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11 de Diciembre 2008
past christmas present
I woke this morning at 3am and began worrying about Christmas.
I've been drinking too much lately, hoping another thimble of spiced rum would warm my frozen ebenezer heart, hoping the bubbles from another beer would slake my thirst for an honest pine scented clean cut utterance of ocomeocomeimmanuel.
I stumbled out to the kitchen, took out a pen and accounted for all the money I've spent on drinking out this week.
It really wasn't so much money, but it still had me a little worried.
I might have needed someone to hold me, but I've taught my loved ones to keep their distance, or else. When I asked Martin to cuddle me, he graciously refused. He knew that wasn't what I really wanted, whether I needed it or not. Thank God.
Instead he put the relationship into first gear and despite being bleary eyed and exhausted, he expertly managed the icy streets of my despair.
He asked all the usual questions but in a way that made me think like a sagacious five year old, instead of like a jaded 28 year old.
What is bothering you about Christmas?
Did you say the Jesus Prayer?
Do you need a Kleenex?
I stumbled through a few sentences and then cried for a while. When he told me I should probably take some deep breaths and get some sleep, I asked if I could just cry a little longer. And he said yes, a little longer.
I know too much about how disappointment feels to ever know how to deal with it.
Christmas leaves so little room for disappointment.
There is a house on my street with snowmen and Santa and a blown up Grinch. They strung lights in a triangle shape on the side of a very large Cedar, and wound more around a funny primordial looking tree in the parking strip. All those little lights poke holes in my January through October coping mechanisms and I feel drunk with fury. I want to drive my car through the fence strung with multicolored c7 bulbs. It would feel so good,
so true to destroy it.
Because all of it is a lie. Snowmen don't really look like that.
The Grinch is a flimsy, desperate metaphor for breaking down a capitalist Christmas. He has become a sort of mockery of what he was supposed to signify because you are supposed to look past him to what the holiday is really about, rather than what he is about and how can you do that when all you really want to do is gape at the giant blown up effigy?
And the funny plastic Santa Claus is a warped version of something that was true once, but for all the tradition he dictated, we have still managed to mangle it all beyond recognition.
It all screams fantasy, that Christmas is about fantasy--Hope's lost cause, broken down, hypocritical, jailbait uncle.
Uncle Fantasy arrives earlier every year. His overbearing presence fills the room with the stink of his fears like foot fungus and in his presence there is no room for simple, honest disappointment.
He laughs in your face and sounds his barbaric yawp: forget what matters to you the rest of the year, what is real, forget what you know and get by with what you can grab today, today is all that matters--tomorrow you may be dead anyway. Cling to instant gratification because there is nothing beyond this little tree dropping its needles, and this big box full of air mostly.
Uncle Fantasy's Christmas story says there is nothing real about two parents who will yell at one another in spite of all they have done to keep the illusion of family alive,
a man who hopes his vegetarian stepdaughter will thrill at a stocking full of smoky dried beef,
and since you learned early to deny yourself a moment to honor your hard earned disappointment you
say thank you for the wrong colored baby doll,
you say thank you
for the clothes that don't fit,
and fold your hands for a sort of weak tea grace over the bloody leg of lamb you will throw up later,
and do your best to let the shame wash over you when you are forced to hug the once-a-year relatives who don't know you would rather not.
And the worst of Christmas day was the reality of divorce: the Christmas morning with dad always outdone, in dysfunction and longevity, by mom's attempts to erase it: her face when we arrive "late" and then, oh God help us, she sees the bags and boxes stuffed in the trunk of his car--she feels like her daughters are moving back in (when we dress for school next week she won't recognize us in the clothes she never would have bought us) she wonders are we strangers or houseguests? And we begin to believe we have allowed Christmas to afford him another opportunity to buy our affections. How long has Christmas whored me out to my father and cracked the ice under my life with my mother?
Resentment looms so large: any sign of disappointment reads as a complete lack of gratitude. Why buy them gifts anyway? Why buy them anything? Why feed and clothe those little brats? Next time they go away they should stay away. And little me, I imagined they would find a way to make me disappear all together: next Christmas I might spend in heaven, wouldn't that be nice--for all of us?
You can see I have plenty to grieve, plenty to sort through, plenty of memories to mourn and many I want to throw out. But it is difficult to imagine and harder to work for a new way to do Christmas. Christmas is about new beginnings afterall.
I don't like the presents and the songs about Santa and Reindeer.
I like the star over the stable and hot drinks.
I don't like spending money on you because I feel like I have to.
I like spending time with you because I want to.
I don't like the confusion over whether you are going "home" or staying here.
I like staying home, which sometimes means just staying put, holding still.
and if I was trying to win an argument over what Christmas is really about I think I might win, don't you?
And maybe all the anger will change soon, I'll learn how to do what is important to be in relationship with those who care most about me who also happen to find meaning in the things I don't like about Christmas.
Maybe I won't be so distracted by the difficulty of hoping or the prevalence of fantasizing. Maybe I'll be capable of generosity and peace, of creating a holy day despite the holiday bustle.
But to put the kind of pressure that this requires this year would be too much. To tell myself to hurry up, and get over it creates a new kind of bustling denial, a turning of my head and heart away from the stories of Christmas past and there is so much to learn from the past that I really don't want to do that.
Redemption redemption redemption. That is what I want for Christmas, and not just for myself, but for you too. If I could give that to you, if I could restore your hope in your family, in the feasts of your childhood and the tearing off of wrapping papers, in the ugly sweaters and itchy dresses, in the recitals and plane trips, I would, you know I would.
But I just can't put that kind of pressure on you. Or on myself.
Instead I want to tell you that
your discomfort this month is trying to tell you something about who you are (I know this because mine is trying to tell me something about who I am).
That
Your anger and frustration has roots that will have to be dug up, pulled apart, you will have to prune and burn the fruitless branches of Christmas and that is going to hurt like hell, for you and for those who thought they were doing right by you.
So just go at it slowly and as gingerly as possible.
Take a good long look and a box of tissue to share.
And know that when you return, when January comes around you might think it was all for naught.
But it wasn't because, thank God, seasons cycle back around and we'll have another chance to do it all over next year.
When you wake up at 3am and you are frightened of Reindeer hooves on the rooftop, scared of fattened intruders and your burgeoning ingratitude remember that this is the pain that comes with awareness and it is a start, not a finish, it probably won't not end you because it is a start. look up at the ceiling and tell God, in your most jilted old ladyish voice, 'coming in like this, breaking and entering the way you do, you sure gave me a start.'
And then call me, because I will be awake too, cursing Immanuel, who comes close to listen well, not just at Christmas but whenever I do. It feels like this is going to take a little longer than I expected...
if you want to cry you can cry,
in the words of my dear husband,
yes, a little longer.
help yourself | By crymytinyflood | 4:24 PM
Comments
I'm stuck in the elevator, help me please! Come and get me on Christmas eve!
Posted by: emile at 19 de Diciembre 2008 a las 05:10 PM
i am so so grateful for you.
Posted by: emile at 16 de Diciembre 2008 a las 05:35 PM
