Here we are as in olden days
December 28, 2002 | 12:00am
I sing my favorite Christmas song to myself. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. From now on our troubles will be out of sight. Every year I believe it, a wreath of hope hung on the door of my heart at Christmas where no one sees it but me. My children believe that year after year I act up (and I do), am grouchy, in a Scrooge mood. They never see that when I’m alone, I hum. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the yuletide gay. From now on our troubles will be miles away. Then I mutter sometimes into a solitary brandy, other times just to myself, Please, God.
Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. One child is in escape mode, sent e-mail saying, "Am taking to sea on 18th December to spend Christmas on a tropical island." Far from you, parenthetically. How loudly ring the things we leave unsaid! We have been unhappy with each other. As it turned out the 18th was a Freudian slip, was supposed to be 28th, and so the confusion grew and we have an unraveling drama which, depending on how you look at it, could be the storm cloud on the horizon or the angel on our tree. These controversies force us to re-examine and face questions or maybe only one question: Am I going to do the same thing I do over and over again or am I going to do something differently and see what happens? If we do differently, we will change and grow. I know which way I want to go but...
Another child has met someone whose Christmases have remained unchanged for 50 years: Go to Mom and Dad’s (who haven’t split up), eat the same unchanging menu. Now this child, who I’ve thought of as my vagabond child who travels wherever, whenever, including Christmas, tells me how comforting that consistency appears. So on my way to change I pause in mid-flight. Why suddenly is the humdrum romantic? Is change really the great thing I think it is? Do children realize how confusing it is to be a mother?
Another child has decided to turn off cell, but is bringing heaps of food. Of the five of us – mother and four children – only two are really and truly present to the season. One child and me. Yes, me. My home has been trimmed since early December and I have been genuinely enjoying this holiday season with my friends and neighbors.
Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more. Like my vagabond child, I too wish for tradition. Tradition is easy and can be maintained in half-sleep. Traditionally, my children and I have had Christmas lunch together. I used to awaken at dawn to stuff a turkey and get it perfectly done by lunch when we would wash it down with wine, a tradition that began when the children were in their pre-teens and I wanted them to learn to hold their drink so people would not use alcohol to take advantage of them. That was when I was naive and didn’t suspect that I might be planting the seeds of alcoholism or experimentation with other recreational substances. The phrase "recreational substance," now such a part of post-modern life had not been coined, wasn’t even imagined. Then we all enjoyed my definition of a civilized holiday repast together. They thought they were lucky to have a liberal mom and that’s what I am. By nature I am an epicure. I like enjoyment and pleasure and being over-the-top.
Now the children divide into those who enjoy drink and those who vehemently oppose it, so I took wine off my menu to avoid unhappiness at the Christmas luncheon table. Since none of us admit to alcoholism, and I’m top of that list, we can do without wine for one meal. Most are vegetarian now, so roast turkey is off the menu as well. My Christmas menu this year is roll-your-own steamed prawns (a la Peking duck fixings) and oriental salad I’ll invent. The meat eaters can share roast chicken and pasta with the non-vegetarian grandchildren, because I have vegetarian grandchildren. It will be our usual confusing, imperfect but nevertheless fun Christmas.
Through the years, we all will be together, if the fates allow. I am getting on in years but my habits haven’t changed. They remain bad. I still like red meat, a rare New York cut steak, fat left in, washed down with a robust red wine. My friends and I start dinner with cocktails, have wine with our meal and cap it with cognac or some liqueur. We don’t do recreational substances. Those of us who still smoke, smoke tobacco. I don’t smoke any more but otherwise haven’t changed my consumption habits. In my eyes our Christmas traditions have evolved with my adult children, adjusting to their lifestyles more than adhering to mine. Even my role has changed. Once I was Santa, then Great Mom. Now I’m Mother of Adult Children Who Have Been to Therapy. I am the screen upon which all their unresolved childhood issues get projected and magnified in livid, living color especially at Christmas, when we are all reminded that it’s family time, time to get together and act out family dramas. I wish I could be in Vancouver with my mother, now that I’m over my family drama with her. Hey, mother issues are universal, up and down the generational line in your family and mine. It’s part of life and Christmas.
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough. We will be 16 at Christmas lunch, that’s my whole family less one child, one mate and one Canadian mother. There will be a moment when I will marvel at how all these people came from me. When I was a child my mother and I would always just get enfolded into larger celebrations because there were only two of us. The widow and her orphaned child, that’s how her family used to think of us, and Mom always rebelled against that, always wanted us to have our own glorious lives. Here, almost 20 strong-minded individuals of all sizes and makes pulling in every direction having glorious lives but always, always, still trying to get together for our imperfect Christmas lunch. This is our tradition, I see it now: We roll with the punches and make the most of our imperfect lives, our imperfect holidays. I married when I was 18. This is the 40th Christmas I’ve done for my family, each a little different from the last. Still have not run out of energy, I am willing still to be pulled this way and that by our conflicting energies. Somehow that should illuminate some of the dark corners where my failures at being Dream Mom are stored.
So have yourself, a merry little Christmas now. There is a door to the heart and on it, whether we admit it or not, hangs a wreath of hope for one perfect Christmas when nothing goes wrong and the family, community and world is perfectly at one. May the wreath hang forever. May the hope never die.
Send comments to lilypad@skyinet.net.
Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. One child is in escape mode, sent e-mail saying, "Am taking to sea on 18th December to spend Christmas on a tropical island." Far from you, parenthetically. How loudly ring the things we leave unsaid! We have been unhappy with each other. As it turned out the 18th was a Freudian slip, was supposed to be 28th, and so the confusion grew and we have an unraveling drama which, depending on how you look at it, could be the storm cloud on the horizon or the angel on our tree. These controversies force us to re-examine and face questions or maybe only one question: Am I going to do the same thing I do over and over again or am I going to do something differently and see what happens? If we do differently, we will change and grow. I know which way I want to go but...
Another child has met someone whose Christmases have remained unchanged for 50 years: Go to Mom and Dad’s (who haven’t split up), eat the same unchanging menu. Now this child, who I’ve thought of as my vagabond child who travels wherever, whenever, including Christmas, tells me how comforting that consistency appears. So on my way to change I pause in mid-flight. Why suddenly is the humdrum romantic? Is change really the great thing I think it is? Do children realize how confusing it is to be a mother?
Another child has decided to turn off cell, but is bringing heaps of food. Of the five of us – mother and four children – only two are really and truly present to the season. One child and me. Yes, me. My home has been trimmed since early December and I have been genuinely enjoying this holiday season with my friends and neighbors.
Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more. Like my vagabond child, I too wish for tradition. Tradition is easy and can be maintained in half-sleep. Traditionally, my children and I have had Christmas lunch together. I used to awaken at dawn to stuff a turkey and get it perfectly done by lunch when we would wash it down with wine, a tradition that began when the children were in their pre-teens and I wanted them to learn to hold their drink so people would not use alcohol to take advantage of them. That was when I was naive and didn’t suspect that I might be planting the seeds of alcoholism or experimentation with other recreational substances. The phrase "recreational substance," now such a part of post-modern life had not been coined, wasn’t even imagined. Then we all enjoyed my definition of a civilized holiday repast together. They thought they were lucky to have a liberal mom and that’s what I am. By nature I am an epicure. I like enjoyment and pleasure and being over-the-top.
Now the children divide into those who enjoy drink and those who vehemently oppose it, so I took wine off my menu to avoid unhappiness at the Christmas luncheon table. Since none of us admit to alcoholism, and I’m top of that list, we can do without wine for one meal. Most are vegetarian now, so roast turkey is off the menu as well. My Christmas menu this year is roll-your-own steamed prawns (a la Peking duck fixings) and oriental salad I’ll invent. The meat eaters can share roast chicken and pasta with the non-vegetarian grandchildren, because I have vegetarian grandchildren. It will be our usual confusing, imperfect but nevertheless fun Christmas.
Through the years, we all will be together, if the fates allow. I am getting on in years but my habits haven’t changed. They remain bad. I still like red meat, a rare New York cut steak, fat left in, washed down with a robust red wine. My friends and I start dinner with cocktails, have wine with our meal and cap it with cognac or some liqueur. We don’t do recreational substances. Those of us who still smoke, smoke tobacco. I don’t smoke any more but otherwise haven’t changed my consumption habits. In my eyes our Christmas traditions have evolved with my adult children, adjusting to their lifestyles more than adhering to mine. Even my role has changed. Once I was Santa, then Great Mom. Now I’m Mother of Adult Children Who Have Been to Therapy. I am the screen upon which all their unresolved childhood issues get projected and magnified in livid, living color especially at Christmas, when we are all reminded that it’s family time, time to get together and act out family dramas. I wish I could be in Vancouver with my mother, now that I’m over my family drama with her. Hey, mother issues are universal, up and down the generational line in your family and mine. It’s part of life and Christmas.
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough. We will be 16 at Christmas lunch, that’s my whole family less one child, one mate and one Canadian mother. There will be a moment when I will marvel at how all these people came from me. When I was a child my mother and I would always just get enfolded into larger celebrations because there were only two of us. The widow and her orphaned child, that’s how her family used to think of us, and Mom always rebelled against that, always wanted us to have our own glorious lives. Here, almost 20 strong-minded individuals of all sizes and makes pulling in every direction having glorious lives but always, always, still trying to get together for our imperfect Christmas lunch. This is our tradition, I see it now: We roll with the punches and make the most of our imperfect lives, our imperfect holidays. I married when I was 18. This is the 40th Christmas I’ve done for my family, each a little different from the last. Still have not run out of energy, I am willing still to be pulled this way and that by our conflicting energies. Somehow that should illuminate some of the dark corners where my failures at being Dream Mom are stored.
So have yourself, a merry little Christmas now. There is a door to the heart and on it, whether we admit it or not, hangs a wreath of hope for one perfect Christmas when nothing goes wrong and the family, community and world is perfectly at one. May the wreath hang forever. May the hope never die.
Send comments to lilypad@skyinet.net.
BrandSpace Articles
<
>
