Let's talk about the Christmas break shall we friends.
It was not so much a break as a mauling.
The most important things I came away with where I wanted to kiss the ground was the fact that my green trash cans got emptied and I won a hard fought battle for a root canal.
But let's step back.
Right around the time the fat red man was coming to dump presents down our chimney, I have five horses at my house. Right? So that week the trash truck decided to accidentally NOT take my ten green trash cans full of horseshit. Which sets off a chain reaction of me calling every day begging them to please come get my trash cans. So my farm can resume regular working conditions not high alert working conditions.
In the meantime I had five horses still committing to their steamy green output and me with nowhere to input their output. So at night I was having to roll their output down the secret path, rake away some fallen leaves along the sides of the paths, hope the weird silent asian lady who is never in her yard is fingerscrossed never in her yard at this certain midnight, dump my (what will be eventually nice mulch) along the fence and then cover it back up with leaves just like in a crime show.
So this is one aspect of the shituation.
At the same time, Nandy our sometimes nemesis and full time extended family decided she was going to try to die around Christmas Eve. Not a little covid or maybe a fainting spell, a full on cardiac arrest where as doctor niece explained to us layfolk, Nandy's heart said "I'm tired" and stopped. Luckily she was in an ER with B at the time. So they shocked her back to life and then B was spending every day until still this minute going to the hospital to check and be there for this very old friend of his whom he raised a baby with.
That baby, meanwhile, is 40, and until the day Nandy tried to die, this grown up baby had been telling B for the last two years that he hated B and he wanted nothing to do with B anymore. He certainly wasn't going to be coming down to Christmas because he felt no duty to see the man he didn't feel was his father. Even though this was the man who raised him from before birth. So this rejection baby who was never going to see us again, was suddenly called down here to this emergency, and now in my kitchen and sleeping at the foot of the bed of the man he rejected.
Eyebrow raised.
A very unhappy grown baby, for sure. He and his nondad did their best to care of the sick hospital part of their family. I only sat in the kitchen playing morning word games on my phone while I drank tea and woke up each day, and this was my time sitting and listening to this boy I had known since he was 7, telling me how he has never been the person I knew.
Question mark.
?
Sip tea.
Okay.
I look out the window at the line of green trash cans, full of shit.
When will they come dammit. Will they ever come. There is more potential incoming shit in this house than I can handle.
In the meantime my brother is coming to give me a break in caring for my invalid mother, and he misses his connecting flight in Dallas. Maybe he is not coming. Also my mom is looking kind of glassy eyed. Is she deciding to chuck it all now, when the house is full of this impending shitcano?
The best part of this particular season this year is I filled with the help of two sweet nieces and a gramma susie, 4000 stockings for people who wouldn't have a stocking at Christmas. I mailed stuff to people out of state who had stockings. So they'd have a thing to surprise them on Christmas. They weren't big things, maybe some socks or a special candy or some lip stuff or a bra. But things people need. People like to be remembered. loved. Even in small ways.
That was the best part. And Bess playing guitar since the day she got one. Music in the house adrift in a floating shit hub, satelliting the earth.
And then the not documentary worthy battle to win a root canal with my insurance company I've been having since the summer, with rejection after rejection and finally an appeal TO THE STATE like I'm trying to reinstate Roe VS Wade I have battled because my tooth hurts to get this procedure without paying 3000 dollars, and FINALLY after Christmas I get a pink letter from the state, that says OKAYYYYYY we WILL FIX YOUR GODDAMN TOOTH LEAVE US ALONE and I immediately felt terrible because I do not WANT a root canal, I just HAVE TO GET ONE because my dentist shrugged and said well that's the only way to make it better.
So after a winter battle like an irish army starved with rotten potatoes but still fighting, I made my root canal appointment, while cringing. And the blessed green trash truck CAME and emptied every single can, one day before the actual next trash day, but one blessed day less of having to bury the evidence on the trail. One less day of lugging, and I could kiss that wet trash can, and the dentist I will see in two weeks. The burden is lifted. But why so much fight for the burden that isn't even interesting.
My brother showed up, my mom is in good hands, there was no nearby snow so no place to take Bess for a one day vacation so instead our vacation became I made chocolate chip banana pancakes for her. I made potato pancakes for the family. I drank tea longer in the mornings. I sat in quiet a little bit while people rushed in and out to the hospital. I admired my long line of stockings hung along the beam by the dead Christmas tree. It is still pretty. It is sparkly and full of memories pinned on.
The best part of having Christmas was Emma home face down on the couch asleep, dreaming math dreams, and me in the kitchen making a turkey and stuffing by myself on Christmas Eve, and baking scones and pumpkin muffins and dreambars, and Emma and Bess making sugar cookies. And little boy Nathan helped me clean the heavy pool filter. Same as when he was four years old, just standing around near me, curious, wanting to help do a hard thing. We wrapped a huge pile of presents for under the tree and at night I would feel happy because time slowed down, Bess got to see the singer she liked at a huge concert, I got to look up at the stars and know it would be warm the next day because the weather is good here. I have a couch and dogs and shapes of family and horses who look at me quizzically.
The burden, I tried to tell the adult baby who visited, who is struggling, every morning while drinking tea, I tried to tell him yes it is all a mess. All our lives and feelings are a mess. I tried to tell him that the burden is the burnt side of this whole thick life. Do you see the other side where we didn't burn it? We tried to show him. The other side is still good.
