I was going to call Jon. I swear. Last time it wasn't so great though. Lisa was there and fully engaged in being a successful artist. She had landed in DC and was driving up to New York to catch a flight to Vienna. It was like Lisa was giving me the leftover Jon. She had him for a few hours to regale him until spent. I showed up and only had the story about the robot costume, which he had already heard, about the web site, which he had already heard, and the parade which he had already heard.
After Lisa left I looked at Jon and Jon looked at me and we collectively sighed. This time of year is never good for us. I had formally announced my opposition to Christmas in a power point presentation a few years ago. I explained why I would no longer participate in any of their "raindeer games".
Most of it has no socio-economic-political stance. It basically is the result of winter depression. I, like millions of others, suffer from S.A.D.- seasonal affective disorder. It is a condition that produces a deep funk and disconnection from people and activities that would normally produce a sense of warmth and caring. This condition produced the "theme" Christmas gift series, such as "the sneaker gift", where all of my family received the same red converse sneakers. I bought 13 pairs of sneakers that year. The following year was sweaters. My brother-in-law, Tom, still wears the sneaker/sweater combo long after my chucks became un-wearable. He clearly only wore them once a year, God bless him.
I believed I skipped the year after that because I could not pull it together enough even for the "Uni-gift". It was at that time I struck upon the idea that I still use to this day. I postponed Christmas to a more amiable date. It is now a floating holiday sometime in July or August.
I still pick a theme, but it is now directed towards the children, the parents being forgotten in the attempt to make an event. They are much less willing participants.
Last year's theme was "China" because Chinatown has an abundance of cheap plastic toys and bizarre items. I was in a especially dark mood that year. We did it over at my sister's house, less than a mile from where I grew up in D.C. - There was a big boulder in the backyard where we had stacked the gifts. Jenny and Zack came down with me from New York to help create the "event". Zack wrapped everything the way an underpaid moving person forced to pack cheap drinking glasses does.
To be honest, it was my sister's children that soured my expectations. They walked around like they owned the place, which they did, but it made me disappointed that they would rub it in so much. Julia actually said "What is this? I hate this!" Immediately the image of the Managing Director popped into my head, a big cow of a woman who had long ago lost all self-perception.
Corner office with blonde wood furniture, an Aeron chair and six inch piles of documents, personal mixed with business.
DT: "My friends dying of cancer, Metabolic Carcinoma, very serious. and when I think of the children..."
The tears well up in her eyes and immediately the emotions are no longer repressed. She had lost her mother 2 months earlier.
JB: "It is never easy losing a parent"
I say this dumbstruck, dumbstruck that a conversation regarding fraudulent budget reconciliation reports had evolved into a discussion regarding cancer. The more I think about it the more I think that cancer was the only thing we had in common. I hope this is not true with my niece.
After Julia's comment the gifts flew off the rock in and effort to end the excruciating failure of my "event", my effort, my marketing plan, to solicit the love and respect of my family, children and parents alike. Tommy and James each received a Chinese spirit mask, a Chinese hat, a tunic, and of course a sword. I bought it all at Pearl River, the premiere one stop shop for all things "Made in China".
I almost wanted to tell the kids the swords were plastic models of Japanese swords used by Samurai, not Chinese, but by then they were into acting like ninjas, so I couldn't even get that far before the video camera came out. Tommy and James were going at it for the camera.
James dominated the scene, hamming it up for the family while Tommy struggled with his lines. I told them to just mouth words and my brother and I would read the dialogue to simulate a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie. I wanted to make it epic, with ghosts and princesses and plot. But the girls had already moved on to Karaoke with Brittany Spears, belting out "Opps, I did it again..." while I yelled at Tommy for screwing up his lipsynced lines.
Back in Mrs. Molac's video class, first of it's kind in an elementary school I learned the difference between the stage and screen. We had done a skit as a class project that was a "news spoof". It killed, milk up nose killed.
Now this is my first failure that I can remember, so I cringe now thinking about it to this day. The skit had theater, explosions, slapstick, physical comedy. When we tried to duplicate the same show for video, I was flat and gray and no one laughed when my weather map fell down, while I gave out the fake temperatures. The skit died and a little bit of me with it. I was a nervous wreck and sat down and wished to be invisible. Tommy is struggling with that now. I don't know how he will do it. I don't know how I did it.
James and Julia had almost nothing to worry about, and that is why I almost hate them. Though I love them of course.
Maybe next year I can get them to act out scenes from "The Office" and dress them in suits and ties...
