Auld Lang Syne

I haven't been writing been writing a lot lately. Things have been a mixed up mishmash inside. I often have a lot of anxiety at this time of year. Christmas is coming and my family is far away and I long for days of yore.
Because, see, Christmas in my house when I was growing up, was magic.

I mean - the magic of Santa and dreams coming true on Christmas morning was a reality for me. But it wasn't just about that - it was the one time of year my whole family was together. Christmas day was sacred to me because no one went anywhere. No one went off with their friends, everyone spent the night and we were all there together. There's no question there were flaws - my dad drank his way through Christmas Eve and probably through most of Christmas day but I think that, as a kid, I didn't see any of that. Maybe I was just used to it. Things changed over the years. I grew up and found boyfriends and friends more important than hanging out with my family but I think I always held on to hope - that that one day was going to be more special than any other of the year. I still wanted us to be together on Christmas Day.

The spell would break the following day, (although in our neck of the woods, stores didn't open on Boxing Day so shopping was out but they would publish the newspaper and everyone would check out the upcoming sales and wonder if anything was actually open on Christmas Day and if you needed to urgently buy milk, where would you get it?). That was the day that everyone went a-wassailing, read their new books and magazines, watched a movie, ate turkey sandwiches and mincemeat pie and cookies galore. Sometimes, when I was really young, I would wake up on Boxing Day and convince myself that it was Christmas morning all over again because it had been so wonderful.

My mother loved Christmas. She went overboard to a massive degree and it was amazing. There would be a mountain of presents under the tree- they would creep out into the middle of the living room! I'm sure she paid for everything with her credit card and spent the rest of the year paying it off but she made it so special and she seemed to love doing it. I just realized that my mother never had a real vacation. She never went to Europe or New York. She never went anywhere. Her family was her life, whether she wanted it to be or not. She went on to do some amazing things but in the end, she was cheated by life, I think.

It was hard the year she died. Everyone came home with the hopes of somehow buffering ourselves from the reality that was painfully clear - she was gone. And with her went the glue that held our family together.

Two years ago, my niece got married. We all went home for the wedding, the first family wedding in many years, and decided to make it a family reunion. There was no other occasion than the wedding. We just convinced everyone to go. That was the first time my family had been together in sixteen years. I'm not talking extended family - this was my brothers and sisters and my father (as well as spouses and kiddies.) Sixteen. Years. This is a hard fact to swallow. As cruel as it sounds, I've come to believe that we don't rate each other as important enough to make the effort that is required to get together. We take each other for granted. We are a selfish lot. And one day, there will be regret. Maybe. Maybe not. My father is aging. So are my siblings. I am the youngest of seven - I will outlive some of them. Some of them I will feel I never knew. Some feel like home to me always.

My Christmases now are different. My partner and I have a quiet routine that we enjoy but there's no question that my heart longs for the way it was. The noise and bustle of a big family - the closeness and chaos and quantity of everything. We went home a couple of years ago and spent Christmas with my sister and her husband. I vowed to never do that again. The whole thing just felt off and I knew that it was better to create new traditions rather than try to recreate old ones.

I allow myself to indulge in my memories at Christmas, even though they make me melancholy, it's like eating or drinking too much - it feels good at the time, even if it brings some pain. I know those days are only a memory and I guess I should count myself lucky that I have them. But I know that they, like my mother, are gone. And it still hurts like it was yesterday.