holiday blues, or silverish greens

I honestly thought I'd be skipping them this year

I’m not sure why I thought 2022 would be the first year in recent memory I could Do Christmas without getting immensely sad. Maybe it’s because I’m looking forward to something on the 28th, and never in my life have I had anything planned during that notorious Dead Week between December 25th and New Year’s Eve. Or maybe I kiiiiiinda forgot that healing isn’t linear and thought any word from the Hard Side of my family would roll off my back. It didn’t. It was just a Christmas card, but that was exactly the problem: there was so much to say, and none of it was said. Just generic Christmas wishes, expressed in succinct and emotionless terms as though nothing had ever happened. I hadn’t known what to expect when Ian came in with the mail, looking grave. He handed me the envelope and said, “If this brings up anything, we’ll work through it.” I almost laughed, what could that mean, this was just a brown-paper envelope with my address and—then I turned it over and saw the sender’s name. Oh.

I hate when you’ve made your exhaustive mental list of what you know will make you cry so you’re always prepared (or at least you can mantain the illusion of being prepared) when it comes, and then that thing happens you’d never have thought about so it didn’t make the list and it blindsides you, and now you’re weeping silently but quite soakingly on your couch for what still feels like no reason, because it all happened so quickly you almost haven’t consciously recognized what brought this on. You recycle the envelope, and the card. In my case, you become very, very suspicious of the notion of cards in general. I’ve always liked them. I keep them! But for the first time, they seem hollow to me, a way to make obligatory contact without acknowledging a damn thing, without putting your heart into it.

I do have to put in a good word for Christmas in New Mexico. Luminarios ignite the spirit. It’s almost counter-intutive to think that a paper back with a lit candle in it anchored in sand could enchant the world, but there’s nothing more genuinely holiday-beautiful than a path lit that way. One of my most enduringly good memories from those Albuquerque days was spending Christmas Eve with our neighbors. Our parents were friends and I was friends with his daughter, and she and I changed into matching black velvet dresses with white lace colors and made a grand entrance to “The Nutcracker Suite.”

Every other positive Christmas memory I have isn’t a lighthearted one to look back on. Of course this would all hit me on the 23rd, when my computer keeps giving me helpful reminders that December 24th is Christmas Eve, as though it’s possible to live in America and forget that. Hang on, wait, wait, wait, I forgot: there was the Christmas right after I had my operation, I was using a walker. And my dad, my grandmother, and my cousin Emily and I went to New York. That was good. That was great. Hot roasted chessnuts in paper bags and The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in their probably-bisexuality-inducing Sexy Santa Costumes and a crispness that felt different from the Chicago cold I knew and a million different languages floating out of more mouths than I had ever seen in one place and people ice-skating at Rockerfeller Center at all hours of the night, and that bright yellow flow of cabs that had me staring down from our hotel room window thinking in awe, so many taxis, and a giant teddy bear that my dad got me from FAO Schwartz and a checkout person who had a Brooklyn accent that had me thinking in an even deeper awe, “that. is. the coolest voice. I. have ever heard.”

I remember sharing an elevator with a family that my dad excitedly whispered were speaking Portuguese and he’d just gotten back from a life-changing trip to Brazil and started talking to them about how much he loves Brazil and how he went there because he’s in the business of roasting coffee and the parents and children stared bewildered at him throughout the ride. When we got back to our hotel room he said, “I don’t know if my Portuguese is really, really bad or if I was wrong and they weren’t actually speaking Portuguese.” When it came to his desire to connect with other human beings, my dad had no ego. He’d whether any potential embarrassment, however theatrical and enduring, for that priceless reward. He had no image to protect, no Idea he hoped people held about him. If I’m less self-conscious than the dominant culture says the patriarchy is supposed to have made me, that’s why. Because everything is transcient and life is too short. When I think about how unshakably my dad seemed to have known that, it’s impossible not to wonder if he saw himself dying young.

Wow, I tried to write a cheerful paragraph about my most memorable Christmas and we ended up there! Good thing I don’t work for Hallmark.

Around Thanksgiving, I was walking (probably to the gym, where else do I even go) and I noticed a photograph welded to the street, wrinkled and dirty from being run over by cars. I stopped to look at it, and found the girls in front of their Christmas tree so radiant and adorable that I inwardly declared it a tragedy for this moment to end up as litter. I picked up the photo and took it home and cleaned it as best I could. Photo-of-a-photo is never ideal, but here are the girls, presumably sisters?

Obviously I have no way of knowing who took this or who the girls are (and if anyone connected to this moment happens to come across this post and wants me to take it down, I’ll do so without hesitation). I also have no way of knowing how this photo ended up in the middle of the road. Did someone (a family member, or one of them now grown) hurl it out the car window out of rage? Or was it a mundane accident, just an unfortunate combination of wind and glossy paper and the window rolled down on a California day that was nothing like this one?

I don’t know why I keep this photo on my desk. Maybe it’s because the younger one reminds me strongly of a girl my Bolivian cousins were close to; she was sweet and often came Trick-or-Treating with us on Halloween, and I have nothing but warm memories of her. Maybe it’s that physical closeness that seems to reflect such ease with one another and I don’t know how often my family on either side has ever felt comprable ease together. It might be because that is one magnificent Christmas tree and they don’t have one. Or because the older girl looks a little bit like my Albuquerque neighbor’s daughter, the one I told you about.

I couldn’t do anything about the wrinkles, but it’s clean, and it’s theirs if they want it back.

How often do we get to say, “I’m keeping this memory of yours as safe as I can, complete stranger, and if you want it back? It’s yours.”