my christmas story

holidays for my family were always such an exciting & traditional time. since we didn't have any extended family close by, our easters, thanksgivings, & christmases were primarily spent with just the 5 of us. christmas, by far, was both the most thrilling & habitual at the same time. my brothers & i were always overcome with holiday hysteria the days - well, month - before christmas. thanksgiving was treated more like the start of christmas season. right after the turkey, stuffing & cranberry sauce, my family would take out the boxes of decorations & manufactured tree, & hang every wreath, stocking, electric candle, & nutcracker in it's exact god-given place. as the weeks progressed, steven & scott & i would scour the thick newspaper circulars, eagerly cut out the pictures of useless stuff that we knew we  wouldn't get, slap it on a piece of notebook paper made out to santa, & shove it in mom's hands, all on the way into the kitchen to stuff our mouths full of grandma's kiss cookies she had sent special from chicago. also we had our favorite classic movies lined up, further elevating our excitement for the big day. & we would repeat those films, line by line, by heart.

christmas eve was magical for my brothers & me. we would spend all day bounding around the house, drunk on eggnog & candy canes, bursting with voracity & impatience. i'm pretty sure my dad seriously considered going to work on christmas eve so he wouldn't be subjected to our untamed fervor. the day was spent waiting for the sun to set. We would dress up in our church appropriate attire, watch parishioners solemnly reenact the historically inaccurate yet still beautiful birth of jesus, & join our voices in song as we lit our candles in the dark sanctuary. afterwards, dad would drive us around to look at the wonderfully, & sometimes garishly, lit houses. we would recount the year my mom saw a dog & mistakenly yelled out "deer!"like she had just spotted an ostrich or dinosaur. we would never let her live it down. at home we would open up & put on our christmas jammies. my brothers & i would get to open our gifts to each other, which were usually some worthless sparkly trinket or plastic jewelry from santa's secret workshop that the elementary school held each year. then we would nestle in front of the tv to watch 'a christmas story,' this was way before tbs started the 24 hour marathon. & steven, scott & i would sleep in the same bedroom, whispering & laughing before eventually fading into a blissful sleep. until one of us woke up before the sun, eagerly rouse the rest of us & christmas morning would begin, right after the parents made coffee.

everything inevitably shifted as we got older. my dad left & eventually we had to split christmas between 2 houses. i got married & further had to allocate my time. then my mom got a serious boyfriend & steven moved to china. holidays, especially christmas, were never the same. with the onset & consequent advancement of scott's addiction, they were becoming almost regrettable. he would show up hung over & at some point we would wait for him to grow irritable as his need for alcohol or other paraphernalia magnified. he would provoke fights with my mom, or whoever else would get drawn into his anger. we had no other choice but to exclude his addiction from larger family gatherings.

this past thanksgiving, mike, harry & i tagged along with my mom & her boyfriend, al to chicago, where most of my extended family resides. scott was living with my dad then, & had hoped to meet us there. but the previous year had been difficult. my brother had stayed out all night with 1 cousin, asked my 75 year old grandmother every night if he could go hang out at a local bar (regardless of the fact that he wasn't drinking at the time), & got wasted at my baby shower, becoming belligerent & accusatory towards the entire family. the icing on the cake was when he got arrested for graffiti & spent hours in the cook county holding cell. so we decided that last year we couldn't handle the stress & ceaseless anxiety that scott's addiction brought to grandma's thanksgiving. it was impossible to explain to scottie that we really did want him there with us, that we loved him & missed having him around. but we hated his anchor of addiction. it was going to drown him & gradually pull us down with him unless we cut ourselves loose.

this last christmas my mom spent with her boyfriend & his family, & i was torn with what to do with my dad & scottie. i called my dad & invited him & my brother to spend christmas in philadelphia with mike, harry & me. i told him that we would come down to florida, but with mike's nana now over 80 years old, we shouldn't risk spending her potential last christmases apart. he understood, but he thought it was best for scott to stay in florida, away from the outside forces that afflicted him up north. all the while, we were blinded to the internal demons that he would never escape from.

i made this sweatshirt for scottie a few years ago

christmas morning to got a phone call from my mom. i recall harry having a particularly difficult night of sleeping, so i resentfully ignored the first set of ringing. she dialed back immediately & i groggily answered to hear my mom & both brothers' cheery voices. i was instantly stoked that i answered. my mom had managed to get all her kids on the phone, while in different parts of the globe. we all started talking over one another. my brothers & i recounted a song from the garfield christmas movie that we used to sing every year, each of us singing our designated parts: me as garfield, steven as jon, & scott as odie. we laughed at how since scottie was the youngest, he got stuck with the part that consisted solely of barking. we made sure to make fun of mom's infamous mistake of calling the dog a deer. although we weren't together, & we didn't know when we'd all spend christmas in the same place again, for a few minutes we had a small glimmer of the holiday of my childhood. my mom cried, of course, wishing that we could be united. but now, looking back, i am beyond grateful for that family christmas conversation. i never would have guessed that it would be the last one i'd ever have.