My Grams and her sisters were a very tight family. I suppose that's what the depression did to people. Grams searched and searched for her brother after World War II. She didn't find him for over 30 years. Eventually, she sent a letter to the Social Security Administration and requested that if they had anyone using her brother's number for the SSA to forward the letter to him. In 1976, Grams received a call from Los Angeles. Her brother was on the other end of the line. After the war, he had not wanted to come home. The war had changed him and in his mind not for the better. The loss of my great uncle had taken a toll over the years on Grams. Not that you'd ever know it. It simply wasn't something she talked about. Of course, it was never brought up that her and my grandfather had come to a sort of coexistence either. I suspect that my Grams hunt for her brother was delayed in sorts by the fact my grandfather was a bit controlling. That was pretty evident in my aunts and uncles. My grandparents five children were always at odds with each other. My mother was the beautiful, popular, and seemingly lucky one, which was huge angst for the eldest of her younger sisters. The youngest uncle, the oops baby, was equally gifted and talented but suffered pretty severe rosacea. He had won an appointment to the Air Force Academy in the1960s. The rosacea meant he failed the physical--which was to say that back then, as I presume it still is to some degree today, he didn't look like officer material. That meant that he was ineligible for the draft also. Ironically, he was heartbroken. My mother's next youngest sibling was my least favorite aunt. She had been thrown by a horse during Olympic trials, broken her back, and ended her college, Olympic, every dream she had ever had. The middle brother received a low draft number. He dodged the draft by going to college. He had figured that if he had to go he'd go after as an officer. The end of Vietnam came first. Unbeknownst to my cousins and myself, the whopping three of us, my grandfather had pit his children against each other and my Grams had kept gluing the pieces together.
What did all that mean? Well, it meant Christmas Eve "dinner" started at 2 pm. There was so much food that we literally ate all day and evening. It meant no presents were opened before 7. It meant listening to Elvis Christmas music until one of the uncles started to gripe about it, which turned into a pretty loud discussion between my jealous aunt and whichever uncle about the lack of merits of the music Jan & Dean or Led Zeppelin. If it was the later uncle, the discussion eventually reamed him because of all the money he cost when he was drag racing, when he crashed, the years in traction which in turn focused on my aunt who had broken her back, the fortune that had cost, and of course, the complete failure that my aunt had become when she simply gave up on anything and everything and worked at a store the rest of her life as a clerk. At which point my mother would clam up, Grams would try to keep the peace, and it was time to open presents. The joy of the grandchildren was all Grams ever was shooting for. Of course, once my mother was gone, even present opening became a chore. My jealous aunt would get mad because Grams and my drag racing uncle would spoil me relentlessly. Not that I actually ever got more presents than my cousins or that they were better than what they received, it was that Grams and my uncle always made sure I had the same number of presents under the tree as my cousins. Present opening began to be a complaint session about what I got and comparing my younger cousin (I was the middle one) to me and how much more "perfect" she was which then turned into someone trying to toot my oldest cousin's horn to change the subject I presume to which my aunt would compare her two daughters, putting down the oldest, and with reckless abandon insist how much a picture of perfection the younger daughter was with her perfect blue eyes and perfect natural blonde hair. Eventually instead of sitting next to the tree, surrounded with wrapping paper and trying to focus on the gifts we had received, the three of us, particularly my older cousin and myself, took to drinking rum--rum and coke, rum runners, rum and eggnog--opening our presents in the massive doorway to the family room in her mother's house and then slipping to the formal living room as the discussion placed both of us at the lower end of dirt particles. As my grandfather had done onto them, they had visited his sins upon us. We were close in those years, but after Grams passed, much like our Grams' children, we barely spoke.
As dysfunctional as that all was, I figured that I would give my boys the Norman Rockwell version of Christmas, and I did my best. But of course, I soon discovered once I got married that a lot of people have the most dysfunctional families ever. Every family has skeletons and unfortunately most of them like to come out and visit during the holidays. My ex and the oldest of his younger sisters got into it huge our first Christmas to his parents farm. I couldn't tell you about what. It wasn't relevant to me and I had become accustomed to tuning such noise out. They got into the same argument pretty much every time we visited. He was, well is, a bit of a control freak and pretty self centered--actually more self centered than most men I've ever met--so in retrospect, I think those arguments I tuned out were him telling her what to do, what she could do, et cetera. From my perspective, it was the pot advising the kettle. Yet, the most amazing woman in the room, his mother, wouldn't act as the glue the way Grams did. The dysfunction was different than the dysfunction I had grown up with. There is no family immune. One of my best friends has a brother that has lived at home all his life mooching off their parents. Good middle class family, she's an attorney now. He's still a bum in his mid-40s sponging off mom and dad. Another one of my best friends has a brother that they don't discuss any matters involving the care of their father who needs constant care now because he has the maturity level of a 2 year old. Ok, two year old might be an exaggeration--12 to 14 perhaps? Another friend hates spending time with one of her brothers because he's an alcoholic (a true alcoholic) who brings up the latest and greatest dirty laundry for whichever sibling is having the best year. Makes me glad that I missed out on that type of sibling rivalry. My boys suffer their own sibling rivalries. My youngest trying to be the best of the best and impress my oldest. My middle one injecting his own follies as needed. They often remind me of too many cooks in the kitchen. Yet, I guess that's what I sought for them. Christmas being together, sharing and often over-sharing to the point that a disagreement might ensue. Not Norman Rockwell, a bit more of a mix between "Home Alone", "Christmas Vacation" and "The Family Stone".
As you sit and enjoy the rest of your Christmas or reflect on Christmas gone by, all that dysfunction that may have trickled out is nothing that no one else doesn't have. There is some version of craziness with every family and I suspect if it looks all Norman Rockwell the hidden unmentioneds are probably way worse than the phony smiles and nods at each other. Family isn't about being perfect and neither are the holidays. It's about appreciating what we have and all the imperfections that make each of us, each of our dysfunctional families, the functional family that somehow manage to be there for us when we really need them. Smile as Uncle Todd debates the merits of Led Zeppelin over Elvis. Or as Aunt Janet insists you have another slice of that burnt pie she always brings. And as your mother re-gifts that fruit cake that has been passing from family member to family member since you were in diapers. As sour as it might be, you'll look back and laugh eventually and forget most of the details anyway. And, next year you'll do it all again. Have a very merry Christmas my friends!!
