Three days after Christmas, the interior of my Venza still smelled of plastic, as in a new car seat and a fragrance somewhat foreign to my home—a whiff of new baby too.
I’d been feeling down about Christmas this year for a variety of reasons. My two sisters, mainstays at the table and the wedding soup bowl, made other plans. We would have fewer Christmas Day guests at the table due to other family members’ obligations and vacations. What had shone bright, moved me, was the expectation of hosting our new granddaughter (and her parents) for nearly a week.
A gift indeed.
Most days, Mark and I considered ourselves lucky. We didn’t worry about “that’ll never happen to us,” as we’d had “that” happen plenty. Over time, when “that” cropped up again and again, we reminded ourselves we could handle it. Until a bigger “that” happened.
This one was called Covid.
Some might conjecture the holidays were not necessarily a “bad time” for Covid since the cancellation of family gatherings could be seen as positive. However, important happenings, ones created in my head, ones most looked forward to, involved ushering in a granddaughter’s first Christmas (she was born last December, so technically this was her first). Since her other set of grandparents were Jewish, Christmas has been declared as our time with her, with our daughter Shannon and her husband, Michael.
Christmas became Christmess.
Mark and I have long complicated relationships with Christmases that could be classified as messy. This one hit hard. And not in terms of germs.
It’s no secret my mother made merry of Christmas. Looking back, I wondered if her enthusiasm was derived from lack of extended family members to please. There were no grandparents in my family photographs after I turned 18. There was the estranged brother of my father’s, and a half-brother of my mother’s, who we dearly treasured, committed to the other side of his family. Her traditions were her own. After my college years and early twenties, Christmases stopped ringing so loudly when my first husband died. Traditions died then too.
The same for Mark. After his first wife, whose birthday was celebrated on Christmas Day, was diagnosed with cancer, holding up the cheeriness and cheekiness of the season proved to be a difficult task for him. Following her death, more so. He and I married three years later.
We blended families and traditions. Some within each category stuck, some not. With each passing year, guests came and went. Santa arrived one year, the next, the kids were grown.
The locale eventually shifted from suburban home to the city life. Preparations remained the same. Trees to be raised, planters to pot, cookies to be baked, wedding soup prepped, ravioli rolled. House cleaned, toilet paper stocked, presents bought, gift amounts tallied to ensure equality. However, the presence of a granddaughter had altered some of that prep work, including the installment of the car seat, and the purchase of enough stuffed animals to start a zoo.
Since Thanksgiving was scheduled a bit earlier, organizing for the holidays became somewhat easier. Two new dresses bought—last year I was invited to two corporate holiday parties that hadn’t made my calendar (ahem). Since our granddaughter was unable to consume dairy for now, I baked batches of cookies—without butter. At the final cleaning of our 150-year-old floors, I rolled around on my stomach like a toddler, looking for old dust bunnies my girlfriend Theresa suggested I claim were leftovers from the spiders of Halloween. Wedding soup ingredients had been prepared in November. Frozen, they awaited their dunking in the newly discovered zuppiera. (link).
Twenty-four hours after the arrival of our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, dresses went untouched, soup remained afloat not within the tureen, one cookie was bitten into, the rest repacked for airplane travel. The house still clean, the toilet paper rolls still piled high.
Mark, or Pappy, after nearly four years of practicing medicine, had caught Covid. Where? We debated this fact and the contagion levels every night so much that in one late-night dream, two friends were splayed on a couch, legs crossing over one another, both passed out like image from the 70s of drug dens.
The kids and our granddaughter flew back home. The hole they left, gaping wide to the elements of rain and cold.
My mood turned foul at times, as I would pick up a blanket we used while opening gifts outside. Or eat the cookies (which turned out great). Throughout the course of the week, I tested negative. Mark eventually did too.
Every time I open the refrigerator, there’s plenty of zucchini (the little one really likes it salted and sauteed) and berries (she’s such a berry monster, we bought her Jamberry book). There’s The Hungry Caterpillar from our own “library” with no little fingers weaving through. There’s no conversations with her mother about whether mustard oil really helps with hair growth (with free time, I ordered some to find out). And no witnessing the photo of the son-in-law’s high school hair. I’d need a ladder to return the tureen to somewhere I’ll find it next year.
It’s none of those things, yet all of them combined.
The mousy voice that filled up the cavernous space with an “uh-oh” whenever she thought about dropping her bottle from her high chair tray, or the blink of the eyes when she finally discovered how to reach that first, grape jelly purple ornament on the tree, or when her mother and I went in search of her as they readied to leave. She attempted to crawl inside the shelf opening below the island where the pots and pans stayed out of my sight, not hers.
There was no Christmas in Bethlehem. The holidays breezed through our home in haste. So we’ll treasure the little uh-oh’s that, like building blocks, add up to an existence. Hers and ours. It’s better than professing one big bah-humbug, in the end.
Wishing all you of the best in the new year. I’ll be back next week, with some words about words: how we read, why we read, and why are brains can handle the printed and digital word.
Happy New Year. Sorry to hear about you guys getting Covid. I got it in 2021 during Christmas as I was moving too. Glad you are on the mend. Hope to see you and T in 2024.
Oh my gosh. What a huge disappointment! Maybe you need to schedule a Christmas in July celebration? Although we did figure out how to live on zoom for quite some time through celebrations during the beginning and peak of the pandemic, but it was definitely not the same. So many traditions from my childhood have been abandoned. I made some new ones along the way and do the best I can to hold on to a few others. Sending wishes for a new year that begins with hope and joy!