Can I go home now?
Okay…
Mom stayed home. Alone. It was just too cold to go out. So, she did frozen Boston Market Turkey and stuffing for one and watched the Macy’s parade for the first time ever… she’s always been cooking during it, she said. It was cool, she said.
She is pitiful.
Didn’t have sis’s phone number with me, or I’d have called down there. I understand Angle is down there… er up there from here I guess.. er over there… er I dunno. I just wonder if it’s cold there.
Tonight we got a little slice of Americana that I think only I appreciated out of our “gang”… Town Square was alive with people dancing and laughing. Families together for the holidays. A lit gazebo with a country music band playing. Folks dancing around it.. granted, line dancing, but it was all outdoors, big park-like setting… little kids dancing about trying to mimic the adults. A few early-teens joining in because there was nothing better to do. Carts selling hot chocolate to some and mixed drinks to others. I really wish I’d had a camcorder. The whole thing was… somehow surreal, and I wanted to capture it and view it magnified.. slowed down.. and without sound. I could see the video I would make of it in my head.
But then, on the other hand, it all made me sad because it is the kind of thing I would wish that Mom and Dad would be doing this Thanksgiving, instead of Dad being gone and Mom being home alone with it “too cold to go out”…
I should have just bit the bullet and gone up there.
Instead I’m down here, slightly miserable about life and work, mostly money, making up Christmas lists for people who like me, but never took the effort to know me well enough to be able to pick out a gift for me. It’s not like that in my family. We never heard of making Christmas lists. We just shopped and hit on “the” thing that our gut told us was right. Granted, sometimes what someone “thought” was the perfect gift fell quite short, but still… it was special and personal and I miss it terribly. I hate fucking lists. I hate spelling out what I want.. they pick and choose, then suprise… let’s see what items off my list you managed to find on sale on the biggest shopping day of the year.
Of course, on the other hand, I did get that hideous quilted 2-piece dress outfit with it’s black, orange, and red tropical print from my mother one year…. the “perfect thing”… which turned out to be the “perfect thing to scare homeless people away from the goodwill store”.
I want to go home, and I’m at this moment just not sure where home is. Right now, I’m really thinking it’s with mom. I just want to go home.
anonymous has made a Comment
Dear Flerly,
I was crusing on random and read your entry. I hope you don’t mind.
I lost my dad last year four days before Christmas. I’m sorry that your family is going through this too.
I’ll bet your mom wants to go home too. I’ll bet she would like someone to REALLY talk to her, and really listen to her. Maybe she’s forgotten how to shop for that special present that your gut tells you to get. Maybe she’d like to be reminded.
You sound like a really nice person. I hope our families both have a merry Christmas.
November 28, 2002 @ 8:03 pm