Monday, December 26, 2005Christmas post mortem -- The Ugly, the Bad and the GoodMy therapist says that January is the biggest month for her and other people in the mental health community because that's when people fall apart. The Thing Expected becomes the Thing That's Failed and now there's no way to ever make it perfect ever again.For me and my family, we take care of all that in December, because we KNOW it will never be perfect and -- just in case it threatens to do so -- we nuke it from space before it ever gets a chance to come close. My mother and I had been doing really REALLY well the past four months. We've been talking every day, close as sisters, sharing and laughing and really coming to rely on each other for a measure of mutual support. Anyone who knows me and my mom will know that this is a kind of amazing thing. Like, a miracle along the lines of virgin births. Not to be cynical, but it really was a big deal. She had gone into the hospital shortly before we went to Europe. I was with her through that and we had The Talk, just in case she didn't make it through surgery. Tears shed, outpourings of love, heart to heart, a true healing and reconciliation. But her demons, as usual, won the day when it came to Christmas. My mom did not have a good childhood. I'm not sure exactly what happened but whatever it was sent her brother into a 30-year bender in the local bar, where he would appear at 6 a.m. and leave at closing time, finally coming down with ALS and dying a sad, lonely, horrible death. He never married. I don't think he ever had a job. He drank. Period. Then he died. Whatever happened to my mom went internal. I will not get into details on a public forum. But she comes by her demons honestly, and they play for keeps. They love Christmas. She has been invited to spend Christmas with me and the kids (and Gavin, when we were together) every year. She made it once, when we all went to Houston and she bought airplane tickets for her and her husband, before the demons showed up, and she didn't have a choice except to show up. I think she got very sick that year and only was around for a few hours. Every other time she's picked a fight and refused to come. The nature of the fight goes like this: You've always failed me, I've never had family, you never invite me correctly, I've never been to your house for Christmas. If I've sent her presents after hearing this litany and knowing she won't be over, they end up back on my front porch. About ten years ago, I figured this system out and just started buying her presents I'd like back for myself. Or I just give them to her as birthday presents in February, when she's calmed down enough to receive them. I can't remember her ever giving me a Christmas present. So this year, again, I became The Problem. She decided while I was in the last week of my travels that the weekend I returned I was going to call up, offer to come down, do some grocery shopping for her and her husband, and make them dinner. Now I would gladly have done all of these things except (a) I had just come home from nearly three weeks of work and travel, I had the kids, and we all had commitments from 6 a.m on Saturday through 5 pm on Sunday. And in the middle of this I had to put my life back together so I could hit the deck running at work on Monday. Not to sound defensive, but it was really not the weekend for me to think up her scenario on my own. However, if she had asked or mentioned it, I would have understood her needs fully. They are old, she'd been sick, I'd been gone. I would've figured out how to make it work. It didn't happen. I wasn't sensitive enough to her needs, therefore I failed. We got into it the next week when she told me she was going to the lawyer, again, to cut me out of the will. This happens about every six months. I've been disinherited so many times that I've lost count, as has the lawyer. The amazing moment happened when I got back INTO the will while she was in the hospital, but that lasted only about three weeks. So. We're back to old ground. I am the problem. It is all my fault. She's never been invited to Christmas, she doesn't believe I really wanted her. I gave all my love to my Loser Father and now I'm giving it to my Loser friends. I could've done anything or been anyone, but no, I had to squander all of it and become a total failure. Her husband was visiting his family and she was pissed about that as well. They're all losers too. She's never had a family. She doesn't want to talk to me, hear from me, or see me ever again. That was Christmas with the birth family. Things didn't go so well with my ex-husband either, but we managed to pull it together and had a pretty good Christmas morning despite several nasty bouts the weeks before. So that's the Ugly and the Bad. The Good came in abundance, however. And it was startling and obvious and beautiful. Christmas Eve I went over to Bridget's house and hung out with her, Cindy and Cindy's husband, Rob. We all go so far back that we almost didn't need to talk. The comfort was deep. Deep down to the lowest molecule. It was comfort like one gets during a good massage, where you almost can't breathe it feels so good. And when you DO breathe, it feels even better. We ate soup, and it was delicious. Cindy and I worked on a jigsaw puzzle while we digested. Then we went to sit by the fire. It was so companionable and relaxed, we never had to work at any of the words that were said. When they tapered off, the conversation just continued at a sub-verbal level. We laughed, we made plans for the future, we talked about the past. We talked about art, we talked about stupid things, we just WERE. Together. At one time I commented that we had come to this evening from wildly different, and pretty dysfunctional birth families. Bridget is going through a divorce, and mine wasn't looking so pretty itself. Rob and Cindy were the representatives of Long Term Marriage. We all have kids. So we had all sorts of family configurations going on ourselves. But we... the five of us... were what family SHOULD feel like. To me. A community of individuals that know and love and accept and are comfortable together. Who can disagree and be upset and STILL come back to that same place. Deepened, rather than damaged. More intimate, rather than less so. I found it again last night, in another configuration. The kids and I went over to another friends' house for Christmas Dinner. Laura is a dear friend, yoga partner, confidante and one of the true keepers of my sanity. Her son is friends with my kids and her husband is a truly good guy. They invited us over, with their family. His sister and her husband; her brother and his wife; both their mothers. And we got to sit in with them and bask in THEIR configuration. Everyone had come from pretty far away -- from down south, to the far northwest, to the East Coast. The house was absolutely beautiful... in the way that unself-consciously beautiful houses can be. It's not a house that bashes you over the head with its magnificence, but it was done perfectly, the decorations and color and warmth right out of an art director's imagination. The same with the couples. The mothers had lost their husbands; they presided over the event with their wise matriarch's eyes, a sense of humor leavened with time, love for their family and not a smidge of drama. (What would THAT be like, I kept wondering.) The siblings and their partners, were great. They, like, LIKED each other. They were affectionate and easy with each other. And Laura and David, whom I know pretty well, they worked together effortlessly. When David poured the mushroom juice out of the sauteed mushrooms that I was stiring and Laura was presiding over, my spidey-sense for undercurrents snapped to attention. THIS is where the conflict lies, I thought. It's the power plays over the food prep, the choice of which wine glasses to use, the moving into the other person's territory. So when she asked me where the mushroom juice had gone, I tensed, knowing that we were in Extremely Dangerous Territory. "David dumped some of it out," I said, cowering inside. "I think he saved it," I added, hoping that the rage would be somewhat deflected. "Oh, that's perfect," Laura exclaimed, fully and completely joyful that David had had such a good idea and executed it. "Great." And then she moved on to mashing the potatoes. WOW, I thought. Wow. That was... amazing. Not a bit of conflict over the mushroom juice. Not a single "you know, if he EVER put the KNIVES back in the right PLACE I'd be able to FIND them when I NEEDED them" with the teeth clenched and the anger sizzling out the ends of the hair. Not one undercurrent. Not ONE. I was blown away. WOW, I thought many times that evening. Like when I walked into the living room to see David's sister and husband doing a little waltz when they thought no one was looking. Like when I saw Laura's brother massaging his wife's feet, both of them wearing silly reindeer horns. I AM NOT KIDDING. I actually saw these things happen. I didn't make a fool of myself, gaping and pointing it out to my kids. I didn't get a migraine because obviously they were all smoking some type of Functional Family Crack that obviously would never be shared with me. I just observed. And tried to understand that these things can, and do, happen. That stories of hideous pain and bitterness and disappointment are NOT the only stories of the season. That this is happening too. And I tried to imagine myself having some of that for my very own, and then (gold stars for me) shut myself up. It was my very own, for a time. No, I'm not related by blood to any of these people, nor to Bridget, Cindy or Rob. No, there's nothing legal or binding saying that these moments MUST be in my life ever again. There's nothing that gives me any title of ownership to this kind of functional love. There's nothing that I can lay claim to to force it back into being. It's all an act of faith, moving forward with the flow, accepting the good even when it's not planned, not mandatory, not calculated, not an obligation. So that's my family of choice. The people with whom I can share those moments. Maybe you have to go outside of blood and legal contracts to find family like that. But to those of you who have given me these memories this season -- and I include all my other extended families as well, Dee and Robert and Theresa and Charles and Anna and Mark and Steph and Val and LoriAnn and everyone else who so enhance and enrich my life -- my deepest thanks for all your blessings on me and my children. The world is an unknown and magical place, when you dare to operate on faith and accept that good is a possibility. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 11:01 AM  
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