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posts about #holidaymemories more → 
"Why Don't You Just Invite the Police Over This Year?"
"Is That Why You're Crying?"
New York, 11:24 AM
Mon Nov 30
21 posts in the last 24 hours
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"Why Don't You Just Invite the Police Over This Year?" |
"Is That Why You're Crying?" |
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12/25/08
12 hours in, he's still good.
12/23/08
oh wait...
12/23/08
12/23/08
Up to that point, I'd seen the repo man on several occasions, been told we couldn't have lots of stuff, etc etc waah waah...but never, not ever was there no food, especially at the holidays. My parents were looking at losing their house, there had been illness and things were really, really bad. So they figured (since I was a teenager, worked opening and closing shifts in a restaurant before and after school myself and rarely got holidays off) that the best gift they could give me was to sleep in that morning.
I woke up late and it was just the most terrible feeling. No tree, no presents and no special food, and my folks and little brother trying to pretend that it was all normal and okay. But my mom told me to check our stockings, which I did...and mine had one, lone, beaded fancy hair barette and a few Godiva chocolates. And I don't think I'll ever forget the hopeful look on my mom's face, or the apologetic look on my dad's face, or how much of a grownup I felt when I gushed over it and made my mom smile.
I know that tons and tons of kids and families have nothing at all EVERY Christmas, and I think about that every year and am thankful for the joy I have now. I used to think about that as the "worst Christmas", but now I think about it as the most important one.
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
Happy Christmas, y'all!
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
Because "the kid liked Toast."
And we happened to need a new toaster anyways...
I don't think I've ever seen him so dejected after he realized that it was infact a real gift and not a joke, and he wasn't getting a toy or anything.
12/23/08
I knew nothing of this. Jeanna Kay and I were sitting in the living room looking at magazine pictures she had of Sean Cassidy when my Aunt Sis arrives; next thing I know Jeanna Kay is screaming like a banshee adn running through the kitchen yelling, "I will not call her mother!".
It wasn't traumatic for me, but it was pretty weird how all the adults tried to act like there was nothing to talk about once they got her calmed down. I mean, really; no one ever addressed the issue. No explanations to the other kids, nothing. Somebody said the prayer, we ate our food and did the gifts. Ah, the power if ignoring anything emotional or problematic--good times! This came in handy years later when I was home from college and very depressed. My dad came to my room and, with coaxing, got me to talk a little about it, so I started crying; my mom burst into the room and yelled at me to "stop ruining Christmas!" When I tried to explain that I was just down and didn't feel like I was up to socializing, she responded, "Well, how would YOU feel if someone came home for Christmas and then sat in her room and cried the whole time?"
I had briefly forgotten that we dont' express emotion in the family -- we just suck it up and smile along, talking abou tthe turkey or the weather or sports. I had forgotten the lesson of Jeanna Kay.
12/23/08
To this day, any family gaterhing suffering from the SLIGHTEST problem -- an aunt spills some wine on the table cloth, my grandmother coughs during the blessing, my brother's cell phone rings in the middle of a meal -- someone will squeal "You've RUINED Christmas!" and run from the room. 'Cause we're still jerks.
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
That's my family. We're batshit and mean to each other and gossip constantly... but for a few drunken moments every couple of years, when we're all in the same room together... well, there's nowhere I'd rather be.
We have the best fucking parties.
12/23/08
Jeez, jeezus, jeezus h. christ, or any derivative thereof;
Damn or damnit; and
Crap, holy crap, or crappola (especially in reference to the presents).
Merry frickin Christmas everyone!
12/23/08
My parents pretty much always ended up yelling at each other about Dad's Christmas presents from Mom. One year she got him a hot shaving cream dispenser. He said, "There are children starving in the world and I'm going to put hot shaving cream on my face? Take it back!"
12/23/08
12/23/08
2. The year my dad came home drunk, put his arm through the bedroom window, bled all over the house while refusing to go to the hospital. He finally did, of course.
3. The year my older brother stole my grandmother's car (he was 12) and drove it to Indianapolis (we lived in mid-Michigan). My mom had to go get him.
4. The year my uncle shoved my brother down the stairs for being disrespectful.
I never knew about any of these things happening until I was an adult. We are protestants, clearly.
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
My brother wasn't there so my dad asked me to take his gift to him. It felt pretty light, but was not expecting the true glory lurking underneath that wrapping paper: a box of chocolate-covered peanuts, like you would get at the movie theater. He was like, what the hell? Sadly he declined my suggestion to send her a thank you note with a box of Sour Patch Kids.
The funny thing is that none of us expected a gift from this woman, but we felt pretty insulted afterwards.
12/23/08
12/23/08
In first grade, the last day before Christmas vacation started, we were using those blunt scissors to cut colored cardboard paper to make Christmas cards. I don't remember what I was thinking, or what my motivation was exactly, but I recall feeling pretty joyful as I took the scissors and cut a small lock of hair from behind my ear. I was 5.
My teacher, Ms. Tittle, gasped a tremendous GASP and grabbed my hand with the hair. She slapped me, loudly, embarrassingly, in the face, and marched me to her desk. I was in huge trouble, she screamed. How could I do such a thing, right before Christmas? She took the hair, placed in in an envelope, wrote a note to my parents, put the note in the envelope as well, and then PINNED THE ENVELOPE TO MY SHIRT. I had to wear it for the rest of the day.
By dismissal, hours and hours later, with this envelope for my parents still on my shirt, my 5 year old imagination had run wild, and I was truly petrified. I was gonna get it when they saw what I had done. Maybe there would even be no Christmas for me! I shakily walked to my mother, waiting for me by her car, and her smile turned to a confused look as she unpinned the note from my chest. My mother opened the envelope, took out the hair, and read the note. I stared at the sidewalk and awaited my sentencing like a convicted felon.
My mom threw her head back and laughed out loud. "Is she crazy? I mean, is she really crazy?"
I will never forget the huge wash of relief that rushed through my body that day. My mom is cool as shit, I realized, even though she sends me to this madhouse of a school because she had to attend it when she was a girl, she was still really cool.
That was a great Christmas.
And my kids go to public school.
12/23/08
12/23/08
I went to the same all-girls' school from kindergarten through 12th grade, and the teachers used to do this to the kindergarten and first graders at my school, too. My mother got around this by putting a strong refrigerator clip on my book bag. I believe she also sent a letter back to my teacher saying something along the lines of "I am also a teacher and I've never done anything so humiliating in my 20 years of teaching DO NOT EVER PIN A NOTE TO MY DAUGHTER'S TUNIC EVER AGAIN!!!!!"
I still have the book bag!
12/23/08
12/23/08
12/23/08
I wind up sitting on a little bridge in a nearby park, under a light, in just intense emotional pain. I think I blamed my crappy upbringing and was distant for the rest of the trip. Years later I figured out that it was part of a pattern of depression that I had not recognized.
12/23/08