Regina Noctis

Christmas used to be very special to both my mom and me. It wasn’t about all the things people gripe about in connection to the holiday. Neither of us is Christian, so it wasn’t about the Christian connection to the holiday either. It was about simpler things. Family traditions that brought us joy, the beauty of Christmas lights, a feast of a dinner, finding or making just the perfect thing for someone as a gift, all of that kind of stuff.

Since I moved here, we’ve hardly celebrated Christmas. Most of my relatives are, quite frankly, pretty atrocious. And the holiday seems to bring that out more strongly. My psychotic cousin has usually been the worst offender. My life and my mom’s life have both been threatened by him on Christmas. He once actually did try to kill my mother for Christmas. On and on. Instead of polishing off things we cherished, the season is turning into something of a nightmare, with old horrors renewed in our memories every year and new ones being perpetrated. We gave up even bothering to deal with it. Christmas here has been just another day.

This year, what with things like my mom’s stroke making life so difficult for all of us, I tried to bring back some of the old joy of the season. The outside of the house is decorated with lights, and a Christmas tree occupies the living room. These are both things we haven’t bothered with for years now. I planned a good dinner, sang carols, and did my damndest to remain cheerful in spite of everything else that was going on. It was almost working. It wasn’t like Christmas used to be, but it was a little better than it had been. Enough of even kinda mediocre Christmases might have even given us back some of the joy of the season we used to feel.

Two days before we got the Christmas tree, I injured my shoulder. I was in a lot of pain. I’m usually pretty stubborn about pain, and I just keep going in spite of it. So I went and found one of the prettiest trees we’ve ever had. I went all over town to find a stand for it, because ours had disappeared (probably stolen by my psychotic cousin, along with almost everything else that I ever owned) and I wanted the tree to stay as fresh as possible for as long as possible. There was not a single stand to be found anywhere in this useless dead-end of a town, unless it was one meant for an artificial tree. Stores gave me the runaround on stands. “Oh, we’ll have them tomorrow. The shipment should arrive by 4pm tomorrow.” The next day, someone else telling me, “Oh, we had no shipment that was supposed to arrive today. You must be mistaken.” I spent three days wandering from store to store and runaround to runaround before I finally gave up and got the tree, with a pair of wooden boards nailed on the bottom to hold it upright. I strung the lights on it, but that was as far as I got that night because my shoulder was getting more and more painful the more I used it.

The next day, my grandmother started screaming at me about how I needed to get the tree done NOW. She implied heavily that I’m so lazy that the tree probably wouldn’t be decorated and done until sometime after Christmas. When I pointed out the problem I was having with my shoulder, she made it quite clear that she doesn’t give a damn how much pain I’m in. The tree being decorated immediately was much more important than any amount of pain I might be in. So that night I cooked dinner, I spent some time talking with Yar, and then I went in determined to finish the tree. After hanging more than 100 ornaments, I still wasn’t done and had been in tears from the intense pain in my shoulder for half an hour. I finally couldn’t lift my arm anymore and had to give up for the night.

The following morning, within minutes of waking up, my grandmother was in my face again, attacking me and insulting me, even worse than the day before, because the tree still wasn’t done. I could still barely lift my arm, and I had to go to the grocery store that day, followed by another three or four hour cooking extravaganza to make food good enough that my grandmother would deign to eat it. If I don’t make something extraordinary, and have it done right at the time she decrees, she usually refuses to eat it and it’s the only healthy thing she eats all day. Add in making sure my mom got lunch, that she got any help she needed during the day, that the other household errands got done, etc, and my day was full. I talked with Yar for a while after dinner again, and the pain died down a little in my shoulder, so after Yar logged out for the night, I finished decorating the tree. In all, I hung more than 200 ornaments. I was again sobbing from the horrible pain in my shoulder and couldn’t lift my arm anymore when I was finished. I decided then that, even though we normally also put up garlands and tinsel on the tree, that this was all I was going to do. I’ve always loved decorating the tree, and spend hours at it, getting it just right. This year, between my shoulder and my grandbitch, it was an entirely miserable experience. Even my mother, who usually defends my irrational grandmother when she gets like this, referred to her as a heartless bitch.

Yar’s birthday was on the 15th, and I’d been working on a piece of art to send him. Things had gotten crazy enough at home that I’d had little opportunity to work on it for a while, even though I started more than a month before. It wasn’t done in time to mail it to him. I told him that if I could get the time to work on it over the weekend, I’d send it out on his birthday. Not perfect, but better than nothing. But the shoulder injury prevented me from working on it. It’s still not done, because it’s only been within the last couple days that I’ve been allowed to let my shoulder rest and start to heal. So it didn’t even get there in time to be a combined birthday/Christmas present. Yar might not mind, since he’s more concerned that my shoulder heal than that I push to get the picture done, and I’ve been listening to him on that instead of pushing it. But it still bothers me that it is now so late.

Then tonight my uncle and aunt came by. For years, my mom and my uncle have had periodic debates. They used to enjoy them. But tonight, my uncle accused Mom of jumping all over him for no reason, and wouldn’t stop. He kept going and going until mom was in tears and left the room. He claimed she’s been doing it for something like two years now. What I was thinking, but didn’t say because I didn’t want to make everyone even more miserable on Christmas, that it was also the approximate time that my uncle started making some comments that were pretty cold and empty of any compassion or empathy. And that this change came before my mom started (if she even did, rather than merely expressing a different opinion, which is all I’ve seen her doing) jumping all over his shit (as he so nicely put it). My grandmother kept telling them not to fight. My mom kept trying to say that she wasn’t upset or trying to attack anyone, she was just expressing a different opinion. My uncle kept on going on the attack. And finally, my mom started crying and left the room. She was still crying almost an hour later.

And he apologized to ME for attacking my mom, but completely ignored her after that. No apology, no nothing. And the way he apologized. “I know you usually back her play no matter how wrong it is…” was how it started. I really wanted to light into him and show him what it’s like to really have someone jumping all over his shit, but I didn’t. There’d been enough hurt already done. The holiday was already in pieces. It wouldn’t have done any good, except give me a chance to rant and get out some of my fury with him. I’d have (maybe) felt a little better, but at the expense of making more people, like my aunt Cheryl, miserable. So I let it go. I just said that I didn’t want to get in the middle, I didn’t want to take sides, I just wanted to finish cooking dinner and get people fed. And then I went back to the kitchen to stew along with the duck I was cooking.

Cheryl is good. She tried to comfort my mom. She tried to get some of the spirit back. She was sweet and caring. Unfortunately, my uncle had upset what small, shaky joy we’d been able to eke out in the face of past Christmas insanity too far to recover it. It might not have worked, but I appreciate that she tried so hard.

So now my mom is hurt, I’m furious, and my uncle is probably feeling quite justified in ruining everything I tried to build this year, and everything that Cheryl was unable to salvage.

Yeah. Merry fucking Christmas, from a family who really knows how to put the “fun” in dysfunctional.