A Christmas Story

I can blog to procrastinate. Being unemployed is still great. I've calmed down. I need to work and I'm blogging but perhaps I also need to consider my beliefs and my life. What a serious girl. Serious is my crazy.

The holidays are something I have to compartmentalize. It's not because I'm Jewish - it's because I had such a complicated childhood. I mean, I think that is why I'm so analytical. Anyway, most people are really into Christmas it seems. I approve the most when there is a lot of baking going on (and wine). On my step dad's side there are some close families. At Grandma Betsy's we'd stay with all his brothers and sisters and cousins in Springfield, Illinois, Land of Lincoln. We'd sing and bake and some grownups would go to Midnight Mass. Seriously, his tall gorgeous sisters would sit up late Christmas Eve by the tree singing "The Lemon Tree." One year it snowed three feet of perfect packing snow, but I was sick. As a result of Grandma Betsy's compassion for the awful injustice of that, I got to eat cocoa puffs 'round the clock. I remember hearing jokes from my aunt on my Mom's side about my stepdad's Episcopalian family times vs. our Jewish dysfunctional disasters- which is a Woody Allen bit from Annie Hall and pretty on-the-money.

A friend of mine recently assumed that I forego Christmas somehow, or wouldn't know about Christmas or something, because "You're Jewish!" (My response: "You think I'm a Communist?") In reality I had many Christmases with my stepdad's family in Illinois, and encouraged my younger cousin bed-sharers to listen for hoofsteps and all this. Santa was big in my life for a time, even predating my stepdad's entrance on the scene. (As was Jesus - thanks to Ted Turner and a Sunday cartoon called "Superbook.") Anyway, I wasn't being raised religious, so you have to give a Jewish kid Christmas if they're in public school for goodness sake. I imagine it just happens. :-) I had a lot of questions about the big man and Mrs. Claus, but I got funny answers - "A big telescope." "They try to match the paper a family is using." "Well, really, it's more like Dad and I are his elves." (I could read the writing on the wall but liked the imagination belief inspired.) My step dad relied on Santa heavily as a negotiation tool with my younger siblings which is sort of sick and funny. He relied on two things, sarcasm and Santa, for the discipline of his children and it really didn't work at all. They'd hit each other and scream bloody murder about it. He'd yell: "Hey! Santa is WATCHING" and laugh.

He employed this sarcasm with me too. When he married my mother, I was five. He made a lot of jokes about "Okay that's it; Go get me my belt," and stuff (His father said such things in seriousness back in his day in what I picture as Tom's "A Christmas Story" childhood). Tom would NEVER have hit me with a belt but I was five and didn't find his humor at my expense so funny at all. There was one day I was punished in the Cafeteria at PS 158 and made to go stand on a perp line with BAD 6th GRADE BOYS for a shaming before hundreds. His delight at the humor of this and support of the principal and her methods was not very understandable to me. When we moved to New Jersey and I hated it, I was unhappy with him. We did a thing called "Indian Princesses" to improve our relationship.

The main way he drove me crazy was that he devised this punishment where I couldn't talk at the table for half an hour or something. And I would basically cry and that got a lot of headshaking disbelief and delight from him. "Crying!? It's been five minutes!" I don't know why I'm thinking about myself as a child so much. I guess it's unemployment and clearing my mind. :-) This Indian princesses story is funny though if you want to bear with me. (why?)

So we do this Indian Princesses thing. He is Tall Timber and I am Little pine cone. Girls and their dads go around town doing crafts at eachother's houses and wearing feathers. Pretty fucking cute.

And then there is a winter retreat weekend to Camp Mason in Blairstown. It's the statewide Indian Princesses gathering and our tribe are all sharing a cabin. I am seriously pissed at one Tom, my stepdad. Children aren't as hard to analyze as adults. I'd say this retreat must have been timed with my first winter in New Jersey and a seven year old's grasping sadism towards Tom was born of not liking NJ one bit and taking his jokes very personally. I hated New Jersey and it wasn't funny!

So the first afternoon we have to rehearse a fable play that we'll perform at dinner that night for all the other tribes. There is a wart hog on the character list. "That's you." I tell my stepdad. "You will play the wart hog."

I didn't like, really, to be so mean. Deep down I felt the same heat in my person that would come with welling tears. Tom and the other dads were good about my (completely Tom focussed) sneering. The other dads laughed it off with Tom. So it was fine. I continued to be just bitchy enough that we could move on with things.

I think I thought it was a pretty big deal. My attitude. Now I realize a mean seven year old is a lot funnier to an adult than she is powerfully scarring.

So Tom played the warthog and I ignored him in the cabin. The next day was so much fun. We went sledding. I was not angry at Tom that day, but I was obsessed with sledding. I ran off with Aaron who was there with his Dad and his tribe of Indian Princes. He wanted to show me another hill. Tom freaked out when I didn't come back up the hill, so he ran down it, falling, and seriously breaking his arm. Well, I felt terrible. Aaron's dad took Tom to the hospital and I went back to the cabin with the other dads and girls.

I wouldn't have been surprised or felt anything but the guilty and deserving party had they then commenced an inquisition into how I had broken Tom's arm. I imagine I was probably asking Jesus and Santa to forgive me even though neither were real. I was trying to steel myself to confess the kind of terrible person I knew that I was to the assembled cabin of community fathers and girls my age with dignity and without tears, but I think I failed, and cried incoherently, unable to explain what I had done - making him the wart hog and hating him yesterday and now he probably thought I didn't like him, as he was screaming out in pain at the hospital.

I broke Tom's arm.

The other fathers assured me this wasn't true. He would be fine. They distracted me and I had the finest night I've ever. So much hot chocolate and such a grand party we had in the cabin.

Tom came back to the cabin around four or five and told me he was fine and I mumbled a little about how much fun we had while he was gone.

His arm was in a cast and a sling and we were dropped off. I ran up to the door to explain things to my mother. She was absolutely horrified.

A Christmas Story of everbody dealing with everything in the holiday spirit. :-) Sometimes people do right. Life has charms.