It's about the season of Christmas. And what happens when the merriment gives out.
I look at some families today. No matter how many years they've been decorating the tree with the same ornaments or baking the same sugar cookies or hanging the stockings in the same place every year, it never gets old. The family at the Christmas table grows and grows as children result in grandchildren and then great grandchildren. Boyfriends and girlfriends become husbands and wives and parents and the holiday warmth grows and grows.
And then there are other families that defy these odds. And collapse. It's more noticeable than ever around the holidays.
I was in the latter. For about five to ten years when I was a little kid, my family was just like one of those super-close ones I just described. We'd regularly go to this one's house for Christmas Eve and that one's house for New Year's Eve. Most of the time, Christmas was in our place so I luckily wouldn't be far from the toys I had just installed batteries in. Our holiday feast was usually around the huge dining room table in my grandparent's section of the house downstairs. And, in our own way, there were Christmas Day traditions.
The unwrapping of gifts. And my grandmother always not liking what she was given.
Roast loin of pork served as the main course. My dog Tuffy would get a plate of the meat juices to lap up in the kitchen.
Apple pie served with a slice of cheese on top. I think this was a favorite of my uncle's.
Post-dinner and pre-dessert, there would be a dining room table game for all those not asleep in the living room. Some years, it was Yahtzee. Others, it was that Trouble game with the popping dice in the middle. We'd wonder each year who would be the first to playfully accuse somebody else of cheating.
Ah, memories. Okay, they're probably not as heartwarming as the Bailey family in "It's A Wonderful Life." But it was how we did things at Christmas and it was ideal for us.
Somewhere and somehow, it all fell apart. In retrospect, I'd like to hire a psychologist to do a study on just what happened. My own private and uneducated analysis would conclude that things started to change as my older cousins got even older and started to have their own lives with boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives. Also, my grandfather had died and a bit of the filter eroded now with my grandmother now a widow and incredibly opinionated. Especially when a cousin would bring home a girlfriend or boyfriend who wasn't Protestant.
As for my parents and my aunts and uncles, things got testy. Why? I'm not sure. Perhaps, as age crept in, small problems became bigger dilemmas and tolerance was a rarity. Eventually, cheating during a game of Trouble was minor compared to bigger issues.
Two aunts would argue endlessly over how to raise each other's children. My mom was used as the sounding board for both and was in the uncomfortable role of making peace where peace was likely impossible.
At the same time, as I had gotten older and into high school, I was now at the dinner table for longer stretches and part of the adult conversation. Before you knew it, I was seeing problems that I never knew existed when I used to be upstairs playing with some Remco toy.
It wasn't long before the holidays found everybody busy with their own lives. And retiring to their own private corners of the family boxing ring. It just was never the same again.
In my own house, I could foresee issues between my own parents. When I was a kid, they used to tell me that they fought and that was natural because "all parents fight."
By the time I was 16 or 17, I wondered if all parents fought that much.
We had the bonus feature of having my grandmother owning the house we lived in. That only works well on sitcoms where everybody hugs at the end of 22 minutes. The biggest battle always between my grandmother and my mother was over the heat in the house. My mother thought we didn't have any. I became the unwilling conduit one more time.
"Go down and tell your grandmother to send up some heat."
Okay. Grandmother would argue back. To me.
"The thermostat's on 72. How much hotter does she want it?"
Winter after winter. Year after year.
The picture below is courtesy of my cousin who recently unearthed some new snapshots. It's probably a holiday event in later years. That's my mother in what looks like a bowling shirt and my grandmother. The angst is palpable. There is no eye contact between the two.
My cousin also dug up this gem. There is really only two photos that I can remember of my parents and me together. Both were years earlier when I was six or seven. But, in what likely was the last Christmas dinner my family shared together, the three of us were caught together in this rare snapshot. My mother, my father, and me sitting together on a couch. From the hair and the striped slacks, I think I'm 16 or 17 and in high school.
I don't think we ever took a picture together again.
After their ultimate divorce and my distancing from both of them after college, we did come together again for some Christmases. My parents made peace with each other after my grandmother (Dad's mom) died. Soon, the holiday was spent with me cooking for them in my apartment. One year, we even dragged out Yahtzee.
It wasn't the same. But, for my parents in their later years, it was good enough. And time well spent every December 25.
These days, without family nearby, I have developed my own Christmas traditions. Late night Christmas Eve service at church. Good, good friends joining me for a home-cooked meal on Christmas Day.
It's not the same as family. But, looking back, it's not only good enough. It just might be better.
Dinner last night: Garlic shrimp at Sardi's.
2 comments:
I am not aware of any pictures of my mother, my father, and me. There are pictures of me. There were pictures of my mother. There were pictures of my father with me and the rest of the family. There was a rare picture of me and my mother. But a family picture never happened. Unless someone in the family has one in a basement somewhere. I resonate with this entry. My parents stayed together until my mother died. But if she had lived, not sure what would have happened.
Len: Your story is exactly why I try to make sure We take a complete family photo at least once a year (getting 5 kids and my wife and I together at the same time isn't easy). Not sure we ever took a complete family photo (with parents) when I was growing up; I wish we had.
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