As a younger person, I never branded my family as one that was entrenched in Christmas tradition. We had things we always did, but not necessarily on a certain day every year or in exactly the same way. The more I scour my mom’s photo albums of my childhood, the more certain traditions stand out.

One of our traditions was to decorate my sweet grandmother’s Christmas tree. My Mama always bought a real tree from a nearby lot and she had a type she always went for: short and fat. Every year, she bought a tree shorter than all of us and fatter than a cousin tug-o-war, After the tree was purchased, we picked a date to come over with my cousins to decorate and read the Christmas story out of Luke 2. I can’t think about the holidays without thinking about this. I was a stupid little kid who didn’t always know what was best for me, so I tried to get out of this event a time or two. I wanted to ride my bike or hang in the neighborhood or watch Happy Days reruns. I quickly learned that this was the one event there was no getting out of. Ever. No rearranging it. No cancelling it. No changing it up. This one was in stone.

Because it was the most important thing to my grandmother. And that made it the most important thing. Period.

Later in my adolescence, my grandmother began to come over the afternoon of Christmas Eve and spend the night. This seemingly minor change in our routine brought me a comfort I can’t explain. I loved having her there. I loved that she wasn’t alone. I loved that she woke up in the house with us. It made me feel one layer more protected from whatever awaited me on the outside. She was the fleece to our blanket.

From year to year, there were the smallest of changes. The tree would change. Because again, it was a LIVE TREE. I have no words to waste on purveyors of the artificial. Some years it wasn’t as fat as I previously described. I feel I have to admit this, because I found pictorial evidence and the tree in the photos is quite fit. Short, but fit. Like a gymnast. But I didn’t lie about the short part. My 10-year-old cousin is taller than this tree. And the reader would change. We all liked to read aloud and we were all decent readers. I remember this being such a competition that at the end of arguing over it, we all needed the Jesus who was about to be born. My grandmother got smart, though, and started prearranging the readers and writing them down, so there’d be no repeats the following year. And the baked goods changed from year to year.

But there was always a 6 oz glass bottled Coke for each of us. And there was always a large jar containing full sized candy bars. And there was a spirit of joy in that tiny, one bedroom apartment, where we hung the 50 year old vintage ornaments and listened to the words and music of the season.

Sure, we misfired on a gift or 50 over the years. And we clearly stunk at handcrafting sleds from recyclables. But I think we had the big stuff right.

Happy Holidays. Enjoy the photographic fiasco that includes a red beret, large, wooden parrot earrings, snide expression, man’s plaid dress shirt, and Jane Fonda hair style.

Memories are funny things. From one side of my brain, a particular date or image can be completely locked away. But by lassoing the stories of certain Christmases past, one memory becomes the tripwire for countless others, exposing a box full of my mother and everything I loved as a child. Things that were there, but just hiding behind a thicker curtain. And where I wasn’t feeling much like celebrating Christmas before I started all of this, now I’m ready to ring the bell at Salvation Army.

So to speak.

As of 2 weeks ago, I knew I had spent one Christmas away from home but could not have told you which one or anything else about it. But last night, as I was laying in bed thinking about Christmas Eve 1988, it came back to me in full color. I remember living it. I remember my mom retelling it. I remember my souvenir from it.

We drove to Lakeland for the holidays on December 23, 1975. I was almost 5. Kicking rocks in the driveway as my parents loaded the car, I remember hearing them discuss the hassle factor. Wrapping gifts beforehand, making room in the trunk for everything you have to take there and then haul back. I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted some toys.

When we arrived, there was the usual hustle and bustle of holiday baking and food prep. My grandmother, quite the southern cook, had an operation going that would take a flow chart and a staff of 15 for me to pull off. She didn’t need a flow chart. She didn’t have employees. She had skillz. As was her custom, and the only one I personally cared about, a chocolate cake was made and sitting stoically in her rustic yellow and white cake tin. Her signature cake was a square, 3-layer cake better than anything else I’ve ever sampled. One bite of an end piece, superbly slathered in homemade icing, was really all I needed for Christmas. But I kept that quiet, lest they take me up on the offer and buy me nothing.

When you travel at Christmas and you step into someone else’s territory 2 days beforehand, you have to hit the ground running and you have to run their route, at their pace. I was only 4 at the time, so I wasn’t asked to do anything except to stay out of the way. That should have been easy enough for me. The kitchen was about a 6′ x 8′ rectangle and you met yourself coming and going if you turned around good. I tried to stay out of the way and I wasn’t at all interested in cooking or helping. But that kitchen had 3 doors. You could practically straddle three rooms by doing a split right there on the tile. And that was pretty cool for a little kid. One door was an opening with a step down into the den. Another door was an opening flush with the carpet of the main hallway of the house. And the third door…well. The third door was a swinging saloon-type door. And that was about as fun as it got in that house. Or any house. I liked to dart in and out through that door between the dining room and the kitchen. I liked to smack it so it swung with force and saunter in like I owned the place. I liked to duck under it, and spy on anyone in range. The possibilities were rich and vast. But in a kitchen that small, with two adults already dodging each other as they worked, my darting and sauntering and ducking was less than welcome.

I was banished.
But I’d be back. Maybe in the middle of the night.

The hallway off the kitchen led to the only three bedrooms in the house. My grandparents had the biggest, which wasn’t big, at the end of the hall. My parents had a small one with a queen bed and a dresser. And I shared my uncle’s old room with my brother. It had red shag carpet and the bed took up the entire room.

Things had been fairly smooth until Christmas Eve. I had managed to find other entertainment and left the saloon door alone. But I was working on a cold. I have 4 kids, so you don’t have to tell me that a cold in December in the nose of a 4 year old is commonplace. It isn’t anything to send out in the Christmas letter. Kids get snotty. But this cold took a diabolical turn and quickly became something else. It went straight to my ear. Again, it’s just an ear infection. It wasn’t pneumonia. But if you’ve ever had an ear infection–a really angry ear infection–the kind of infection that bulges up in your ear until the drum almost bursts, then you know it can be a painful kerfuffle inside your snotty head.

When I went to bed that night, I wasn’t my typical Santa-stalking self. Christmas Eve was a time to question everything, delay the process with water requests, beg for another story, or sneak off to the tree for one last peek at the bounty. For me that night, it was all about getting to sleep. I was hurting. I went to sleep with a slow, dull burn inside my right ear. Sometime after midnight, I woke up with a raging fire. My brother was asleep like a brick beside me, so I untwisted my nylon red nightie to free up my feet and ran across the hall to find my mother. She snapped awake the moment I reached her bedside.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, groggily trying to help.

“My ear,” I said, starting to cry with my right hand cupping it.

She scooted over in the bed and scooped me up to be with her. I have no idea how my dad didn’t get shoved off completely. There wasn’t enough bed for the 3 of us. My mom tried everything she could to bring me relief. Warm oil. Baby aspirin. Nothing touched the pain. So for the next 5 hours, she held my head in her lap as she sat propped against the wall. I cried all night. She cried some, too. We waited for daylight.

At 5:30, when my grandmother was stirring to start the Christmas meal, my mother told me to go get dressed. We were going to the E.R. Doctors weren’t open, Hospitals were. So, I was placed in the back seat of our Buick and driven to the hospital feeling like a very sick national celebrity. When we arrived, there was no one else there. No other sick people. None. Not one other patient. It was just me. And because there were no other patients, I was ushered in and treated like the royalty I had begun to believe I was. The nurses wore Santa caps and leaned down to me like I was on tour with the Jackson 5. Would you like my autograph? I can’t really write yet.  

I was put in a temporary room behind a curtain that rolled on 1000 tiny metal balls. It was all quite fascinating. The doctor came in, checked my ear, said I was just on the brink of a ruptured ear drum, and got me a nice little antibiotic to make the whole thing go away.

It occurred to me right about then that it was Christmas. Straight up Christmas. And there I sat in the ER getting fawned over. The fawning was fun, but my stomach was growling for whatever my grandmother had going back at the house (our family never skipped breakfast) and I was more than ready to open some presents.

Before I left my fan club behind to rejoin my family, a nurse walked out with a toy for me. She said I had been such a great patient that I deserved a…weird little Santa doll. It wasn’t a cuddly plush Santa or a Santa with movable parts. It was a doll cut and sewn from 1975 Santa fabric. It was ugly enough to make a 4-year-old kid give up the myth of Santa altogether. And yet, I was immensely proud of that ugly doll. Because it represented the battle I had fought that day. It gave me an inflated sense of self importance. And because it was my first gift that year.

Until recently, I still had that Santa. Somewhere in the move two houses ago, I either tossed it or lost track of it. But you know the good ole internet. Nothing is ever really gone. So here’s a picture of some other kid’s ugly Santa. I’d be surprised if it’s not the same one. This one, with his rashy cheeks and sewn together black stumps, is sadly for sale on Etsy for a whopping $22. Whoever owned this Santa back in the day, I hope he earned it. Something this remarkable shouldn’t be free.

HH (happy holidays),
Missy

As I sit here typing, the dog is stretched out on the couch like an ad for a taxidermy company and rain is falling softly like Christmas confetti as it moves the lazy river water downstream. It looks like winter, but it’s not cold today. It does feel like Christmas. Finally.

I haven’t written much this year. It just hasn’t felt writable, most of it. And truthfully, much of it still isn’t. I struggle to dance along the line of what’s my story and what isn’t. When it isn’t my story, then it isn’t my story to tell. And writing my reactions to someone else’s story is crossing a line. So I follow the advice of my mother quoting Thumper and sometimes I just say nothing. 

It’s a challenge. Cuz I’m a talker. 

But here I am with a lazy rain and dog, thinking about the next two weeks.  I’m grateful that finals are upon us and almost over. The kids are not nearly as stressed as I am, which I’m well aware is messed up.  I’m grateful that we have an opportunity as a family of 6 to create a little holiday magic when we felt like we were lacking it. 

To look at us, you wouldn’t know we were lacking in spirit. We went to Home Depot the Sunday after Thanksgiving and picked a tree. We usually like to walk through the choices and really consider our options. This year, we picked the very first one our eyes landed on. The first one. We named him Bert. We walked out within 2 minutes of walking in. That’s a record. Bert is doing his job. He has some gifts under the tree. He has kids gathered around him every afternoon as they recount the boxes with their names on them. There’s one particular kid who has been slightly naughtier than the others. I actually considered returning a gift last night. 

But, of course, I’m not gonna. Because that’s so mean.  And I might be having an off year, but I’m not mean. 

And though I’m not usually accused of meanness, I have been grumpy for the last couple of weeks.  Grumpy about homework. Grumpy about carpools. Grumpy about stale snacks. Grumpy messy rooms. Grumpy about stains on white shirts that I am tasked with getting out. Grumpy about my too short pajama pants. Grumpy about stuff. 

I think I just had some hurdles to trip over. I don’t think my race has been graceful or particularly impressive, but I have continued to trip along. And there’s something to be said for not quitting. I am past some stress. I am past all of the “firsts” after my mom died. I am not past my kids’ finals, but we’ve already decided it’s disturbed behavior to fret about someone else’s test schedule. 

So here–now–on this rainy, lazy-dog, swollen-knee kind of day, I declare CHRISTMAS SPIRIT. I declare gratitude and joy and peacefulness. I declare contentment.  I look around and see only blessings. I have to step out of my own head. I don’t know who will read this. Maybe nobody. But if you’re reading and you are having an off year too, find a way to get back on. Crank up the Ella Fitzgerald music.  Pay something forward. Say Merry Christmas to the dude walking into Hibachi Express.  Eat Mexican food. Take pride in the stains you get out of shirts. Keep people on your nice list even if they don’t deserve it.

And Happy Holidays. From me. (And Bert.)

Come on, 2019. It’s game on. 

I hate diets.

Obviously.

I’ve lost some pounds over the last 10 years, and done so with such repugnance that I found them all again and brought along some friends to spite the diet that I had used to lose them in the first place.

Diets don’t work for me. The main reason is because I have just a small percentage, almost undetectable some might say, of Rebel Blood in me. I mean, I’m mostly a go-with-the-flow kinda gal. But tell me I can’t have the slice of cake and I’m all up in your face with the other ¾ of the entire cake hanging out of my mouth, icing in my teeth and crumbs cascading down my shirt. Because you told me I couldn’t.

I’ve learned something from all of this. I struggle against the DON’T statements. I do better with DO statements. I do better if I’m attempting to drink 4 bottles of water in a day than if my rule is to not drink a single Diet Mountain Dew. Not drink Diet Mountain Dew? What are we, animals?

But, I’m going to set physical dieting aside. Because tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Only evil people discuss dieting the day before Thanksgiving. I’m actually thinking about the concept of dieting in relation to gratitude and positive thinking. I haven’t done myself any favors here. And I keep thinking things like, “I’ve got to stop thinking this,” or “I need to not complain about this thing,” or “I shouldn’t use sarcasm anymore.” Etc. But that puts me in my rebellion against diets zone and I fight against that.

Instead, I need to go down the DO statements road. I need to spend 10 minutes a day listing the things I’m thankful for. I need to season my speech with grace (Colossians 4:6) by looking for kind things to say or ways to build someone else up. I need to take my thoughts captive and make them look more like unicorns and rainbows than CNN’s reporting on the 4 year old that stabbed his cat to death.

I can choose what goes in, for the most part. I can’t choose what I hear crossing a parking lot, but I can choose my movies, my reading materials, my news outlets, or my friends. And I can choose to lasso my plumb donkey foolish brain into working for a good cause.

Instead of noticing the bloody molar that Jenna pulled out and dropped onto the porch table, I choose to be thankful she didn’t ask ME to pull it.

Instead of noticing the EXTREME noise level of 7 rowdy children, I choose to be thankful for my ear buds.

Instead of being grumpy that the guy at the next table in Fuddrucker’s had clearly not showered in well over a year, I choose to be thankful that Fuddrucker’s still exists in Texas. And that I was able to escape to a table across the restaurant. That was a life and death situation. I am not kidding you. Not even a little. 

This went off the rails. So I’ll just end with this.

It’s been a YEAR for my family. And James Dobson’s people haven’t called me once for an interview on any of their podcasts. And I’ve had to restart my positivity regime 17 different times. But standing off in the gravel as I get up and brush myself off to get back on the rails are a host of friends and family. People that love me in spite of the fact that I am winning all the wrong awards. People that are happy to put their boot against my backside and push me back into the game. Who somehow make failing at life fun. For this, I could not be any more thankful. For these people and for the God who put them on my path, I raise my forkful of cherry pie and my can of Diet Mountain Dew, and I say a sincere and heartfelt thank you. 

Thank you.

Growing up, every year I spent Thanksgiving in Lakeland, FL with my parents, my brother, and my grandparents. Every year but one. I don’t remember why we didn’t go that one year. I’m sure I didn’t care. This only serves as proof that my kids really don’t care what we do from year to year, either. They probably won’t remember.

Every year, there was a big meal around my grandmother’s cherry-wood, clawfoot dining room table. Every year I sat at that table and ate it.  I don’t remember a bite of it.
Not one bite.

What I do remember is the breakfasts. My parents and grandparents made as big a production over a breakfast table as they did over Thanksgiving. The sausage was cooked first so that the scrambled eggs could take a leisurely swim in the sausage grease as my grandmother rolled them around the skillet. Those eggs took time. We were willing to wait for them.

I always slept on a pull-out couch, less than 5 feet from the oven in that concrete block house on Belvedere Street. I shared the bed with the bar that protruded up through the tissue paper mattress. But I never minded because I loved being that close to the operational center of so much good smelling food. Waking up to the clanking of pots as they were pressed into service by hands that knew exactly what to do with them became one of the most comforting zones for me. Those mornings I teetered peacefully between sleep and wakefulness with 0% responsibility and 100% hope.

I loved being close to my family, in house so small we had to flatten against the wall to pass each other in the hallway. I loved taking walks along a road canopied with camphor trees, while listening to U2 through the Walkman I saved up for on my own. I loved hearing stories about the life they lived in Kentucky before they moved to central Florida. I loved watching college football with the entire intense extended family. I didn’t care as much as they did then, so it was fun to watch them freak out.

I haven’t been to Lakeland for Thanksgiving in more than 20 years. There’s no one there now. My grandmother died in 2008, 2 weeks before my fourth child was born. My grandfather died in 2011, just shy of his 96^th birthday. Their daughter—my mother—died 6 short years later. How strange.

Two holidays ago, we brought my ailing mother over to my brother’s house to eat Thanksgiving dinner. It didn’t go well. She was too sick to be there. And last Thanksgiving, she ate in the dining room of her assisted living facility, with my dad feeding her, and with her assigned tablemates that, to her, were strangers.

She didn’t care about that meal. She couldn’t care that we came to visit that night. She was no longer with us.

She had her eyes on a heavenly country.
We had our eyes on her.

I am writing this from a plane to Austin, sitting in the midst of two rows of the people I love most on this earth. We are days away from gathering around yet another dining room table, with more people I love dearly. There will be no slow scrambled eggs. There will be turkey and dressing and everything quintessential to the holiday. There will be a Macy’s parade in the living room and a staggering pie-to-people ratio. And I know without question that there will be laughter that comes from the stories that fly around the table as we eat. Not one of us is normal, which makes for some pretty colorful tales about catastrophes gone by.

I am eager to get started.
I am thankful.

But I have to acknowledge that this is the first Thanksgiving without my mom. Without the opportunity to call the her she was toward the end and hear her try to speak back to me. Without even her shell on this earth with me. I have to turn my face to it and wear my memories like a warm fleece around my shoulders.

I’m not sad– just solemn.
Not melancholy—only reflective.
Not wistful—absolutely thankful.

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Happy Thanksgiving, friends. Wherever you are this week, whomever you are with, embrace, enjoy, appreciate.

And eat pie.