. "Jingle Bells" and "Frosty The Snowman" can only hold up cheer for so long. Songs like "Christmas Time Is Here" from Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas album acknowledge the accompanying blues of the season.
As I waited for my mother to finish in the bathroom, she began to cry. "It's 8.30, it's 8.30," she muttered over and over to herself. My father and I asked what was wrong and she repeated that again. We asked if she was upset that we would be late to my sister's for breakfast... if she was mad I wasn't in the shower yet. She began to blow-dry her hair and repeat that neither my father nor I get it. Get what? What don't we get? This is a good lesson in relationships. One can not complain that the partner doesn't get them if one does not let oneself be gotten, so to speak. Apparently, we were meant to remember that my mother's parents would arrive at 8.30 on Christmas morning, before my grandmother passed away and my grandfather married my mother's good friend. I always thought they had arrived later in the morning.
Plenty of gifts were under the tree at my sister's house despite all our efforts to scale presents back this year. My father's company closed, my sister and her husband had bought their new house, and I will always be broke. My Christmas tactic is to open gifts until one is a book to read then I can happily sit in the corner. Last year I read about the road to financial freedom. This year I flipped between a law school survival guide, stories of past slayers, and the toddler guide again.
HappyWill, my three year old nephew, was the focus of the day. He wiggled around in his reindeer pajamas in excitement the night before and nicely opened each gift. Until his other grandmother arrived and started shoving cheap wooden IKEA toys at him. He's a good kid and bought for me Shoot Out The Lights. I spent most of dinner wondering if the spot on the sleeve of my new shirt would come out.
Sneakers the cat spat at me to wish me a merry holiday. Then he slapped me with his little white paw though I think that was out of pure spite.
