2007-12-18 - 10:44 p.m.
I just put Lola down for her afternoon nap. She is like clockwork and I love it. This is my two hour window to do whatever needs to be done and get my work out in.
As I was thinking about Christmas and my excitement for Lola's first experience of it, I remembered the Christmas when everything fell apart for me as a child. It was the Christmas I found out Santa did not, in fact exist, and my mom had a problem.
For those of you who do not know, my mother was a druggie and alcoholic. Wild Turkey. That was her bird of choice during the holidays. Her holidays were colorful indeed, filled with pills of all shapes and sizes, and kept in pretty little boxes. Whitman's yellow chocolate candy boxes where the home for her pot and sat right inside her bedside table, alongside her bottles of bourbon and whiskey.
It was Christmas Eve and my sisters and I had gone to bed with grand anticipation of waking up in the morning to experience pretty much one of the only awesome things we knew we could look forward to. Christmas, somehow, was always magical for the three of us. I am not sure if it was the fact that we had each other, or if it was that it was seriously the ONLY time each year that our mom treated us special and made everything all about us. I remember thinking often on Christmas mornings that maybe she would be different and we could all be happier in the next year...that maybe she would become more like the parents of my friends...normal. Maybe this year, instead of using her money on her drugs and alcohol, she would buy us new school clothes and supplies? Maybe we could move into a place that was a little bit nicer and didn't have cockroaches?
Anyway, I would use the excuse that I had to get up and go to the bathroom so that I might be able to pass the tree and get a peak...see if Santa had come yet. The only thing I saw was my mother, passed out drunk on the couch. It was three or four in the morning. I remember standing there looking at her and then the tree...realizing everything that kids my age should never have to. My mom is sick and there is no fucking Santa.
I did the only thing I knew I could. I tried waking my mom up. She sat up under her blanket and was still drunk, talking to me like I was a friend her own age, and telling me things I didn't want to hear.
I wrapped all the gifts that year, including my own. I knew if I didn't, in just an hour or two, my sisters would be waking up to come in and take a peak and shake their presents, only to find mom and an empty bottle.
That Christmas morning I got up and experienced Christmas with my sisters with a lot less exuberance than in the past. This year I knew the truth and there was nothing magical about it. Nothing was ever the same again and that was one of the first wedges that drove in between my mother and I.
I feel lucky that I am able to give Lola a life so different than that I grew up in. It isn't about believing in a Santa or not, or the presents. It is about taking care of those you love and taking care of yourself. It is about giving to make others happy and not being selfish.
It is about being a good parent.
�
�
