Christmas Comes But Once a Year

I am married to such a great person.  I realize that now.  I married a great person who on his bad days has terrible flaw flare up.  Know anybody like that?  I finally see that he would do anything for us, his family.  I am so glad to be married to such a man as this.  It’s his birthday today and I am unfortunately feeling very unwell.  I usually have some nice dinner, cake and presents planned, but not this time.  He graciously waited on me this morning, watched after the baby and saw that some semblance of morning routine was flowing with the kids.  Everyone was prodded to get a shower, get dressed, to get their breakfast because dad was going to take them out to celebrate his birthday.  Antique store shopping, a Bass Pro shop visit possibly, pizza and then he’d pick up a cake to bring home to celebrate.  The house is so temptingly quiet.  I hate to miss out on their fun together, but my body aches and my mind is full.  I was cleaning up a bit around the house and I was reminded of what Christmases were like with my father.  Christmas was honestly the happiest time of year for me.  My dad was different.  Life was different.  The gnawing pain of anger, rage, argument, blame, abuse and rotten words seem to subside into an abyss of what seemed more of a normal life.  The money burden was gone for dad for the time being because of the Christmas bonuses he would receive from the people that lived in the condo.  For the time being the money piled up in his pocket.  He was a night watchman at a couple of condos and he would wait on the people throughout the year as well (not in his job description), fetching their papers, bringing up their groceries or their cars around warmed up for them, etc.  My dad was a very congenial guy in public.  He knew how to make people like him generally speaking.  He knew how to make them feel special.  I guess the folks at the condo were particularly impressed by the time Christmas rolled around.  I remember that there would be so much extra money that almost every December dad would have us all come out to the living room to receive a special Christmas envelope.  We always knew that there was money inside, but how much, we weren’t always sure of how much.  Typically, there’d be between 100-150 bucks in each of our envelopes.  I remember us all being absolutely thrilled and I always felt so rich.  Many years of receiving this money we would buy each family member a gift, so when Christmas did come each of us had seven gifts to open.  It wasn’t seamlessly joyful, but for me it was ray of hope that beamed each year, a moment to look forward to instead of retreat from.  And money…it was a lot about the money for dad.  He was stressed out.  He didn’t have any real skills, well, he did, but I don’t think he knew it.  He went to a bible college to become a preacher, but really couldn’t make a decent living doing that or really anything else.  He settled with being a security guard at hotels, condo high rises and banks.  He never made more than ten bucks an hour, worked two to three jobs at a time at 80-90 hours a week and made the majority of his money in his overtime hours.  My mom did work at an insurance company full time and made about fifteen dollars an hour, but still, even with all of their jobs money was always tight.  Dad finally saved up enough to and took us out of the city and brought us to suburbia.  He bought a new house, a new car, and new everything to go in the house.  I remember going into the brand spanking newly built house for the first time and just loving it, loving the way it smelled, but really the price we all had to pay to live there I would have foregone having any of it, if it only meant that our family could have peace, love, harmony of any kind together.  It was the money, having to make so much of it all the time that promoted the type of atmosphere we lived in at home.  We depended on dad to keep us in that place.  He knew it every day, he felt it every day.  We were one pay check away from disaster.  My dad lived on the edge.  Financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically…he was drained.  Throw some mental illness on the fire and any other type of family problem and you had chaos in the wake for all of us.  But Christmas, Christmas was different.  If Christmas didn’t come once a year, I’m not sure what my family would have done without it.  Christmas meant something better, something more, something that partially fulfilled the deep sense of longing for a little bit of sanctum.  And when it was time to open up the presents, dad would make us take our time.  We never ripped into the wrapping.  We would all take turns opening one at a time.  We would pass our presents to him that we bought for him and he would shove them aside, just glad to see us open ours, and smiling, he smiled a lot on Christmas.  I’ll never forget how much.