Blue Christmas
A Tragedy in Five Acts

I.

Alison and I exchange glances between the front and back seat of my husband’s Honda Passport. “Why the fuck is he getting the mail?” I say loudly between my set of chattering teeth. “We’re cold!”

“I know,” she agrees, “I don’t know why he had to get it right this second.”

Owen gets in the driver’s seat and hands me a stack of mail. “I was hoping that Bob’s nuts would get here.” We had ordered a tin of nuts emblazoned with the saying “Bob’s Nuts” as a gag gift for his 17 year old brother Bob. The item had backordered and was probably not going to arrive for Christmas. “Well, maybe it will come tomorrow,” I say, as he starts the car.

And we’re off to the first stop on our Christmas Tour 2003.

* * * * * * *

Annoyed again, I glare at my husband – more accurately, his ringing cell phone. “Who calls Christmas Eve?” I ask the room, and the women all nod with me. He plugs his ear and ignores all of us. “What could this possibly be about?” I ask my sister-in-law. “This better be something good.”

He ends the call and turns to me. “That was Scott. He just drove past our house and said that someone plowed into our mailbox and totaled their car.”

Good thing he got the mail before we left.


II.

After managing to avoid the platter of pickled herring (as did my father-in-law, claiming he worried about “mad herring disease”), I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got home. Utter chaos? Carnage?

Instead, we were greeted with three utility trucks surrounding our driveway. My husband put on his hazards and ran out to find out what was going on.

Apparently, the driver didn’t just take out our mailbox. He then went on to knock down our telephone pole, leaving us powerless, phoneless, and cableless. (And would remain so until late in the day on the 26th) The utility truck was working on the power part. They would have that restored within the hour, but there were live wires strung across our driveway, so we couldn’t get in yet.

On Christmas Eve, nothing is open. Not even Taco Bell. Thankfully, our in-laws live about five minutes away. So one hour and a good portion of a James Bond movie later, we arrived at home. It had been a long night, and we were going to follow it up with an even longer day. The Christmas Tour of 2003 had three more stops to get through.

III.

My father-in-law is shaking a box that is obviously holding a neck tie. A high school English teacher, his love of British literature get the best of him: “Is it a Thomas Hardy necktie?” My husband, playing along, shrugs in dismay. “How did you guess?” My brother in law chimes in. “Yeah, it has Jude the Obscure...” my other brother in law adds, “The dead children...” And my husband adds the finishing zinger: “And it’s a clip-on so you don’t hang yourself!”

I guess you had to be there.

IV.

We’re at my aunt’s house, one more stop to go after this, and everything is fabu. I know this, because my aunt declares it to be so at every opportune moment. We play a game in which we all hold wrapped ornaments, and my uncle reads “Twas the Night Before Christmas” aloud, and on each recitation of the word “the,” we are supposed to pass our wrapped ornament to the person to our left. So you can imagine, all the passing and giggling and hooting and ornaments shooting out of people’s hands. “That was fabu,” my aunt says afterward.

Opening a gift of a charm bracelet where all the charms are high-heeled shoes: “Fab.... boo!”

Telling us all about a play she and my uncle saw... fabu.

“Well, that party was fabu,” I said to my husband as we got in the car to go to our final stop, my mother’s house.

And then I thought to myself, or maybe I said it aloud, “I hope my mom hasn’t had too much to drink.”

V.

We’re relaxed. This is the home stretch, nowhere to go after this. All the presents are unwrapped. My mom has, in fact, had too much to drink, but it’s Christmas after all, and she seems to be in good spirits.

“Just check on the roast,” my mom told me, slurring her words a bit.

I got up, my husband followed, and my aunt for whom I am named also came into the kitchen to begin setting the table. We got the roast out, my husband was slicing it, when we heard the crash.

My aunt and I exchanged glances. This has happened before to us, and it’s a surefire sign of trouble to come.

She went to check on my mom. She had fallen into the table, knocking a platter of shrimp and cocktail sauce onto the carpet. But my mom was just sitting there, on the floor, the chaos around her.

“Get away from me,” she said.
“But I just want to help you clean up,” my aunt said.
“I said, get the fuck away from me!”

In the kitchen, I began to feel sick to my stomach. I know that nothing from this point on is going to be pleasant. My aunt comes back in to the kitchen and says to me, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Ignore her,” I say. “She is probably looking for some drama.”
So we eat. But the whole time, we are dead silent. Sometimes exchanging glances. Sometimes just trying to eat as fast as possible to prepare for the inevitable showdown. Sometimes just listening to make sure that she’s still there. And to hear what she’s doing. A couple unwrapped gifts were tossed around. But nothing major.

I can’t explain what got into my mom. She has fought alcoholism for many years but never have I seen her the way she was on Christmas. It didn’t end there. She screamed for us all to leave her alone, called us names that don’t bear repeating, and finally went upstairs where we thought she may have passed out.

"This is going to get ugly," my aunt said. "I just want the two of you to get out of here."

As my aunt and I tried to put away the remains of the ruined Christmas dinner, my husband hurriedly packed up the car. From the kitchen, we heard sounds of a woman screaming.

Both of us froze and then ran to the front door. I envisioned my mom screaming at my husband, hurting him in some way, and I panicked.

In an instant, I heard the words “baby daddy” and realized that it was the family across the street, involved in their own set of Christmas unpleasantries.

But for my aunt and I, it broke the tension, and we both smiled, briefly, and embraced. “We’re not the only ones,” she said.


Epilogue: Picking up the Pieces

I haven't spoken with my mother since Christmas Day. After we left, it got worse for my aunt. Both my mother and aunt have bruises, and it eventually led to my aunt having to leave the house at 2 in the morning, in the middle of an ice storm, and find a hotel room. We're not sure what caused my mother to snap the way she did. But it goes beyond the drinking. My aunt then told me a series of stories about my mom which shed some light on certain events. I'm still trying to process all the information, but it's overwhelming and throws all I thought I knew about her out the window. I have a feeling that it will be a rocky road to all of us being a family again, if ever. We don't know if she will remember her tirade, or the way she acted. I kind of hope she doesn't, because I'm sure she will be embarrassed and ashamed, but on the other hand, I hope she does, because maybe this will be the breaking point that she needs to get some help. I know that I can't do anything to help her, because any interference only heightens her rage.

The owner of the car who hit our mailbox came to our door yesterday to offer to reimburse us for the cost of a new mailbox. He was not hurt, miraculously.