They will be here in an hour, late afternoon.
Daryl was going to drive down to Waco yesterday and fetch them, but the winter storm hadn’t let up. It’s hard for my folks, being in their 80s and used to more rural roads. Even though the streets are quiet here in our Hollywood Heights neighborhood, to Mama and Daddy the interstate headed into Dallas looms up like the set of Gotham City in the Batman movies. During visits not bullied by holiday traffic, we tried meeting them at the Waxahachie courthouse where I would drive their car the final leg of the journey. This time my husband decided to make it easy for the rest of us.
“Easy” is not a state to be undervalued at this time. The strains of George Winston’s December album sooth the air while I wait.
My parents haven’t spent Christmas Day with me in six years. We plan a holiday visit in the general vicinity of the date — just not right at Christmas. This has been mostly my doing, but they haven’t voiced particular preferences otherwise.
For better or worse, I have decided to hit the holiday bull’s eye dead center this year.
? Tree — possibly
√ Mantle decorations
√ Outdoor wreath hung from eaves
√ Presents purchased, presents wrapped
√ Stockings hung and stuffed
√ Cards arranged on china cabinet
√ Three-meal-a-day menu, holiday food focus
√ House cleaned
√ House cleaned again, certain items placed out of sight
√ “Safe” holiday movies and programs noted
√ Christmas light drive route mapped
√ Subjects of conversation considered
√ Tree — definitely
My good friend says, “Okay, Anne. It’s nice having your parents up for Christmas. Just try to relax and don’t make a big production out of it.
Who is she kidding? I think this woman just likes to hear herself talk.
Like any number of people, I’ve disliked and dreaded the holiday season literally for decades. There are legions of us, even the barely perceptive can detect our presence — in the tense and ambivalent faces at the gift-wrap counter, in the long tribal lines of frozen turkey bearers at Minyards, in the screeching tires of a station wagon sporting a cheery wreath on the grill.
Each Yuletide my allergic reaction to holly intensified until seven years ago this guy I was dating suggested we just have fun — drive somewhere we hadn’t been before, shop, see movies, eat, that kind of thing.
What a character. This fine fellow obviously had some bizarre delusions. Enjoy this ordeal — this sadistic season of ill-advised acquisition and enforced euphoria? I went along with it, not that I would have gotten into an argument at that time of year. No date to Christmas parties, no date on New Years Eve, no thanks. January is the month to risk rejection; December is pure madness.
The next year, the first year of our marriage, I went through the motions. Decorations on the fireplace mantle. Sent out some cards. “Mr. and Mrs. Daryl Davis” to my older relatives. “Anne & Daryl” to my friends who might have severely injured themselves howling and tripping over the furniture in their homes, helpless with glee over “Mrs. Daryl Davis.”
I can’t remember exactly when I realized I was having a little fun. Just … a very little bit. Like an flowering weed growing up through a sidewalk crack. But I had to admit — six years of being a little bit happy at Christmas had left me more peaceful, more whole.
Other feelings surfaced too. An odd gentle sensation, rather as if I were homesick. A little poignant, a little pleasant — a perplexity. Like someone tugging at my sleeve and then being gone by the time I looked around.
December 25, 1965
The oblong package under the tree isn’t boxed. I can feel something punchable moving up and down through the thin angel wrappings. Discovery is swift and savage. A plastic clarinet.
I am six, and the concept of restraint is nothing short of ridiculous. Playing that instrument of horror long and zestfully, I don’t recall ever being told to “pipe down” or “hush.” The warnings probably came but they were, in all likelihood, lukewarm given the McDonald family climate in those years.
What musical experience could surpass screeching out the melody to my favorite nonsensical nursery song? The name has escaped me, if I ever knew it. The main chorus went.
“DOWN in the meadow where the green grass grew SWAM three little fishies and the momma fishie too. SWIM!! said the momma fishie, fast as you can. And they swam and they swam all over the dam.”
I always sang the last word softly. I thought it was a bad word. When I opted to blast it on the clarinet instead, this moral compromise was no longer necessary.
This was Christmas. My father flagrantly throwing icicles onto the tree without budging from his easy chair, my pretty sister Lois laughing and fixing. My brother Mark’s lanky form stretched out forever on the braided rug with another in a series of thick books in front of his thick glasses, oblivious to everything but his grizzly bear of a cat. My mother sometimes smiling, sometimes fussing, hovering in or about the kitchen. Smells. Cooking, floor wax, pine needles — Here’s My Heart perfume. Waking up on Christmas morning with excitement so intense, feels like something heavy pressing down on my chest, spreading my ribs out flat.
It’s possible that was Mark’s cat.
December 24, 1999
They’re here.
Mama with her salt-and-pepper pixie haircut, vivid smile and knowing dark eyes comes down the sidewalk first; Daddy, quiet and bemused, gray Stetson planted firmly on his head as always, fights Daryl for the suitcase. I’ve seen pictures of some elderly people back when they were in their 20s and thought, “Is that really them?” Not so my parents, and it’s more than just their familiarity to me. I could hold their World War II wedding portrait right up next to those faces and nobody would doubt the connection. They’re “tall Texans,” even in old age both still taller than me and I’m no shorty.
We all block our orange tabby’s desperate escape attempt into the coveted front yard, Land of Forbidden Cat Pleasure, and settle in. Two hours into the visit I realize my friend may have been a little bit right about not over-doing it. My first show-off meal has been moved up an hour and replaced with light toasted sandwiches and tomato soup … “we just don’t eat that much in the evenings anymore, baby” and for some reason that makes my heart feel like it’s being squeezed through the end of a toothpaste tube. The orchestrated conversation has given way to discussion of the traffic and weather on I-35. What clothes were packed.
We open our one gift each that night. It’s what we used to do on Christmas Eve. I begin to have that odd feeling again but before I know it, they’re in bed. Asleep.
It’s 9:30 p.m. I do the end-zone touchdown dance in my bathroom. I am not, nor have I ever been, a football fan but I wring and spike my body sponge off the tub bottom.
Christmas Day
We’re almost finished opening the other presents and un-stuffing stockings but there are still a sprinkling of gift bags and boxes, artfully spaced. Some are for friends we won’t see until after the season, others are empty — just extra decoration for the tree. As soon as I admit that, I catch my mother’s eye. Her infectious laugh rings out like a silver bell.
We’re both thinking of the same story and we’re both trying to tell it at the same time, in the sort of mock competition that is our tradition. Back when I enrolled in college, Mama did too, and had the nerve to make better grades than me. She conquered Microbiology while I stumbled through Freshman-level science. She dabbled in Accounting while I pleaded with the heartless liberal arts math professor at UTA for a “C-.” But when it is time for the English language, we go mano a mano (although she likes to remind me that is because she read to me from the day I was born).
So we take turns acting out the tale for Daryl: One year — may have even been the plastic clarinet year — my father’s main client didn’t ante up for his land survey bill until the week before Christmas. So after Thanksgiving, my mother and sister loaded down boxes with piles of the Waco Tribune Herald and Dr. Pepper bottles, and wrapped everything up so the tree would look festive until the real thing arrived. I was very young, but I did my part to help; I spilled my guts to the first visitor who commented on our lovely tree and all the presents. To this day, I don’t know whether I felt guilty or was just showing off my adult informed self. Lois was mortified. She had plans to be an interior designer when she graduated from high school and I imagine she saw me as her inaugural bad client.
After we all laughed again at the re-telling, Mama suddenly looked like she was going to tear up and I held my breath instinctively. But it passed. The two of us gossiped in the kitchen while I made my storybook Christmas luncheon complete with linens and our wedding china and a turkey surrounded by lush parsley and perfectly halved cherry tomatoes. The entrée was an uncomfortable note for me; I’d been a vegetarian for years. But my parents are omnivores and this was Christmas, right? Sorry, Mr. Bird, old pal. Kiss your tail feathers goodbye.
My father and husband were watching television in the living room; I could pick up their intermittent remarks. Daddy has trouble hearing me anymore — sounds and voices in the upper registers are a special problem for him. This started with a war injury to his ear when he was a master sergeant and engineer in Europe, frantically building bridges one step ahead of the Allied troops.
I miss his joking banter, the easy way he laughs; I guess it’s hard to make a clever remark when you aren’t sure what’s being said, but I wish he’d try more often. Daryl’s low tones and the familiar language of men seemed to connect though. Was there a football game that day? I think so. I don’t understand how one can stomp on one’s fellow athlete on Christmas.
Wait a minute, of course I do. Just give me a helmet.
Anyway, who in the world could have predicted that watching A Wonderful Life later was a mistake? They both seemed so chipper after an afternoon nap and Life’s a wholesome, life-affirming movie. We were all sprawled out on our comfy couches, playing with the cats via crumpled-up wrapping paper when Mama made her first comment during the commercial about how “that’s nice, but life isn’t that way.”
Daryl didn’t really notice — this wasn’t his mother. But I was on full Red Alert, missiles ready to launch. Sideways looks at Mama’s face showed the storm clouds brewing. I should have switched the program on the spot. To anything. Pulled out my National Geographic video of the lions eating the other animals (how dare they market that thing as “Cats: Caressing the Tiger”?). Every time she tried to say something else, I interrupted her, negated her remarks, ignored her feelings. Finally, she just looked away from the television while the rest of us watched Jimmy Stewart’s joyful revelations.
I was a DC-10 headed for Successful Parent’s Christmas Visit International Airport and would not acknowledge the air traffic controller in my gut. I was sure the final scene would overpower any negative feelings. And what do you know? Movie ends, everybody plays happy, bedtime again.
The Day After Christmas
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” —Auld Lang Syne
The last day of the visit and the ladies laze around in bathrobes until late morning. I make coffee and Mama assumes her station at the kitchen table for our last Christmas 1999 chat.
Turns out that It’s Not a Wonderful Life after all. We’re back to that insufferable movie and she is going to have her say.
Just moments before I was the Good Daughter, bringer of Christmas cheer; now I’m the Coldhearted Changeling. I stiffen. I look out the window. I try to be loving but all I can feel is my carefully planned “happy holiday” slipping away, like the cat once he makes it over the front door threshold. I fight the impulse to tackle Mama and wrestle her, yowling and hissing, back into safe territory.
The memories she chooses to re-live are painful and I am stubborn about that. But I bring my eyes back to her face and sit quietly and try to accept this song of sadness alongside the other more cheerful notes of our visit. I guess we have what is called a “package deal” here.
It’s true, our life wasn’t “that way,” hers wasn’t, and most people’s isn’t. I can see why it’s hard for Mama to enjoy that movie; she’s never been able to pretend like me.
No angel brought us back to a world where everything wrong was made miraculously right again. We didn’t wake up from the bad dream that a train soundlessly rounded a blind rural stretch of track and wrenched from the earth a car full of giggling high school girls on their way to lunch at our little green brick house, racing along to plan a graduation party that would never happen. No generous telegram arrived from a rich friend to pay all our bills after that rainy day, just three years later, when a station wagon lost control and slammed into Daddy and Mark. We didn’t live happily ever after at the end of the movie, surrounded by a laughing singing crowd of family and friends. Multiple deaths in a household affect easy socializing much like a contagious virus. I never hear anyone but Mama and me even say their names anymore. Lois. Mark.
Mama cries a little, she doesn’t so much anymore in front of me; Daddy did only once. I reassure her that I understand and that I love her and that it’s “all right.”
The stages of loss — denial, anger, grief, acceptance — sound rather orderly, like learning how to tie your shoes. But shoes come untied and I can guarantee that people who lose someone they love revisit those first three feelings from time to time. Acceptance is not likely to last undisturbed over the long years, and it forsakes different family members at different times. You have to take turns. I am 41 years old this Christmas; I can do this now with Mama, if not perfectly.
Not more than 15 minutes later, Daryl walks in and wants to know “what’s so funny?” It’s about fashion and he doesn’t seem to understand at all.
3:00 p.m.
“ … until we meet again.”
Happy Trails
The car is loaded with the neatly packed green Samsonite suitcase and the slim garment bag, and the presents and some loving memories.
My husband is a good man, but not a patient one at times. The engine is running and he has four hours of driving ahead of him, two of them center stage. He pats my hair.
Just before the Jeep begins to move a little, Mama hugs me and tells me what a good visit it was. She looks happy and sounds like she means what she said. Daddy smiles and hugs me back and mumbles something I can’t entirely understand, but the way he looks at me still makes me feel safe and fine.
I wait until they’re out of sight before going inside, but even then I push aside the lace curtains and stare out a front window. One of our neighbors is shepherding her small daughter down the sidewalk pushing some kind of bright plastic rolling thing — a faux lawnmower? I can’t hear them, but I can see that the little girl is singing as she bumps along, giving a little hop periodically, perhaps in time with the melody. Probably Barney or Rug Rats music. But I find myself humming merrily along with the only nursery song I remember.
“Down in the meadow, where the green grass grew, swam three little fishes and the momma fish too.”
