My Real Christmas

[abcrystcats]

My Xmas was adequate and predictable. My mother is still determined to throw away money by sacrificing a gorgeous half a million dollar home for the dubious opportunity of living in a smaller home for an almost equal sum of money. My father drank himself into oblivion a few nights in a row. He isn’t doing that on the meager supplies of wine kept openly in the house, therefore I feel sure he has a special stash of hard liquor locked in his safe in the office. He is too much of a chickenshit to assert himself over my mother’s selfish efforts to ruin them both by her rash financial decisions, so drinking is a great escape for him.

As for me, I spent $90 bucks in gas, reimbursed a pet-sitter to care for my cats, and spent one night in a hotel so that I could spend Xmas with my parents. I spent about $30 per person in gifts, plus the expense of creating half a dozen copies of the autobiography at Kinko’s, and the additional expense of making four batches of Xmas cookies to take to the collective bash. When there, I had to buy a few more dollars in groceries to make a Christmas coffee cake. Since I was making it, I had hoped my mother would pay for the few ingredients I needed to buy, but no ... I had buy them myself. I was lucky that my father had the decency to buy ingredients for a family meal I made the night after Xmas. If my mother had been along, I would have paid for those too.
On Xmas Eve, my mother made mashed potatoes laced with chicken broth, so that a vegetarian could not eat them. The fruit salad had marshmallows (made with gelatin, a horse bone derivative), and the turkey stuffing was both literally “stuffed” into the turkey and also laced with chicken broth. I was lucky there was one vegetable dish I could eat, otherwise I would have gone hungry. Xmas night, there were plenty vegetable dishes, but they came from a grocery store and were overcooked and laden with congealed sauces of indeterminate origins. I had serious gas pains that kept me awake for hours.

My gifts? I gave my mother two good business style blouses, of the type she had specified on her list. I gave my dad a t-shirt shell and a casual pullover, also specified on his list. To both of them went a copy of the autobiography in ring-bound text and on CD, at slightly over $50 a pop. I got, from them, a cheap gel candle, some plastic bags (the vacuum-suck variety) and a picture. I confess to asking for the picture. My mother did a great watercolor of her own cat, Kelly. I asked her to do a similar one of any one of my cats. I cannot complain that the quality of the second watercolor is inferior to the first, since my mother’s watercolor abilities vary greatly from picture to picture. I did ask for it. I did not ask for plastic bags (who would?) and I hate gel candles. I have plenty of wax ones anyway.

A few days later we went to lunch at a moderately expensive restaurant. This was part of my mother’s plan for the week. It was apparently also part of her plan that we go dutch. I ended up paying a dollar to get money out of a foreign ATM, then $11.47 for a lunch in a crowded and noisy restaurant where the waitress was rude to my sister-in-law and the sandwich was greasy. The soup and the bread were good, however.

That afternoon, I napped. Unconconsciousness seemed like a good idea. Then I watched DVDs on television and steadily got drunk, assisting my father in his personal deluge. He got so drunk he asked my mother where I was. I was right in front of him, where I had been all evening. I can’t blame him for wanting to get drunk. I can blame him for not asserting himself with my mother after 45 years of exposure to her methods. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and never got back to sleep. By 6:30, all my stuff had been slammed into the car and I was cruising down 179 towards the 17 north, and freedom, uttering imprecations as I went.

I didn’t say goodbye to Mike, my sister-in-law and my nephew. That was rude, but it took all my energy to get out of there without doing violence to my mother and/or my father. My dad would be a great guy if he had some cojones. My mother would have been a good woman if someone had bitch-slapped her into reason once or twice in her life. I cannot believe I share 50% of my chromosomes with this woman. Perhaps I do not. I mean, I know she was pregnant with me, but maybe the genetic material didn’t get distributed 50/50. At any rate, I only need to look at her to know why I do not want children. Ever. No one needs that legacy.

My mother has two sisters. Out of the three, she has been the most successful. She attached herself to a professional guy with great career potential and basically rode him ragged. One sister married a Catholic and agreed to the no-birth-control rules, thereby having six children. Another married an OK guy, an Italian, and treated him like the man of the house. My mother married my father and treated him like an upper servant, after the first two years. I do not think my father has had sex in at least 25 years. I could call him a victim, but he stuck to her like glue. She needs a good swift kick. She has never had to work. She’s done it, but she could never support herself on what she earns. Reading a Barbara Delinsky novel is a major intellectual achievement for her.

How can I relate to my family? My mother is the antithesis of everything that is important to me. I like and love my father, but he is such a wimp. I have no admiration, no respect, for a man who could climb a telegraph pole in Arctic winds to prove to his men that he would never ask them to do anything he wouldn’t do, but who could allow someone like my mother to dictate his whole life after that. He’s as docile as a little boy around her. Worse. I have tried to find a reason why she deserves this loyalty, but she does not. She is obtuse, and even evil. There are moments when I feel sure that at some base level she knows what she’s doing, but she doesn’t stop. I can’t bear to watch this scene getting played out. My father’s wasted life. My mother’s ignorant and selfish interests, unenlightened by even a single moment of sexual pleasure or love. I came from this? God help me.

[Lightning Rod]

very honest piece, cat

sounds like an Albee play

[Dave The Dov]

This is something like I see in a movie. But the movie wasn't up on the big screen. The movie was real life.
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blue moonshine plants

[abcrystcats]

something like an Andre Dubus story

[perezoso]

This f-n rocked! Now just fine tune 'er: flesh it out with some graphic sex and/or violence scenes....ya know, sapphic incest intrigues....daddy getting the shit kicked outa 'em...maybe he falls from the pole......pile ups on freeway.....trailerpark family love....arf arf..... .mmmmmmmm....and send this puppy off to , like, Cozmo.......

[knip]

i ignored the fact that i've recently discovered my sister is a crack addict...supposedly for the benefit of the 4 kids, who seemed to deserve a christmas...but i knew it was because my mother is kicking her out of the house she bought her, and doesn't want to confront her until she sells it, lest dear sis ruin the joint first

my 2 brothers ignored me...still mad after the divorce 25 years earlier when i didn't join them in their desire to 'go beat up pops'...apparently this is because i'm a navy guy and have sold my soul for the comforts of life...easy to complain about people with comforts when you got none

so i got all that over with and enjoyed a nice christmas with wifey and kids...i'm bound and determined to keep the 4 of us normal, although the older i get, the more i find out my family isn't that great an anomaly...there are many billectric skeletons hanging around out there...

on the plus side, i woke up a bit and reinvigorated my relationship with my mother...or at least am trying to...plus i took my nephews to the movies yesterday...hellcats they are, but they behaved for me...another bond needing attention, especially considering what the future likely holds in store

help the innocents...fuck the morons

[Dave The Dov]

happy
sad
life

or

sad
happy
life
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Bankruptcy Forums

[stilltrucking]

christmas still a pretty new thing for me, no family traditions for it, everyone is like breaking new gound for me, I was going to skip it this year, with the war and all I was not into to listening to the jesus freak side of the family, Diamond Lil my sister in law my brother homeboy the shrinks wife like a older sister of mine, she is pretty far into her seventies, scares me how she throws herself around, a tiny bundle of a woman I just could not show. Her niece cornerred me in the kitchen I think she wanted to buy me a ticket to Israel or something, I was resisting puting my hands over my ears when Lil shut her up. Nobody crosses Lil in her kitchen. Other than that was a sweet good time. Your christmas makes me realize how dysfunctional my own family, the tension between my sister and her son was right their below the calm, they are actually friends sometimes, but other times the family dysfunction creates flashes of anger, my mantra for him and sister was, if we could just get this right, respect each other, know that we love each other, if we could just get it right one day out of the year then

[jimboloco]

ABC baby.
It was an intellectual effort for me to read your snippet,
but well worth the effort.

I always say that I thought my sisters were wierd until I became a nurse and found out how normal they were.

I can see you leaving out early like that.

I did that before myself.

Not now, tho. I am older. You are still young.

Knipster's sister
my counseler's brother
hit the hard stuff.

Me am doing quite well.
Creatures cats comforted.
Curled up at the window.
Violins playing. Stoned.
but sober.

Families of origen.
When we get older,
if we are lucky,
the circle comes through
and we sigh and love
what we can.