1 post from December 2008

My father hates Christmas and has hated it ever since my grandfather passed away in 1997.  My father had always associated the season between Thanksgiving and New Years with his father on many levels and having him no longer there to share them with has made the whole season sour for him.  Already a 'surly' or 'prickly' man at the best of times, my father becomes down right unbearable and scrooge-like at Christmas time.  

While discussing it with him just two days before Christmas this year, I told him that he had the power to make Christmas whatever he wanted to make it, and that, instead of turning it into a sad or bitter occasion, he should take an example from the father he loved and make it a time of love.  Grandpa always made things fun for his grandchildren (my brother, sisters and myself) and that Dad could choose to do the  same for his his grandchildren, too.  

Or he could go on being a scrooge and making the holidays horrible for all of us.  

His choice, and I told him that he should choose love.

Flash forward by two days and I am sitting on the floor between my eight year old daughter and two year old son, helping to pass out presents and taking pictures.  

Brenna hands me one package, marked as 'To Debbie, From Santa.'  The 'Santa' in question is my mother and the package is medium-sized, soft and squishy.  I am hoping for socks, because new socks are one of the few unique joys in life that I call mine.  

Also, Mom always buys me socks, so I'm really looking forward to them.  It's the one present I have always been able to count on being under the tree.

When the packages are all passed out -- with the lion' share going to the kids, Steve and my mom -- I find myself sitting on the floor with … just that one present in front of me.  I open in, and the hoped-for socks turn out to be a pair of fleece jammies.  I don't often wear jammies because I don't like things on my legs when I sleep (they make my legs itch), and instead wear nightgowns or over-sized shirts.  

I'm sitting typing this and trying to put into words the emotions that were running through me yesterday while I was helping Mom clean up the wrapping paper and empty boxes.  I don't intend to sound selfish or childish or anything like that, and that is what makes it hard to say this.  I got one present, and it wasn't even one I necessarily will find joy in for more than 2 wearings (before I wash them and start making my legs itch, that would be).  

It's not really that fact that I only got present.  It's not even really the fact that it wasn't the socks I was hoping for (and largely expecting).  

It's the simply fact that the only present I got this year was from my mother and that there was nothing under the tree for me from my husband.  

Further, Christmas Day came and went without him saying thing about it.  No 'Merry Christmas' or even a Christmas card with an IOU taped to the inside.  

People, this is the same man who bought me a glass globe of the earth for our anniversary to symbolize him giving me the world.  He is not generally without resources, creativity or imagination.  
He could have done something and simply put, did not.

And for my part, most of the way through Christmas Day, my kept going back to that conversation I had with my father about making Christmas be about love and not 'just things' so I sucked it up and nothing even though there were times when I wanted to just crawl off somewhere and cry because the man I'd put months of energy and planning to finding the perfect gift for had not even gotten me a lousy Christmas card.  Because the kids were happy and we were getting ready to have my brother and his new fiancée over for Christmas dinner and it would not do to be glum on Christmas, right?

Right, so I don't say anything, until later that day, after dinner when Mom and I are doing dishes and she notices that I am not necessarily happy.  She asks what's wrong, so I tell and… get told that "he tried but couldn't find the gift he had wanted to get for me' so I should not be mad at him.  

(The gift in question… he had been trying to find me two movies I had asked for three weeks ago, which had been on sale at Walmart down home in VA at the time… and in stock aplenty.  He did not buy them there and no store up here in PA had them… so not buying able to find them anywhere, he gave and bought me… nothing.  And further compounded it by saying nothing or offering up an alternative and basically leaving me to feel like I had been forgotten or worse, an after thought.  But I am supposed to forgive that right?  Because he tried, or so mom says. )

Today, he's hunting with father in The Big Woods (it's flint lock season, yay!) and I'm at my parent's house with the kids, typing this when I should be cleaning the house before Mom gets home and still feeling pretty much like a selfish shit because getting gifts is not what the season should be about and I know it.  There are people in the world who are so much more worse off than I am who do not have the things and blessings that I have.  

This holiday season, I have been blessed with two healthy, happy children, my husband home safely from Afghanistan, and have been surrounded by family (my parents, brother and sisters, nieces and nephews).  

We are not homeless, jobless or poor, even though the economic crisis has pinched us, too.  

All in all, my family has a lot to be thankful for this year and I should be happy with that instead on dwelling on some … stuff… I did not get.