The Raging Elitist

Christmas break is nostalgia’s imitation of real life, cherry-picked memories setting up expectations of holiday bliss. Its onset is like being a kid again, wishes all still intact, the time to see them come true seemingly infinite. Sitting in the carpool line waiting to pick up my seven-year-old on his last day of school, butterflies float in my stomach like when I lay awake in my bunk bed trying to control my excitement on Christmas morning. I think of the upcoming trip, parties on the calendar, visits with friends, and all the time we’ll have with the kids; they’re all waiting like unopened presents in the living room of my childhood. I see the perfect Christmas in front of me. It’s a trick, though.

By the time my nephew is refusing to eat the sandwich my wife packed him for lunch the next day, the childhood of Christmas break is over. Hopes and wishes have been replaced with responsibility. Cherry picked memories are crowded out by the here and now – my sister complaining from the back seat that I drive too slowly; the dog pressed up against her, anxious and panting; my voice rising as I assure my nephew that we will not be stopping at McDonalds. We have another 300 miles to go to get to my mom’s house in Virginia. I’m driving a van filled with seven people, an animal stubbornly resisting its anxiety meds, and luggage bloated with Christmas gifts. Yesterday’s expectant butterflies have given way to today’s stress.

Every step of the way, I expect to come out the other side of the holiday wormhole and into the stressless bliss that I foresaw in the carpool line. Instead, Danyelle and I come home from Virginia sick. We cancel on friends. We struggle and fail to match our boys’ energy, and each of us has a moment of sheer frustration in which we brutally shout at them. The hours drag as we long for the kids’ bedtime to come so we can numb ourselves with a movie on TV, and the days slip by so that as Christmas nears, we wonder, “How can it have happened so fast?”

The day comes and goes, and Christmas break is suddenly in its old age. There’s a last hurrah on New Year’s, but as the final hour approaches, a sense of dread sets in. I wish I could do it all over again. Sitting at my desk, I remember the highlights – a nice dinner out with the family amid lavish decorations at the Mexican restaurant, teaching my son a complicated new card game and seeing him enjoy it, a conversation with Dad that reduced his friend to tears of laughter; nostalgia cherry picking my mind again, assuring me that I understand Christmas and know how not to waste it, lying to me that I’ll get it right the next time around.

As a teen I sobbed in my room the last night of Christmas break, staring at the heavy backpack and swim bag lying on the floor waiting to be picked up at 4:15 the next morning. I know my seven-year-old will cry underneath his covers tonight, the last night of his break. Dreadful as it may be, though, I’m ready for the holiday season’s tiny death, eager, even, to restart our routine, and not just because the kids go back to school.

There’s a reason Christmas cherry picks – it’s urging us to keep going; a reason for its slipping past and filling us with dread – it’s reminding us that the end is nearer than we think, that we’d better look for joy in the mundane, because despite our wishes and dreams, that’s what we get, a whole lot of the mundane, starting with a 7 a.m. drive across town with a sad little second grader tomorrow morning. That’s the beauty of Christmas break’s imitation. You think you figured it out too late, and then you look up and realize you still have your life to live.

I’ll Stay Home for Christmas

Nothing goes better with eggnog than a head cold. Mmmmm, that’s viscous. Whether it’s my customary sinus infection, a cold virus brought home by the kids, or a freak stomach bug like the one Cartter splattered all over the floor Christmas morning four years ago, getting sick over the holidays is a family tradition.

Usually, it’s only part of the family that suffers. This year no one got out unscathed, though. The boys sniffled and coughed in the leadup to their break, and I felt the onset of sickness early in our trip to Virginia. I suspect my nephew gave me the flu. He ended up getting pneumonia. It wasn’t just humans either. My mom’s house caught a virus during our visit, and its dishwasher, garbage disposal, and power all went on the fritz. My house wasn’t immune either. We came home to a lake of storm water in the crawl space. Of course, the dog got in on the act too. Sammy ate an entire box of dark chocolate mints gifted to us by Matt Gruca’s mother. She puked six times before her emergency visit to the vet. All this was plenty to complain about, but Danyelle being sick made things much worse.

My being diseased on Christmas is par for the course. Even though I start the break with high hopes, missing the party with friends and not enjoying a drink with Matt Gruca while he’s in town are more than distinct possibilities – they share a space in my mind with death and taxes, suppressed, but still inevitable. So too does the prospect of losing my shit in front of the kids. This year it happened sitting in the van in a parking spot on Market Street. Driven over the edge by the kids’ hour-long fit of hysterics, I was surprised by the rage behind my screaming demand that they shut up, disturbed by the maliciousness of my confession that I’d wanted to trip Cartter and watch him faceplant in the crowded market. Deep down, though, I knew it was coming at some point. I always seem to fall into the trap of frustrated would-be Christmas heroism. Usually, Danyelle is there to clean up after me. This time she was laid up on the couch battling an illness of her own, and we were equally worn down by the kids’ boundless energy and incessant noise. It all added up to less tolerance than usual for Cartter and Scotty.

It would have been much easier to handle when they were toddlers. Then, they were content just being with us in the house. We could have just sat in the living room until we were healed up. Now, one or the other is always telling us, “I’m bored.” Then, they were entertained by a soundtrack, a toy, or an imaginative game for an hour at a time. Now, they crave engagement, either with friends or us, and always with each other. They fought as toddlers, but now they tear ass through the house, slam doors, perpetrate violence and, worst of all, their lungs are much bigger and produce a much higher volume of shrieks. The insufferableness of it all brings to mind a comment a swim team mom made to me a few years back. I had dismissed parents’ complaints about the practice schedule conflicting with camps. What, these lazy parents can’t spend time with their kids? “You’ll understand one day,” she said. That day is today.

At 5 and 7, the kids have officially outgrown their Christmas babydom. They still believe in Santa Claus, or at least they pretend they do, but they aren’t content with cuddles in the living room anymore. They crave action, and Danyelle and I are expected to facilitate, or at the very least, tolerate all the action that they require. Both of us being sick makes that impossible, and the myriad demands coming from all directions of our respective divorced families makes staying sane and healthy during the holidays impossible too. Drive 800 miles to Virginia and back to see my mom and her family; host Danyelle’s siblings; host Danyelle’s father; pay homage to Danyelle’s grandmother and aunts and uncles. If this season taught us anything, it’s that we need to start telling people no more. We thought getting through the baby phase would make things easier. We were wrong. The kids are way more of a handful now. No Christmas trip to Virginia next year. No visit from Danyelle’s Dad either. Fucker lied about being sick before he came, and now that we’re all over our Christmas illnesses, we have fucking Covid. Thanks a lot, asshole. Just what we needed.

I can feel the stakes starting to ratchet up. A year ago Scotty said he felt like he was supposed to be a baby. Now he says that he’s not five but five-and-a-half, and he’s become laughably good at rolling his eyes at me. He and Cartter are endlessly erupting into a screaming fight, but neither of them is the other’s real enemy. That would be me, and sometimes their mom. Our half-assed interventions into their bullshittery (Go to your room!) are now met with wide-eyed, tight-lipped silence, the apparent aim of which is temporary invisibility that results in parental amnesia. It’s disturbing how often it actually works. I’ll be sitting in the den at my desk and hear a fight break out 30 seconds after another just ended and call to Danyelle, “Didn’t you just send them to their rooms? . . . Why aren’t they in their rooms, then?” The answer – gamesmanship.

Maybe I’m using the boys’ growing independence as an excuse for my own selfishness. It’s undeniable that giving them more room makes it harder to keep them in line, though, and that it requires a new kind of focus. We seem just about to launch into the real challenges of parenthood. I’d rather like to enjoy them. Even during Christmas.

Polar Bear Magic

In between flooding, sickness, and more sickness, New Years was a bright spot, this year even more than usual. I was actually well on the day of the polar bear plunge and managed to enjoy three glasses of champagne before carrying a thermos of vodka down the beach and jumping in the ocean. It was my first New Years plunge in four years, and to my surprise, my immediate thought after trudging through 50 yards of shallows and diving headfirst into the 59-degree water was, “That felt good.”

As usual Dad provided the highlight of the day. He was holding court in his living room when the younger generations got back from the plunge, and I managed enough bluster to put an immediate end to the lesson he was giving on conservation easements. Over the span of the next few minutes, Dad’s self-important bubble sufficiently pricked, I got him to confess that he is transitioning to a woman and that he had STD-laden sex with Eli Manning. Naturally, this led to a reenactment of a seated Magic Johnson guiding a man onto his cock. Take that 2023.