pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS 281. A CHRISTMAS POEM Well, Christmas is over. The goose got fat and the chickens and children came home to roost and discover just how many stories that we�ve told ourselves for years are, in fact, inaccurate (at least if my siblings can be believed). My older sister said that, at the height of my dad�s dysfunction, we had seventeen abandoned cars in our yard and she knows this because she counted them. I can�t remember a particular number, but do know that I avoided bringing anyone home after elementary school�when junk was fun instead of embarrassing�because I didn't want him or her to have to wade through the detritus of his misbegotten dreams just to reach the door. I also know that my sister is the kind of person who would have counted those cars, whereas I am the type of person who would have pondered the art I could make out of them. Post-Christmas discoveries also confirm that Penelope is the type of person who will back a truck down a hill and start tossing every piece of furniture or dishes or solid brass doorknobs or other random items from mother�s collapsing basement into the back.Clearly, she sees no value in any of these items�sees them simply as objects to be discarded. But some of them are valuable either for sentimental reasons or because they could provide my mother with some much-needed cash. I asked Mama if what Penelope was doing downstairs was what she wanted and she said �Well, you kids can always finish sorting through the stuff when I�m dead." (slap.head.soundly.) Meanwhile, Pottergrrrl was trying to point out that she used to help run an antique auction and that some of the items were worth a fair amount of money at auction and that she could sell them very quickly up in the mountains. But no one was listening to us, so Pottergrrrl and I filled the back of my car with what we could salvage�a nice oak chair that needs refinishing; a huge old jar like the ones that country stores used to stock pickles in; a large distressed wooden box that I wrote my name in when I was, judging from appearances, about six years old; a thoroughly ruined desk drawer that will make an amazing frame for a sculpture; solid brass doorknobs with accompanying brass plates; several antique glass doorknobs; a hacksaw; a cool old Kreamerware kitchen tin with �Sugar� written on it; an old-timey gas can.many other perfectly good items were already broken or buried at the bottom of her pile, just as they were when Penelope threw away that valuable spinning wheel/loom last time she went on one of these purges. (And yes I AM still pissed about losing that loom because Mama told me I could have it once I have room for it.) But back to those potentially untrue memories (some of which got revised yesterday as I worked on my novel). My memory of my father�s explanation for why we never finished the addition to the house is that the bank convinced him to take out a certain amount that was smaller than what he requested with the understanding that, if this was not enough money to finish the house, then they would loan him the rest�only they reneged on the offer and we were left with a partially finished addition. I also thought that we quit working on the addition because my mother shot herself in the midst of the construction and my father thought that the construction chaos somehow contributed to this action. Turns out that, if my little brother is right, Daddy spent the balance of the construction loan on crap at an Army base sale (such as the huge pile of forty-man Army tents that he hauled into the yard then promptly left there to rot for twenty years).My father was wonderful in many ways (when he wasn't being violent) but a completely frustrating and increasingly dysfunctional asshole in others and I am still trying to absorb this disturbing news. So this morning, my regular barrista asked how my holidays went. I said �mostly good and the bad was, mercifully, over and done with quickly.� For example, my brother whose wife left him and took the kids�the drugged out brother who has been sleeping on my mother�s sofa ever since his family left him�left Mama's on Thursday night and, as far as I know, has still not returned.We know he was depressed and hope that he just couldn�t face Christmas without his family and so went to a friend's house to lay low. There�s a nagging voice in my (pounding) head that says he could have gone into the woods to stalk his family at the camp where his wife works though. Or he could have gone into the woods to kill himself. Pottergrrrl and I also watched with our mouths practically agape as my little sister confirmed just how bad a mother she is. And my mother just looked on, defeated and sad and empty. We got out of there early, found a Chinese buffet where Pottergrrrl could have some non-meat-slathered vegetables, and, as soon as we sat down, I started to cry.Why? Well what can I say? Maybe I expect nothing and what I expect defines me. (That�s a line from a Philip Schultz poem, not my own.) Or maybe I keep expecting something and nothing is all that turns up�which puts me in mind of a Jesse X lyric: and more of this�the same nothing. Or maybe I hate watching my family self destruct and that's all I've ever seen us do. Or maybe I feel guilty because nothing I do could or would rectify the situation ... and I suspect that my sister and brother who are, theoretically, functioning well feel this way too (in which case, I guess I should say that at least Penelope took some action). And I guess I could choose to comfort myself with the knowledge that Christmas has been about delusions ever since the Christians co-opted it from the pagans, which only began celebrating Jebus's birthday because the Church needed to respond to a heretical claim that Jebus was only a spirit (as opposed to a body)�hence the need to turn a pagan revelry into a celebration of their mythical savior's theoretical humanity.(And let's remind ourselves that the Puritans outlawed Christmas altogether for years ... but I guess no one told this to the Fox commentators who keep saying we need to be more like our forebears.) Anyway, seven of my staff are out on vacation today and I am finally caught up enough on work to finish and post this. so there you go. Merry fucking Christmas.3:39 p.m. - 2005-12-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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