Yeah, it's Christmas, and yeah - I'm working. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. The day after that. And the day after that.
I'm a little bit bitter.
I'm a lot more sad, but I've insulated myself from being lonely. Well, too lonely. It'll still hit sometime tonight or tomorrow, but I've done everything I can (short of going home) to make sure I don't wallow in the Junior-Bacon-Cheeseburger-and-Frostyness of the Christmas I had a couple years ago when I discovered that everything - including gas stations - closes down on Christmas Day. Everything except the Wendy's at the truck stop on the far, far, far other side of town, where your Christmas dinner will come in not-so-festive yellow packaging and be consumed while sitting next to a highway patrol officer after your Christmas Day shift has ended.
Anyway.
Fuzzy wanted to know why Christmas is the holiday we most associate with family time, and I think it's because (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least) Christmas occurs during a cold time of the year, and family time is (usually) warm and happy and full of hugs and hot cocoa ... you do the poetic and philosophical math on that one. I will agree that parents with wee ones get the shaft on the travel end of things, but that said, I have great memories of traveling to Texas and Minnesota in the good ol' brown Citation for Christmases (and Thanksgivings) with aunts and uncles I loved and my parents' old friends who I thought for a long time were relatives and cousins whose names I can't remember, even now that I'm grown up and expected to spend half a buck on postage to send them a Christmas card (oops). Three cheers for the family Christmas road trip.
Anyway.
My post-office Christmas Eve will be spent in search of a church service and then in search of E's apartment, where company, food and booze await.
My pre-office Christmas Day will be spent cooking and then consuming much food in the company of coworkers who face a fate similar to mine (the joys of news). I refuse to joyfully toast the inevitability of holiday newsroom shifts, but at least misery will have company this year. I was determined to avoid the I'm-1,300-miles-from-home-and-everyone-I-love pity party, so I'm playing host to fellow stranded, semi-bitter, somewhat alcoholic journalists and editors.
Merry Christmas. To all of you. Yes, even you.
And now, a journey with the Sarah of Christmases Past:
- There was the year when Mom left the kerosene heater on while she went shopping and came home to a smoke-filled, soot-coated house. The cat had knocked the heater over, and it had smoked for several hours, leaving a fine layer of grease on ... well, on everything. We spent Christmas in a hotel that year.
- There was the Christmas my brother hid all of the presents he'd bought in an old suitcase in the garage. On Dec. 23, my dad unknowingly took the suitcase to our town's equivalent of Goodwill, who - having no use for it - threw it in a Dumpster in the alley. Come Christmas Eve, the Dumpster was as empty as my kid brother's hopes for surprising us all ...
- There was the Christmas Day when my brother and I joined a dozen or so other kids in sledding down the hill at a school not far from our house. There was a tricky little bump at the bottom that could send you soaring spectacularly ... if you remembered to leave your feet out of the sled. My brother didn't remember, and he nearly broke his nose in the resulting faceplant. Snow turns really red really fast with that much blood around.
- There was the Christmas in Texas when Dallas was blessed with below-freezing temperatures. We were staying at the home of some friends who had gone elsewhere for the holidays. For the uninitiated, the pipes in most homes in Texas aren't insulated, because it never gets cold enough to warrant such a thing. It did that year, though, and as though to taunt my parents and remind them that they could never escape frozen, bursting water pipes ... the Douglases' pipes froze and burst, just for us. Jolly times.
- There was the Christmas in Texas when I thought my aunt's front door was standing open, so I leapt from the doorstep toward the doorway ... only to be met by the sheet of glass that constituted her storm door.
- There was the weekend after Thanksgiving when, as I was driving back to school, I hit a dear at 80 mph on the interstate and totaled my car.
- (This one really is a favorite memory) There was the Christmas Eve when Mom was working at Walmart and Dad had the day off from the power plant. I didn't know my dad could bake until that day - he baked and baked and baked, all day, wandering out of the kitchen every half-hour or so. "Eat this! Tell me what you think!" he'd say - so, so many cookies. I love that memory of my dad.
- There were the Christmas Eves when I would stay up late, barely crack open my bedroom door and look down into the living room and watch my parents get the house ready for Christmas morning.
- There were the 5 a.m. Christmas Wakeups when I dragged my brother to the basement to "come see what Santa brought!" My parents were usually (reluctantly) woken very shortly after 5 a.m.
- There were tissue-wrapped presents from Grandma, packages from Aunt Carolyn and Aunt Liz, Aunt Dottie and Cousin Bobby. There were ornaments my brother and I had made in Sunday School, cookies my dad made, a cheese ball, a crockpot full of punch, the pre-present handing out of the stockings that almost always had M&Ms and Lipsmakers. There were phone calls to relatives, the video camera propped up on a tripod, and the determination that this year, I would - I really would - write thank-you notes to everyone. Great sweaters, awful perfume, new CDs and, later, a deep appreciation for sleeping in, no matter what Santa had brought.
Tonight, I miss all of those things. The old house on Granite, the cold air that froze my runny nose shut, the multi-colored twinkle lights blinking in the living room all night, the Christmas Eve services, putting a big bow on an angry dog and an angrier cat, wearing oversized Christmas-themed sweatshirts, eating Hickory Farms Meltaway mints, the smell of cold air and woodsmoke that clung to every piece of clothing, the impromptu Christmas play my brother and I put on for Mom and Dad. All of it. I miss home. I miss my family. I miss being a kid. I hate saying it but ... I miss the snow, too.
