My Real Christmas
Posted: December 30th, 2004, 4:05 am
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.
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.