tuckova

Christmas and I’m five, I think; this is a story I only know secondhand. My parents throw a party where they serve Scarlett O’Haras in tiny glasses because they don’t want people to underestimate the punch this punch packs, and apparently some people drink doubles in protest of my parents’ perceived cheapness, and I am doubtless wearing a cute velvet dress of some sort and carrying a tray of cocktails around to the grown-ups who give the cute little girl a sip of their presumably watered cranberry juice and southern comfort, except that my dad would never water a drink and later I am passed out on the coats with my cousin, who despite it being the 70s and the South knows he can’t drive home, so you can imagine how my brain spins in the coats, the fur scratching my cheeks.

And then it’s Christmas and I’m what, ten or eleven and my parents have made this weird modern arty kind of tree that you can buy in the store by 2002 but this is 1978 or so and such things are not in abundance; it’s homemade and a bit rickety. I am mildly sick as I always am on Christmas and am trying to hang the prettiest glass ornaments on our alt.tree, and one slips from my hand and falls and shatters. Shatter is an important word. My mother comes to scold me and realizes I’m running a fever and Christmas stress goes up three knots.

Or I’m seventeen and I’ve been out dancing and come home in something provocative and interesting, throw on a robe and run down the hall to shower off the smell of danger; it’s probably four or five in the morning and my grandfather is already awake, smoking in the living room, blowing the smoke up the chimney. "You shouldn’t smoke," I say automatically, pulling my robe closely over my dress and hoping he doesn’t see the glitter on my face, the cuts on my arms. "Why not?" he asks, and his eyebrows Spock at me, because he quit smoking years before only to be diagnosed with colon cancer. We get through Christmas without his saying anything to anyone or to me either. When he leaves he whispers in my ear to be careful if I can’t be good; this is the last time we talk before he dies.

Twenty-one and living in Japan and my mother comes bustling over the ocean with Christmas gifts and cheer, but to no avail; I am more desperately lonely than I have ever been in my life and all my edges are so blurred there is no core. We listen to the bell ring three times three times nine times and I am as empty as I can be and still be full of sadness.

And then twenty-five, or maybe only twenty-four? The Christmas when I sat in a living room full of nutcrackers apologizing to the woman who would never be my mother-in-law for breaking the heart of her boy who had never loved me, then later filling his truck with my things and moving to a new life that was, in the end, even worse than the awful one I was leaving.

There have been good Christmases, for sure. But it is altogether not my favorite holiday. Imagine me, yesterday, engaged in a shouting match with Squire over the importance of vacuuming pine needles before the cat chokes on them, and he says, "Why are we jumping on each other’s ay-ess-ess-es? I’m happy to be home with you and I know you’re happy to be home with me," and I burst into laughter colored tears because I am again reminded that it is not all about the past, but about the present, which we write as we go along.

And so now Friar is making something tasty with fish and we are listening to Cechomor’s Christmas CD and the tree is lit and you know, I’m trying as hard as I can to be the person I want to be. Now and for next year. And I wish for anyone this contentment and this hope.