There are a few simple things about my life that blow my mind. Living in a house with rose bushes, being able to whip up a cake from ingredients that I just happened to have in the pantry and having enough underwear and socks to make it a couple of weeks without running out still makes me catch my breath on occasion.
However, given the season, it is the Christmas tree that is proudly casting a soft white light over our living room that I simply can’t get my head around.
Adding to my annual amazement is our mantle.It is decorated with a roly-poly gnome, garland and cinnamon scented pine cones.
The Christmas after my parents went to prison,some well-meaning church women delivered a box of food and presents to our dark, joyless house. I opened the door and was mortified. I threw all of my gifts away without unwrapping them.
If you would have told the 15 year old me who opened that door that I would one day live in a house that not only has a fireplace, but one where said fireplace is currently adorned with fake strands of evergreen and pine cones that waif the scent of baked goods into the air I don’t know if I would have laughed or cried, but I certainly wouldn’t have believed you. And, I would have emphatically told you that I didn’t even want such sticky-sweet nonsense.
For the most part, we just didn’t celebrate Christmas when I was growing up. I never believed in Santa (and, that’s probably for the best because I would have thought that he was a real s.o.b.for always skipping me).
However, there was one Christmas that despite living in a HUD funded apartment and collecting food stamps, we had a Christmas fit for a Kardashian.
This was thanks to the bricks upon bricks of marijuana that my dad had somehow acquired. The pot was stacked on a shelf in the coat closet.
Even at my young age I knew that my gifts were obtained through less than legal channels, but it didn’t make me enjoy my beloved Nintendo any less.
Other than that one bright and shiny Christmas, whatever rental house or apartment or trailer that we found ourselves in during the holiday season always stood alone in the pitch black. I hated Christmas because it illuminated all that was dark in my life.
Given my lack of Christmas experiences, my first Christmas with my in-laws was rocking-in-the-corner overwhelming. Their house was adorned, inside and out, with the most beautiful decorations that I had ever seen outside of a magazine. When Tony and I pulled up to his childhood home, I sputtered, “Are there two trees?”
He laughed and shrugged as if living in a beautiful brick home with two giant trees glowing in the windows was just normal life.
“Well, I can’t go in there,” I said, my mouth agape.
But, my love for him was strong so I unbuckled myself, gathered the measly gift I had gotten for his mother, the one that I had to get Tony to wrap because I had not the foggiest idea as to how to wrap a present, and went inside to Grand Christmas Station.
Viewing the two trees from the outside was a lot to take in, but it was mere child’s play for what awaited me on the other side of the door. There were approximately 342 beautiful, slightly wine-drunk Italians gathered for Christmas Eve dinner. They all talked, all the time, all at once.
After dinner it was time for the gift exchange. It took 32 hours to complete.
After the festivities were over, Tony and I escaped to his bedroom to exchange presents. His room was more a small apartment, it had a huge bed, a couch, a large chair, its own bathroom and a huge fireplace. We had a bottle of white zinfandel and a sixer of Bud Light – a Christmas splurge for our college budgets. To add to the evening’s ambiance,Tony built a fire.
We cuddled up on the blanket he had spread out and exchanged our gifts.
Suddenly, a smoking ball of fur comes screeching out of the fireplace and begins to run wildly around the room. We are shocked into stunned silence for a moment, but then we notice that not only do we have a crazed, smoking squirrel, but that the room is also filling with smoke.
In moments, the smoke detectors were blaring.
My now father-in-law, Lenny, came barreling down the stairs in his Christmas boxers and a striped robe and started looking wildly around the house for the source of the fire. He yelled for everyone to evacuate the house because it is surely going to burn to the ground at any moment.
Tony excitedly explained to his dad that he had built a fire in his room and that the flue must be stuck. Lenny calmed down and said, “Oh hell son, flying squirrels kept getting in the chimney and since we never use it, I stuffed the damn thing full of cardboard and newspaper.”
We informed him that we just met one of the flying squirrels and that he was still downstairs, fur singed and mad as…well,as mad as a fiery flying squirrel. Lenny told everyone to start opening the windows. When his daughters started whining about how cold it was, he told them to get on a jacket because being cold was better than dying in their sleep due to asphyxiation from toxic fumes. He is an alarmist and an extremist.
It was at this moment that I knew that despite the two trees, the perfect dinner, and the thousands of gifts, that I had found not only my people, but my light.
This Christmas will be the 22nd that I have spent with my people. I have now celebrated more Christmases with them than I did without them. They have loved me back from the brink and in turn my heart has grown three sizes.
I have done away with my Christmas cynic. I want to marry Christmas. I want to weep when I see Conley tear into her gifts and then hug them. I want to wear matching Christmas pajamas and quirky Santa hats. I want to bake cookies and sprinkle elf dust. I want to bask in the holly jolliness of it all.
Finally, all is calm, all is bright.
Merry Christmas.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
