“Suppose you listen to me for a change?… I said listen to me! I’m tired of being pushed around. Tired of being told what to do. Tired of writing your god-darned articles. Tired of dancing to everybody else’s tune. Tired of being told whom to marry. In short… I’m tired!”
That Barbara Stanwyck tirade from Christmas in Connecticut captures how I’ve felt lately, though no one (besides politicians) ever tried to dictate who I should marry. In recent weeks I’ve had deadlines to meet and final tasks to complete ahead of upcoming structural work to the house. There were marital fires to extinguish and some last-minute holiday drama from my in-laws. It’s the stuff of everyday life, nothing too special or strenuous on its own, but I’m doing it with left-sided neck muscles so tight that it’s hard to swallow.
The basement project that was slated to commence next week is now delayed by seven days, upending my schedule and Crankenstein’s. Bright and early tomorrow I’ll have my fourth meeting about it in four days, and today I hired someone to remove wall paneling and yank up some flooring, then put it all back once the structural work’s done. Those are things I could’ve done myself at most points in the past and needing help with it now is both frustrating and embarrassing. In the future it might be what I remember most about this holiday season.
You don’t always know in the moment that something’s destined for memorability. Ten years ago my paternal grandmother, a Presbyterian, hosted what seemed like an ordinary Christmas dinner. At one point my partner rose to use the guest bathroom and returned irritated, angrily whispering to me “I will never use that bathroom again!” In fairness to her, that’s how all of us felt — the pipes were old and rumbled unsteadily, like a dangerously wobbly freight train — but it’s one of those moments I’ll never forget for other reasons. She never would use that bathroom again; she flounced from my life a week later.
I still remember how she adjusted the bottom of her shirt as she sat down beside me, and the color of the tablecloth, and the wallpaper’s imperfections as I looked up from my plate. My grandma soon lost that home to foreclosure; the aunt who moved in to sponge off of her a couple years prior hid the extent of Grandma’s dementia from those who saw her less often, concerned the gravy train would end. Even as she bled her mom financially dry she never checked to verify the property taxes were paid.
My cousin was at our table that night, along with her wife; they’re husbands now in a tale familiar to countless Millennial lesbians. He and I worked the cash box at the garage sale where Grandma’s belongings were sold — where items she once considered priceless were traded for crumpled dollar bills and cup holder quarters sticky with soda. Our aunt appeared occasionally to make racist comments about immigrant shoppers. Credit card debt from her compulsive shopping meant she couldn’t let items go for less than what she paid, so she sold nothing of her own that day.
When Grandma died last December, the same aunt caused a scene at the nursing home, sobbing in the lobby after the mortuary attendant wheeled her mother to his transport van. A crowd of strangers gathered as she wailed “We don’t even have a family Christmas anymore!” Never mind that her quasi-estrangements from siblings were of her own making, or that she could’ve baked a ham herself and invited everyone over if that’s what she wanted.
Following that dinner a decade ago, my sister, my partner and I went to a late-night showing of American Hustle. I remember the car windows fogging on our way to the theater, and the glow of the dashboard lights, and the good spirits that continued when we arrived home. We were back at the theater again soon enough, for a morning showing of The Wolf of Wall Street, and we would’ve eagerly sat through it again but my stomach and SI joints weren’t doing well then and needed a break.
Crankenstein, unknown to me then, was halfway through her intern year, pulling lonely holiday shifts. She spent Christmas caring for a patient who died before they could be transferred to hospice, then went home to an empty apartment and a microwave dinner. The next Christmas Eve, she attended a midnight church service while I hung out at her place. She warned that her cat would hide and ignore me, but within minutes of Crankenstein’s departure the cat jumped onto my chest, purring as she shed onto the overpriced slip her mom would come home and remove.
I don’t know what this Christmas, or next Christmas, or the Christmas after that will bring; the same can be said of every day of my life or yours. Settings and people and circumstances change, and all that’s really permanent is the impermanence of it all — and the memories etched in our hearts, like another I revisit each December: Darlene Love bringing down the house for David Letterman with her rendition of a timeless Christmas classic written, naturally, by a trio of Jews.