Spending the Holidays with People I Want to Punch in the Throat

by Jen Mann

  Last year the rules were a little different. Along with your white-elephant gift you also had to—oops, I mean got to—pick one or two of my grandmother’s extra Christmas ornaments to keep. My grandma is getting older and has moved into a retirement community. She had to downsize and give away a lot of her belongings. She and her children went through her stuff and picked out the Christmas decorations she wanted to take with her to her new home and left the rest behind for her kids to sift through. After they chose what they wanted, the remainders ended up in the slush pile that the rest of us got to dig through on Christmas Eve.

  We were all cracking jokes about the quality and condition of these poor misfit ornaments. There was an obvious reason Grandma and her kids didn’t want them: they were horrible. Everyone kept “forgetting” to pick an ornament or two and had to be reminded constantly.

  When the night was over and Grandma had handily won the game, it was time to head home. Before we left, Gomer and Adolpha asked if they could have another of Grandma’s keepsake ornaments (they are really the only ones in our family who have any sentimentality, plus they’re tiny hoarders and they can’t pass up free shit). I could see that there were several left, so I told them it shouldn’t be a problem. I helped them dig through the box to find something that wasn’t too hideous—like the angel made from a corn husk or the dingy needlepoint Santa. And then all of a sudden I saw something that made my heart stop.Buried deep under all of the unwanted, shabby, broken, old, and decrepit ornaments were two tiny treasures. Two little wooden ornaments that my precious snowflakes, Gomer and Adolpha, had made for their great-grandparents six years ago. (I know, because I always write the date on the ah-may-zing and adorable works of art that they foist on relatives.) Gomer had been a beautiful little three-year-old boy when he carefully painted the ornament. Sure, he mixed all of the colors together and ended up with black, but still. It was gorgeous. Truly one of a kind. My sweet, angelic Adolpha had been barely one when she haphazardly slapped a bit of red paint on her masterpiece.

  “Grandma!” I shrieked. “How could you?”

  “What?” she asked, clearly confused.

  I held up the ornaments to show her. “My children—your great-grandchildren—made these works of art for you! And you just tossed them in the junk pile? Like trash?”

  “They’re not trash! Those ornaments are heirlooms! You’re supposed to take them to remember me by when I’m gone.”

  “These heirlooms are crap, Grandma. You didn’t want them. No one wants them. Whatever is left after tonight will be thrown out. You think my kids’ ornaments are crap.” I was really irritated. Sometimes I think my kids and I are at the bottom of the totem pole in this family. She’d never throw out shit from my cousins’ kids.

  When Grandma realized why I was pissed, she looked for an out. “Not me! It wasn’t me. I would never. It was your aunt Ruby!”

  “Me?” Aunt Ruby cried. “What did I do?”

  Grandma continued, “Yes! Aunt Ruby was the one who helped me choose what to take to my new apartment and what to give away. In fact, she must have put those in the box when I wasn’t looking.”

  Aunt Ruby came closer to see the ornaments in question. “Oh. Those,” she said, shaking her head. “Mom, we agreed that you shouldn’t take them with you.”

  “You agreed with her, Grandma?” Gomer asked, his eyes big.

  Aunt Ruby tried to smooth things over. “Now, Jenni, you must understand. Grandma couldn’t take these with her. We had to pick and choose. All of Grandma’s ornaments match now.”

  “Oh, they match now? Well, I’m sooo sorry to hear that my little children’s ornaments were too ugly for her tree!”

  The room was silent. Everyone could tell that I was upset, and no one was quite sure what to do to make it better. I looked like I might burn down someone’s Christmas tree, and my kids looked like they might burst into tears. Grandma and Aunt Ruby gave each other a knowing look, and then Grandma said, “Actually, now that I think about it, it was Uncle Filbert’s fault!”

  Uncle Filbert. Hmm. He was a bit of a curmudgeon, but would he really throw out my toddlers’ handmade Christmas ornaments? I looked around to confront him and remembered he wasn’t there. Uncle Filbert was spending Christmas in Mexico that year.

  “I remember now. He was the one who went through the ornaments. I’m sure he did it. So you see, Aunt Ruby and I had nothing to do with this!”

  My eyes narrowed. I wasn’t sure I was buying what she was selling. How convenient for Grandma and Aunt Ruby to throw Uncle Filbert under the bus. The one uncle who wasn’t there to defend himself.

  “Well, he has a lot of explaining to do when he gets back in town. You better believe I’ll be asking about this,” I said.

  “Mommy,” Adolpha asked, “can we take our ornaments home and put them on our tree?”

  “Of course we can,” I said, gathering them up.

  “No, I want them,” said one of my cousins.

  “No. Give them to me,” said another.

  “Wait!” Aunt Ruby cried out. “I would like them. I have a place of honor for them.” She plucked the kids’ ornaments from my hands and proceeded to hang them on the front (not tucked in the back) of her “good” tree. Her tree where everything is gorgeous and perfect. At first I didn’t want her to keep them, but I could tell it was killing her to leave the ornaments hanging from her beautiful boughs. I knew she was trying to make things better with me, but I wanted her to suffer a little bit, because I knew that Uncle Filbert had had nothing to do with the decision to throw out my kids’ gifts. Of course it was her. Uncle Filbert has never cared if a Christmas tree’s ornaments “matched.”

  What I didn’t expect was how much it bothered my little Overachieving Mom-in-training to see those hideous ornaments tucked in the perfection that is Aunt Ruby’s good tree. As soon as Aunt Ruby hung the ornaments on the tree, Adolpha said, “Ewww, Aunt Ruby, those do not look good there. It’s ruining the tree. I would take them off. The tree looked better without them.”

  And just like that, my daughter went to the dark side.

  Our family goes to church every Sunday. Really. We do. The Hubs is the son of a preacher, so every weekend he drags our butts out of bed and makes us go to church. If it were up to me, I would probably read a book and let the kids sleep in most Sundays, but the Hubs won’t hear of it. He’s single-handedly trying to save our souls. It’s probably a good thing. If you’ve read this far, then you know my soul could use some saving.

  When the kids were little I really liked going to church, because they would go to the nursery and I’d get an hour to myself. Now that they’re older, they go to Sunday school. This is okay, I guess. Except for the part where I have to deprogram them.

  See, I know what I believe, but what I believe isn’t the “official” word that most believe. I’m different from a lot of the Christians I’m surrounded by. I’m not a big fire-and-brimstone type. Also, I’m the sort of a believer who thinks God loves everyone: Jews, Muslims, little children, gays, douchebags, believers in the theory of evolution, you name it. Sunday school tends to teach my kids stuff like “Of course there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, Adolpha, because the world is only two thousand years old!” or “Yes, Gomer, your friend Ahmed is going to hell. You need to battle him for his eternal soul before it’s too late.”

  I’ve been so busy deprogramming the kids of all this nonsense that I always assumed they were learning the basics. Or so I thought.

  It was the Christmas when Gomer was eight and Adolpha was six. The kids and I were decorating their Christmas trees. As I’ve said before, I’m not really into Christmas decorating, but my mother is and she’s passed that overachieving gene on to my children. Over the years they’ve collected ornaments for their trees from the clearance bins after Christmas and my mom’s cast-offs. Enough that they have their own personal bins full of decorations just for the Christmas trees they put up in their rooms. I was in Adolpha’s room helping her hang yet on
e more pink poodle ornament on her little tree when I heard Gomer yell from his room across the hall, “Mom! Can I put out my nativity?”

  “Yes, go ahead,” I replied. Both kids have their own plush nativity sets that they can display in their rooms. They received them when they were babies and they like to arrange them every year.

  “Where’s mine?” six-year-old Adolpha asked. “I want to put mine out, too.”

  “Look in your closet,” I said, digging through a box of Eiffel Tower ornaments. What? You don’t have an “Ooh La La, Paris”–themed tree in your house?

  “Hey, Mom!” Gomer yelled again. “I can’t find my baby!”

  I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. “What baby?” I called back. “I’m helping Adolpha. If you need me, come to her room, please.”

  Gomer stomped into Adolpha’s room holding his Joseph and Mary dolls. “I said I can’t find my baby. I’ve only got these guys.”

  “These ‘guys’ are Mary and Joseph. They’re kind of important people in the nativity,” I said. I could hear Adolpha digging in her closet, and each crash of something falling to the floor only made me more exasperated.

  “Okay, whatever. I can only find Mary and Joseph. Not the baby.”

  There was another loud crash from Adolpha’s closet. I needed to investigate now. It sounded like a whole rack of clothes had fallen down. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Gomer. It was all there last year when we put it away. Go look again.”

  Gomer ran from the room and returned a few seconds later. “I’ve only got the basket. It’s empty. I can’t find the baby.” Gomer showed me his empty manger.

  “Keep looking, Gomer. He’s got to be around somewhere.” I left him while I went to check on Adolpha and the mess in her closet. It was as I had suspected: she’d pulled down an entire rack of dresses on herself.

  I was helping her hang up her clothes when Gomer returned several minutes later. He was victorious. “I found him! I found my baby!” he shouted. “I found my baby Moses!”

  “Uh-huh,” I mumbled from beneath a pile of Hello Kitty crap.

  “Come on, Moses, let’s get you in your basket,” Gomer cooed.

  “Wait, Gomer,” I said, finally ignoring Adolpha’s mess and giving him my full attention. “Who did you say you found?”

  “Baby Moses.”

  Are you kidding me, Sunday school teachers? You’ve spent so much time focusing all of your efforts on converting new followers to Christ or distributing coupons for chicken sandwiches at God-fearing businesses that I think you forgot to teach my kids some of the key players. Namely, the key player.

  “Gomer, that isn’t baby Moses,” I said.

  “Sure it is,” Gomer insisted. “Moses was the baby in the basket. This is a basket.” He held up the manger.

  “Yes, Moses was a baby in a basket, but that’s not a basket. That’s a manger,” I said, waiting for the lightbulb to pop on over his head. I got nothing from him.

  “What’s a manger?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Like a trough.”

  “A what?”

  “A thing used to feed animals. Only they put baby Jesus in there like a crib. Away in a manger,” I sang, thinking surely that would jog his memory.

  “Why would they put a baby where animals eat?” Gomer asked.

  “Remember, there was no room at the inn, so Mary and Joseph went to the stable and Mary gave birth there.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good place for a baby at all. She should have been at a hospital.”

  “Gomer! This was biblical times. There were no hospitals.”

  “Really? Where were babies born, then?”

  Ugh. I did not want to get into this conversation right now. “Listen, it doesn’t matter where the other babies were born. Jesus was born in a stable and then he slept in a manger.”

  He looked at me and shrugged. “Well, this isn’t a manger. This is a basket. Moses was a baby in a basket.”

  I tried one more time. “Gomer. What holiday is coming up? What are we decorating for?”

  “Christmas!” he answered quickly.

  “Right. And what is Christmas about?” I asked.

  “Presents!” yelled Adolpha from her closet.

  “No!” I said, shaking my head. “No. We celebrate a birthday. Whose birthday are we celebrating? He was born in a stable…a long time ago…”

  “Grandpa?” Adolpha called.

  “No! What’s wrong with you two? Mary was his mother and Joseph was his father…”

  Gomer looked at me with a blank expression.

  “Gomer,” I tried again. “The very first Christmas was the birth of our savior. He is also known as…”

  He looked at the doll in his hand. “Uhhh…”

  I gave up. “That’s baby Jesus, Gomer!”

  “Who?” Gomer asked.

  “Baby Jesus.”

  “Wait. Jesus was there? At the first Christmas?” Gomer asked.

  “Uh, yeah! Of course he was. He was the baby. We celebrate his birth at Christmas! Come on! You know that! Right?”

  “Ohhh…,” Gomer said, finally understanding. “Whoops. I just always thought this was baby Moses,” he said, looking at the baby in his hand.

  Adolpha emerged from her closet with her nativity clutched in her hands. “Hey, look! I found my Jesus,” she said, holding up Joseph.

  I need to speak with their Sunday school teachers.

  A few years ago I found out that two of my cousins have a tradition where they go out to dinner and then go Christmas shopping with our grandma. I had no clue this was happening until my grandma let it slip during Thanksgiving dinner at my house. “Why don’t you ever come shopping with the girls and me?” she asked between bites of pumpkin pie.

  “What do you mean, Grandma?” I asked, trying not to retch at the disgusting smell of pumpkin.

  “Your cousins and I go shopping for their Christmas presents,” she said, polishing off her pie.

  I looked across the table at my cousins. One stared guiltily at the ceiling, and the other had an emergency text message she needed to send out right that moment. “I didn’t realize you three went shopping together,” I said.

  “Uh, y’know, it’s no big deal,” my cousin Lucille said, putting down her phone. “We just go to dinner and do a little shopping is all.”

  “Why wasn’t I ever invited?” I asked.

  “We started it a while ago,” my cousin Eloise said. “You were really busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I think we started doing it right after Gomer was born. We didn’t want to bother you and make you feel like you had to come,” said Lucille.

  My cousins are childless and husbandless. They think escaping from my house requires a nail file and a smoke grenade. They’re kind of right, actually.

  “You never even invited me.”

  “You girls never invited her?” Grandma asked. “I had no idea. I just assumed you didn’t want to come, Jenni.”

  “Well, sometimes it can be hard to get away because of the kids, but they’re older now. It wouldn’t be hard now. I think I’d like to come with you.”

  “Wonderful,” Grandma said. “Now, let’s all pick a date that works.”

  We got out our calendars and started comparing dates.

  “December first?” I asked.

  “I can’t,” replied Eloise. “I have a work event that night. What about the eighth?”

  “I can’t,” Lucille said. “It’s a Tuesday. That’s my date night with Rodney.”

  “How about the ninth?” I asked.

  “I have to be in court with my clients that night,” Eloise said. “I’m looking at my calendar and really all I have is the eighth or the fifteenth.”

  “That’s still date night,” Lucille said with a shrug.

  Date night. How cute. I remember having date night back in the day. Now date night is a stroll through Target while my parents keep my kids. “Could you miss date night
that week?” I asked Lucille. “Eloise can’t miss court.”

  “I’ll see what Rodney says,” Lucille said.

  “Never mind,” Eloise sighed. “I’ll skip the work party if you can do the first.”

  “I can do that one,” said Lucille.

  “Great. Then it’s settled,” I said. “How does this work?”

  “We’ll meet at the mall at six on the first. Grandma takes us to dinner and then we shop,” said Lucille.

  “Fine. I’ll see you there.”

  A few weeks later I found myself shopping with my twentysomething cousins and my eighty-something grandma.

  “Now, Jenni,” Grandma reminded me, “each grandchild gets one hundred dollars to spend. You need to spend yours on your whole family, so you each get twenty-five. These girls each have a hundred to spend on themselves, so don’t be jealous that they’re getting nicer things. It’s the only way I can do it.”

  “It’s okay, Grandma. I understand. But my family isn’t here and I just might spend the whole hundred on myself.” I enjoy teasing my grandma. It drives her crazy.

  “You should!” said Eloise.

  “I wouldn’t like that at all, Jenni,” said Grandma.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just teasing.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to buy. My kids wanted toys, but that would have to wait for another day, because I couldn’t imagine Eloise and Lucille hanging out in Toys “R” Us with me. The Hubs never wants anything, so I could spend his money on myself, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I thought I’d see what my cousins were buying; maybe it would give me some ideas.

  Eloise is a young, single lawyer with a nice paycheck and expensive taste. She had her eye on a Michael Kors bag. Now, Grandma’s money was never going to buy her a Michael Kors bag, but she thought she’d put it toward the bag and use her own money for the balance. We went to the department store to get a closer look at the purses.