{by Erika from Be Gay About It}

The holiday season serves as a lap marker for me, that pristine line on the track where time is measured and recorded, where, at the end of the race, the ribbon snaps against the heaving torso of the runner, his arms splayed in euphoric victory, holding up the world.

We expect the race to end because that’s what races do.

*****

Five years ago, my brother began to swell. Fluid filled him from the bottom up, an army of ounces colonizing territory after territory in

his feet, his ankles, his calves,

his thighs, his waste, his abdomen, his chest.

Before he entered the hospital the first time, he visited me at my apartment, a sort of willful last act of normalcy and wellness. I remember that we sat on the floor because that was the only place comfortable enough for the sixty pounds of fluid that had inflated his trim, athletic frame. I don’t remember what we talked about that morning, just that we spent the time together.

That was before we knew what was happening. Before I knew the starting gun had fired.

In the weeks that followed, so did the tests and the doctors and the questions until, ultimately, our family lexicon had no choice but to admit cirrhosis, terminal, and transplant into membership. He spent four days in the hospital that first time and all I could do was try to cheer him up. I wheeled around his room in his wheelchair, crashing clownishly into the vinyl visitor chairs and tray table at every pivot. When he slept, I watched him, my eyes squinted in the flannel light of the over-the-sink fluorescent, wondering why he had been drafted for this particular marathon, while I had been spared.

{by Melissa from Rock and Drool}

It was August 1999. I was a 30 year old mommy of two small children. I was the wife of one really screwed up little boy stuck in the body of a 33 year old man. Yet, I was no one. Just an empty shell.

Things looked pretty from the outside. Pretty house. Pretty cars. Pretty kids.

On the inside. It was ugly. I was dead and rotting. I felt lifeless and completely without any hope.

I was teetering on reaching maximum density. I was also precariously balancing my sanity. I was beyond misery and I didn’t want company. I wanted to stab my husband in his sleep. We couldn’t have that though. Because who would raise the kids if the dad was dead and the mom was in jail? The system? Hell to the no. I hated him though. With every fiber of my being.

It was bad. Not in a violent sense. There was just nothing worth saving there. But I wasn’t ready to jump off that high dive.

Until, one afternoon in early August. I snapped awake from a short nap. He was the first thing I saw. I looked at him, sweating on the exercise bike that was in our huge bedroom. And I knew it was finally over. Whatever guilt that had been holding me captive in that house, it had lifted. My fears and my conscience screamed that I was free to go.

And I did.

I grabbed clothes and toys. Enough to keep my 1 1/2 year old and 3 1/2 year old dressed and busy for the next couple of days until I could come back to the house when he wasn’t there. I grabbed some essentials for myself. Loaded the stuff into laundry baskets and placed them in the trunk of my car.

{By Robin from PENSIEVE}

I’m sure it all started with visions of sugar plums, dancing ’round my head like Coyote’s stars after Road Runner smacks him in the head with a cast iron skillet.

At some point in Christmas Past, these were my illusions of grandeur:

Children (freshly scrubbed, neatly dressed and mannerly) joining my husband (dressed in a crew neck Christmas sweater and slacks) (yes, slacks, that’s kind of important) and me (pearls and a June Cleaver dress, bosoms unnaturally pointed and waist the size of Scarlet O’Hara’s–let’s be realistic–after giving birth to Bonnie Blue) decorating tree and home. Efficient and precise, my husband, would string the lights as the children tenderly unwrapped each ornament, taking time to recall memories or giver attached to each. Aussie, head resting on crossed paws in front of a fire’s roar, would gaze sleepily upon our merriment. I’d stop long enough to serve hot chocolate with mounds of whipped cream and offer home made cookies, each a Martha Stewart masterpiece. I’d hesitate with intention to capture the moment, wanting to catalog the scene in my heart and mind, not daring to interrupt the feng shui with camera and flash. There’d be much laughter and story telling, and one of us would eventually find our way to the piano, where we’d all join in a hearty performance of the “12 Days of Christmas”. They’d always let me sing “Fiiiive…goooolden….riiiiings!” because they know it’s my favorite.

Well, buckets of rain on my delusional Rockwell-esque Christmas parade; the Road Runner must’ve smacked ME upside the head with a skillet! When all is said and done, I’m pretty much the one who does it all.

{by Jennifer from Playgroups Are No Place For Children}

One of my children’s favorite books is The Polar Express. They’ve been begging to have it read to them nearly every night since the first Christmas commercial was broadcast back in October. I also love this story, it’s beautiful illustrations and the reminder about the true magic and spirit of Christmas.

On the other hand, BAH HUMBUG.

I think I first began to lose the magic of the Christmas season the first December after Tate and I were married. Instead of looking forward to all the merriment and celebration, it started to feel like nothing more than a to-do list.

1. Attend the same Christmas party that had been cranked out every year before.
2. Fret and stress over over every gift purchase.
3. Travel long distances home for the holiday and bounce from one relative’s house to another, trying to keep everyone else happy.
4. Unpack 1,000 ornaments out of their boxes to decorate the tree, only to have to repack them three weeks later.
5. Hear the same sappy Christmas songs on loop, no matter your location.

And the list could go on and on. So for the past several years, I’ve invited Scrooge and all his angst into my heart to endure the purgatory of December.

Since having our kids, I’ve really have tried to feign a festive spirit during the holidays. Carson and Ella at least deserve an attempt at a joyous holiday. We’ve spent time drinking cocoa by the fireplace, baking cookies, and building gingerbread houses, all while wearing Christmas aprons. FESTIVE, I tell you! Both of the kids so young, I had no idea if my artificial attempts and creating an atmosphere of magic had made an impression on them.

{by Maggie from Okay, Fine, Dammit.}

They march into his home, the law on their sides, and rip him and his father from their family like scabs. It is November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht. The “Night of the Broken Glass,” the night of the breaking family tree branches, all crushed beneath the German soldiers’ boots. Obliterated.

At night he lies on an eight-foot plywood “bed” with seven other men and he thinks, This is the end. The crisp, frigid air is as merciless as his captors and so he gives his own underwear to his father to give him just one more layer of warmth. He watches men murdered in a manner too wretched, too unbelievable, to be written casually by a stranger here. He notes that the officers are hardest on the most devout of his people, the ones praying on broken knees each night for a saving that never comes.

Seventy years later he will stand, shaking, a 92-year-old Jewish great-grandfather, an honored guest in our tiny church, and in a thick accent he will tell the congregation that he left his faith behind in that concentration camp’s latrine. That he associates the idea of faith with certain death.

Ironically, his very presence will fill me with hope.

***

I grew up in the famed Driftless Area, a particularly beautiful patch of Wisconsin passed over by the glaciers and snatched up by blond haired, blue-eyed Scandinavians. My small town was 99% white, 105% Christian. I had dark hair and eyes, olive skin, and a nose not nearly as button-cute as those of my friends on the dairy farms. I knew my last name ended in –berg, but I had no context for what that meant and I didn’t think a thing of it. Every year we put up our Christmas tree. We wrapped gifts, hung stockings, told stories about the baby in the manger. I don’t remember when I figured out my dad was Jewish; he never went to temple. He eschewed all religion, hadn’t attended services since his Bar Mitzvah, fled New York at the age of 17, met my mother (a Wisconsin farmer’s daughter) at 19, and never looked back.

{by Grace Davis from State of Grace}

Before she lived in her safe and snug redwood house by the sea; before she met a man who loves her from the top of her head to her toes; before she birthed and raised and set free into the world her beautiful and bright brown eyed daughter, before 20 years of work in a series of rewarding occupations; before she labored at two sometimes three jobs in a big city as she put herself through college; before the richness, goodness and accomplishments of her life today, she was a 17 year old girl with just $200 and a backpack full of books and some clothes to her name.

She was on her own three days before she turned 18 and her high school graduation. She missed the ceremony to find work. On her birthday she found a job in the mountains, in the loving caress of nature. Though she was young, she intuitively knew that the embrace of twig, stone, river, mountain and sky would help her heal from the carnage she had known all her life in her parents’ household.

She had fled from domestic violence. She left, knowing she had to save herself. All on her own, at 17, she began her journey to recovery and wholeness.

Such a journey almost always involves hard work. In that first year on her own, this meant hard manual labor. A strong and sturdy young woman, she was part of the crew that maintained the grounds and buildings of a lodge. She moved, pushed and placed furniture and equipment around the property. She scrubbed, scoured and swept the rooms and cabins. She toiled in a restaurant, busing tables and balancing large trays of dishes and glasses on one arm over her head.

She opened a checking account in the village bank. Her savings grew. Her goal was to save money for college.

That summer, on her days off, she hiked deep into wooded canyons and ascended steep switchbacks to the tops of granite peaks and shimmering waterfalls…

{by Amy Turn Sharp from doobleh-vay}

This year is different. Each year as we turn around the sun and land smack into a new holiday everything is really relative to the places we have just come from.
My husband lost his father this summer.
Thick in the summer morning heat at the end of July I got a phone call quiet from England.
Joe’s sweet sister shaky with tears told me that dad had died.
I wrote about telling Joe this news:

You never write the narrative of yr own sadness until the moment it happens.

Joe’s father died last night.

It’s like there is a giant hole in England now
in his town
in Joe’s heart

And when I had to put my arms around him
to hold him and tell him
it was like he wasn’t all there
like he had shrunk to the size of a boy
and even my strong strong arms
wrapped right around him
couldn’t do enough

It has marked me. Like tracks we all have across our souls from the biggest imprints of our lives.
From horrible events to the most exquisite blissful times we have ever known and not the little in between.
The big things that freeze a life and spin it.

{by Julie Pippert from Julie Pippert: Using My Words}

I was standing outside my house, directly under my children’s bedroom window, in what passes for cold in Bay Area Houston. In my hands I balanced a big boom box, Say Anything style, except it wasn’t blasting music. It was blasting the sound of reindeer hooves on a roof, including snorts, and the jingling bells of their harnesses.

That’s when I knew it.

No, not that I had lost my mind; I knew that I had finally gotten my holiday groove back.

I knew that come what storms may, we could weather them, and when you have a chance to stand outside in what passes for cold blasting sleigh bells on a boom box to bring a little magic to kids, your kids, who still believe in, well, the everything sort of possibilities…you go for it, big.

This marked a huge change.

I’ve spent my life trying to find my footing during the holidays. My family had the general traditions – ham, pie, gifts, visits to family – but nothing terribly consistent. My parents had barely settled into our immediate family’s ways when they got divorced, then we had to transition into juggling two (very competitive) Christmases. That was barely settled when each got remarried and then a whole new set of traditions and expectations came into play. By the time I left home and married my husband, I was more a little confused about the holidays. I was, in fact, completely cynical.

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