THE WIND PHONE
We Used to Fight at Christmas — Now We Laugh
Celebrating with the living and the dead
I’ve become one of those people who gets hysterical — but in a good way. I’m not crying. I’m spitting my water across the table. My son thinks I could help myself if I wanted to.
“You could hold it in, Mom,” he said, but why would I?
My goal has always been to laugh as hard as possible. Spitting my water across the table is a ten on the laugh-o-meter. Ten is the highest, in case you don’t have a laugh-o-meter of your own.
I used to get angry on Christmas. I slammed doors. I challenged my enemies to duels. I cried in closets. As fun as that was, it was exhausting. My knees aren’t what they once were. Nor is my righteous indignation.
Youth.
In retrospect, I should have brought a service dog with me to the holidays, or ingested large doses of Xanax, but 20/20 retrospect, you know?
Shoulda coulda didn’t.
Growing up, my stepfather's favorite Christmas song was Up Your Ass With Christmas. Don’t look it up. Al wrote it. It’s way better than Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer as far as screw Christmas songs go.
The funny thing is my stepfather loved Christmas — as much as a Jew from the Bronx can love an overcapitalized smug Christian holiday. This is my second Christmas without him.
He was the best person to give gifts to. He was like a kid on Christmas. That’s not an easy thing for a 92-year-old Jew old Jew from the Bronx to pull off, so forgive the cliché.
I miss buying gifts for him. His excitement about gifts was like a rosy-faced snow shivering kid on the Hallmark Channel. One of those adorable ones with a delightful British accent.
“For me sir? I didn’t think anyone remembered.”
One year I gave Al a Christmas angel. She was blond and glittery — a shiksa goddess, if you will.
“Too much?” I said when he opened it.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “No one ever gave me a Christmas angel before.”
Because you’re a Jew from the Bronx. Most people would think it was inappropriate, but I am not most people.
This Christmas, we were having a Zoom call with my sister who didn’t come. When my husband appeared on the screen, she said with a start, “Oh my God. I thought that was Al.”
I know the feeling. Ghosts. They’re everywhere.
On a walk with my other sister who is here, she said “I wonder what dad would be like if he were alive now.”
It’s been 25 years since our dad died. His early death is still a sucker punch.
I don’t remember conversations with my dad anymore. I remember being little with him, how we woke up at 4:30 am and watched Hawaii Five-O. I remember his smile, his laugh that sounded like a gulp, but I don’t remember one conversation.
My sister does. I contemplate being jealous, but it’s not authentic. I’m happy for her. I’m glad one of us remembers.
She thinks Dad would have loved his grandkids, that he would have been great with them. I can’t do that thing she does — imagining dead people being here, the kind of people they’d be, how they’d still be breathing.
In my mind, Dad had some hints of white in his thick black hair when he died. That comforts me. Hints of aging. The possibility of it.
But I can’t do that thing my sister does — imagine him holding my son. I give myself a quick picture of Dad shooting hoops with my son. I try to make that fake memory last as long as I can like holding a plank pose. I hold it long enough that I can pull it out of my memory arsenal now, like a phone number in a rolodex.
Dad’s rolodex. I remember that. Another memory retrieved.
I used to cry on Christmas. My family made me so angry, but not anymore. Now, every laugh is a gift. I can’t believe there are people left to love, that anyone is still here.
Ghosts loom large. I spend a lot of time with them, but the living are still sitting beside me at the table, pissing me off, making me laugh. I can’t do that thing my sister does, like go back and imagine what if, but I can be here now.
I can look life directly in the face and spit water in its face.
Thanks to Kit Dejacques and The Wind Phone for edits and a beautiful pub to write for