I thought Christmas would be the rough day this year...
Christmas morning we always opened presents at our house as kids, then went to my Mimi and Papaw's house (great-grandparents) and had Christmas breakfast and opened more presents. After that we'd usually head to one of my Dad's relatives for the afternoon and evening, and then back to our house to play with the bounty we had received.
As I got older Mom and Dad divorced and remarried, Mom divorced again, Mimi and Papaw passed, I got married and had my own children, and we moved to Ohio, but we still came home for Christmas every year, but now Mimi and Papaw's house was Mom's for Christmas Breakfast. One year I drove from Dayton to Knoxville on Christmas Eve night with pneumonia...I didn't want to but it was my ex's turn with the kids for Christmas, he was already in Tennessee and when I called to tell him I was sick and couldn't drive the kids down, he threatened to call the police on me. I remember that drive like it was yesterday....it's Christmas Eve, it's snowing in Kentucky, it's foggy, and I'm running a fever of 102. I kept hallucinating that people were walking out out of the fog in front of me, and slamming on the brakes. The heater in that old AMC Pacer was intermittent at best, so I kept a towel on the dashboard to wipe the condensation from the windshield, and had almost every blanket I owned wrapped around the kids in their car seats in the back seat.
I was stopped by a Kentucky State Trooper somewhere around Williamsburg, Kentucky, because I was doing 35 in a 60 m.p.h. zone. When he realized how sick I was, he wasn't going to let me continue driving but I broke down completely at that point and told him what my ex had threatened to do if the kids weren't in Knoxville on Christmas morning, so he escorted me all the way to Jellico, Tennessee then bought me and the kids hot chocolate at a Waffle House, and made me take four aspirin. I wish I could remember that man's name...he lived in Corbin, KY, he went off shift at midnight, and his wife was at home putting the kids to bed so they could play Santa later when he got home. He had two kids similar in age to mine, a boy and a girl as well, and we actually exchanged Christmas cards for several years until I broke the chain by losing my address book and moving three times in one year. Wherever you are, God Bless You. I hope you are safe and retired and living a good life.
The first Christmas I missed at home with my family was when I lived in New York. I didn't have the money or time off of work to drive home (an 18 hour drive one way!) so I spent it with my boyfriend and his mother, who did not like me. To be fair, according to Darrell, she never liked any girl he dated so I shouldn't feel special (in his words). I cried all the way back from Gloversville to Albany, and spent almost two hours and $30 on the phone with my mother and sister that evening crying and wishing I was home. Somehow in my young, stupid brain I thought this was the worst Christmas anyone could ever have. Looking back now, I want to kick my own keister for that little pity party. I take that back...the feelings were legit, I was terribly homesick and so far away from home. It just seems so...pathetic now.
Later when I moved back to Knoxville, then to South Carolina, Christmas was all about Mom's house for Christmas Breakfast, just like in the old days. And, despite all of us being in our 20's and 30's, we acted like children a lot of the time. Christmas 1992 my sister Kim, her husband Darrin, my boyfriend Patrick and myself chased each other around the house with cameras having the infamous "Camera War", which Kim and I talked about for years. I have the pics someplace, one of these days I'll find them and post them. This was when my Mom was living in Mimi and Papaw's old house in Old North Knoxville, a Craftsman-style cottage set amidst the old Victorians. Built in 1902, my great-grandparents moved into it in 1928. I loved that house, and the smell of wisteria in spring will still take me back to the porch swing next to the trellis on the front porch. That house and neighborhood held so many good memories for me, but not so much for Mom so she sold it in 1994 and moved up above Lake City, TN on Norris Lake. I can understand why now, though at the time we were all completely puzzled. Jeff Foxworthy has a joke that goes "You might be a redneck if the directions to your house include 'turn off the paved road'." The directions to my Mom's lake house were "turn off the gravel road at the mailbox that looks like a cow onto the dirt track that goes downhill at a 45 degree angle". I kid you not.
That valley has it's own weather. It could be beautiful, sunny, blue sky and 50 degrees in Lake City, and yet 12 miles and a lot of feet up on the side of the mountain it would be snowing with a foot on the ground, 28 degrees, and no sign of stopping. I'm not exaggerating. We got snowed in enough times there that we learned, if it started snowing, RUN. I'm laughing now, but spend three days in a 2-bedroom 1-bath cabin with five other people (all smokers except my John) and no electricity or hot water and you would run too. We went for a LOT of walks during those three days. But we also probably had the best Christmas I've ever had...Christmas morning, since there was no electricity, we opened our presents by candlelight and kerosene lamplight and light from the wood stove fireplace, then Mom and Didi (my maternal grandmother) told us stories about Christmases when they were young, and we played board games and cards and cooked soup on the woodstove and sang Christmas carols and it was absolutely wonderful. We are all so pigheaded that there was usually at least one argument at some point on Christmas morning, but not that day. I have a picture that I cherish so, of me, John, Kim and Darrin on the deck, snow falling around us, and you can see in our faces that we're all so happy and having such a great time.
Mom had been diagnosed with cancer the spring before that Christmas, and would see only one more before she left us. She was still doing well at that point, she had lost her hair but not her spirit, and we all believed she would come through and make it. After she passed, Christmas was never the same again. Darrin and Kim had moved to Puerto Rico not long after the snowstorm Christmas, and after Mom left us Kim never came in for Christmas again, even after she voted Darrin off the island. We would come in and go to Dad's, but Dad's house was (is) a minefield at the best of times, plus they never put up a tree. Mom ALWAYS had a tree and lights and decorations. Always. Then I had my big blowup with Dad and, well, Christmas is spent with John and my best friend Gareth at my in-laws house now.
Don't get me wrong...I LOVE my husband's family. They are such wonderful people, all of them. Oh, believe me, they can get on your nerves just like anyone else, but Christmas at John's Mom's is fun and full of laughter, joking, yelling (not in anger, they're just a loud family), food, and love. One of the things I love about John's family is they are very loyal to one another, something I never had from my family, and loyalty is one of those things I appreciate most in anyone. They can give each other absolute hell, get in shouting matches, curse at each other, stomp around and make each other crazy, but if anyone messes with any of them, the full force of the Painters will come down upon that unlucky person's head.
But it's not the same. And knowing that it will never be the same makes me miss my family all the more. Losing my sister last winter, even though we hadn't seen each other in five years, was hard. Knowing that part of yourself, someone whom you love and admire and cherish and care about so is no longer on Earth and will never share Christmas with you again leaves a huge hole that no amount of love from others can fill.
So I thought Christmas this year would be especially hard, the way the first Christmas after Mom passed was. But it wasn't. I missed Kim and thought a lot about her on the days leading up to Christmas, but on Christmas day, I was ok. And I was proud of myself, because I thought I had handled it well.
Then New Years Eve arrived. As the day passed and the evening grew nearer, I grew more and more morose, then started having bouts of crying. When the last guest invited to the bonfire blew me off, I took it as a personal affront and just wanted to go to bed, pull the sheets over my head, and pray to die. But I didn't. I made myself stay up, welcome in the New Year, I didn't get drunk (although I wanted to), and even watched a movie after watching a beautiful fireworks show, first put on by the city of Seneca, then by Gareth, in our back yard. I got my dog Torch out of his enclosure and spent time with him, time we both enjoyed, and he got the treat of a roasted hot dog that had fallen in the ashes.
Today, I've spent the day reflecting not just on the last year, which sucked majorly, but on my life. Especially the last six years. I've made some personal, private New Years resolutions, not just the normal one to lose weight, which is my perennial favorite, but others having to do with my interactions with others and with my personal and professional life. I watched a movie about three women that deal with their parent's issues and their father's dying, as well as their own issues with each other, and it made me think about how much of my life has been wrapped up in getting angry for how others have treated me. I need to learn to not be so angry. I need to learn to not be so angry with others. I need to learn how to channel my anger and my depression in positive ways. And I need to work on my relationships with those I love, rather than shutting them out of my life because I'm afraid of them hurting me. I need to learn to address things that bother me at the time, rather than allowing it to fester. And, most of all, I need to stop feeling so much guilt. I turn 50 this year. My goal is to make it another 50, and that's not going to happen if I don't start doing things differently.
Here's hoping that 2012 is a much better year for all of us than 2011 was. Happy Holidays, and a very Happy New Year. And I mean that with all of my heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment