Christmas '09 In Review

The good...

* Christmas Eve was great. I drove up in the afternoon and met my Virginia family at my sister-in-law's parent's house and went to mass with them. After that, we went to my niece's house for the evening. My niece and her family, my sister and brother-in-law, and my brother, sister-in-law and niece sat around and munched and drank and laughed. The boys opened presents and got sufficiently wound up from wrestling with my brother.
* I spent all of Christmas weekend in Syracuse -- did day after Christmas shopping with the family and played with lots of Moon Sand with the boys. Sunday, most of the family came back out to my niece's for brunch before everyone scattered again to their own lives, including the Virginians who would be heading south the next morning.
* As much as I enjoy being in Syracuse and hanging out with my niece and the boys, and there is nothing like an uninitiated hug from a two-year-old (you know you're loved when you get a hug for no reason, without asking for it), it was good to be back home, to sleep in my own bed, to turn my heat on as high as I wanted it.
* And about 11:30 on Christmas morning, my phone beeped. A text from E: "Merry Christmas gorgeous. hope you have a great day."

The bad....

* a rare snow storm in the mid-Atlantic region halted my holiday plans for Baltimore the weekend before Christmas. I was going to see Bubbles, Wanda and her family, Tim and the girls, Jan, and visit the Museum. I was also looking forward to testing myself by being in the city and NOT reaching out to J in any way.
* I handled Christmas day the best I could. And by that, I didn't really acknowledge my new niece, born over the summer. There were 14 other people to dote on her (and they all converged on her two feet behind me as I was doing dished when she first arrived). If she were older and would have noticed the slight, I wouldn't have done it. But she's six months old. There was a little tension with her mother, another one of my niece's (we all the know the story) -- or maybe I imagined it. Maybe the hurt feelings over her wedding, over the way she told me she was pregnant, made me think there was tension. In any event, I didn't really talk to her (thankfully with such a large family, it wasn't possible to have a lengthy conversation with everyone).
* At one point, I felt the tears coming on. I was grating cheese and fought the tears back. I wanted to let loose, I wanted to start bawling, but was surrounded by my family. A family who doesn't really understand the pain I sometimes feel around a baby. I tried to explain it to one of my sisters and she said, "but you're around babies all the time." Not really, and not really the point, but my response was "yes, but those are babies whose mother's are nice and supportive of what I'm going through and understand that their happiness might cause me pain." I was met with a blank stare, so I changed the subject.
* The family pictures! Ugh....almost as much as seeing my niece's baby, I was dreading this moment when my sisters would make a production of doing "family unit" pictures. Not just a picture of everyone who was there, or even random photos throughout the day, but posed pictures of each little family unit. Brother, sister-in-law, two kids. Niece, her husband, two kids. Sister, brother-in-law, niece, her husband, two kids. Etc. Ever since it was suggested that we frame these sorts of pictures for my parents' 50th anniversary a few years back, and I contribute a picture of me with my cat (seriously!), I've avoided these little set-ups. I stayed in the kitchen, and thankfully no one called me into the living room to pose in front of the tree, either alone or with my parents.

The weird...

* Thankfully there wasn't really any ugly. My sister got me a strange present, and while she thought it was funny, it's not exactly the way I would have handled it. As she explained it, she ordered two day planners from the Smithsonian gift shop and was able to get one monogrammed for free, so she got hers done with her initials. When they arrived, she started filling hers out, and only then realized that she had started writing in the non-monogrammed one. Rather than give me the one she had started to write in, or get me something else and write this one off as a loss, she gave me the one with her initials. So instead of having LAW (my true initials) on a day planner, I have for the next year (should I decide to use it) KLY. I know, it's the thought that counts. But I find it weird. And again, given lingering tensions over her daughter's wedding and the way that was handled, I think I'm finding more wrong with it than if it had come from my oldest niece or even my sister-in-law in Virginia. Because I'm closer with them, because I would have found it funny, and because I know that that's not how they would have handled it.

And so all in all, the Christmas I was dreading, the Christmas I wasn't really looking forward to....I survived. It's over. The family drama, the tension, the feelings of inadequacy (because of singledom and childlessness)....it's all over. And so if I'm still childless next year, here's hoping Richmond is an option. Otherwise, I think Bubbles and I should be finding ourselves on a beach somewhere, drinking margaritas and ignoring both of our families.