There's a reason I love Christmas so much, and it's usually the reason so many people don't love it at all. I love the season of perpetual hope, where everything shines a little brighter, where you're both expected to and often fight for reasons to be happy. Let's face it. My Twelve Pains video is on the money. Christmas is stressful. You eat too much, you spend too much, you chase around all these expectations to "look" right and fit in, particularly with people you don't usually see throughout the year. Family get-togethers, work parties, forced socialization - all that is nightmarish for those of us who struggle with such things.
In a season of such shared experiences, it can be isolating and lonely if you don't fit some Norman Rockwell painting we've come to idolize over the years.
Back in the early 1990s, my life was no fairy tale. I had small children I had to fight to support on a regular month, much less filling the empty space under the tree. Worse, I was married to someone who was bipolar, who would have violent reactions to his inability to "fit it." I was so singular in my focus never to let it touch my kids memories that I probably went a little overboard doing whatever I could to spoil them and make them happy so that when they thought back to Christmases past, they wouldn't remember it as a time of stress, lack or fear. They would regard Christmas the same way I did - the one bright spot in an otherwise dysfunctional childhood.
My upbringing was anything but traditional. My father was a stay-at-home dad, and my mother worked, way before such things were accepted. "Mr. Mom" may have been a novelty to people going to the moves in the early 1980s, but not to me. Worse, we weren't your typical "Little House" or "Waltons" family, despite how we prized both family and faith. Instead, we were more like "All in the Family," where our main form of bonding came from bickering.
"Mama's Family" was painfully all too real.
In fact, I couldn't even laugh at the Mama's Family sketches because it hit too close to home. The only exception are the ones where either Tim Conway or Vicki Lawrence endeavored to make their cast-mates break character. (I have been known to use the "Playing hockey with a warped puck" line a time or two myself.)
The most famous example of this, of course, is the Elephant skit.
Despite the arguing, bickering and resentment that normally took up residence in my childhood home, around Christmas our family finally looked like everyone else. Around Christmas, I finally felt, for lack of a better word, "normal." It was what I wanted to give to my kids if nothing else. And I became rather obsessive about it. I wanted it picture perfect. I threw myself into making memories for my kids that weren't marred by the ugliness I juggled.
One of those traditions that had been missing from my own childhood was the family portrait. I say family, but really - there was only way to make those portraits perfect back then. I had to keep both me and my husband out of them. Thanks to Dan's unchecked mental illness, one that we didn't even know to treat, there was domestic abuse in the home, where Dan would randomly flip out and become this scary shadow of his former self, particularly when he felt forced to participate in anything "normal." He felt such self-loathing for his inability to provide, and we bore the brunt of it. Not with beatings and bruises, but the subtle terror we lived under for years, where we were too afraid to cross the many lines he'd drawn in the sand.
I struggled with self-loathing, too. At the time, one of Dan's main problems with me was my weight. I had gained sixty pounds with both pregnancies, and was the heaviest I had ever been. It strained our marriage on a daily basis. I suspected he was right - that I was this huge fuck-up because I dared to "let myself go."
To make the holidays picture perfect, then, I had to take me out of it. That's why you won't see many photos of me from the early 1990s.
The one exception happened around Christmastime. It was 1992. Tim was nearly three, and Jer was a few months old. They were gorgeous kids (still are,) so I made it a point to get those portrait packages whether I could afford them or not. So I dressed them all cute and headed down to Sears for their holiday special. Dan didn't go with me, because he wouldn't, and so I made peace with the fact these photos would just include the kids. Considering their parents were their biggest liability at that point, I figured it was better that way. This drove most of the portraits I kept back then.
That's the great thing about photos. You can edit out all the parts that don't fit into the memory you're trying to preserve. And needless to say, I "edited" myself out of quite a few photos of my kids' childhood.
But not Christmas of 1992. Christmas '92, when I took my beautiful boys to the portrait studio, the photographer decided I needed to be a part of it. He asked me to sit for one pose, which I totally didn't want to do. I wasn't dressed for it, for one thing. I think I was even wearing sweat pants, since - all those pounds later - that was pretty much all I could wear back in those days. I had a festive top on, but nothing "portrait" worthy. The last thing I wanted to do was take a photo, especially since Dan wasn't there.
This is not a memory I wanted to preserve for my kids.
But, people pleaser that I am, I decided to sit for the photo anyway, just so I wouldn't make any waves. When you're the victim of domestic abuse, you tend to go out of your way to avoid conflict. I knew I'd hate the picture, because I hated most pictures of me at that point. I was so much heavier than I had been as a teen, when I thought I was so unforgivably fat then.
But then I got the proofs back to approve. And I hated how I looked in it, sure. But there was something more important going on there. I was with my babies, the ones I loved more than life itself. And it was Christmas, with a perfect backdrop to mask our imperfect life.
Basically, aside from Dan's absence - or maybe, truthfully, because of - this was the happy childhood I wanted to give to my kids, but just couldn't pull off. It was a hope of all we could be.
It was a memory worth preserving. And it taught me well about "editing" myself right out of my kids' lives, just because I wasn't perfect.
I was never going to be perfect. And the perfect Christmas, as far as I'm concerned anyway, is to find the love and the merriment and the happiness despite that. That's what the hope of Christmas truly means to me, and why I cherish it so.
Years later, after Dan got treatment and began to heal, we finally did get that family portrait. And I knew how far we'd come just by the fact we could finally take it together.
As you can see by how much happier the kids appear, this photo proves that by editing myself out of the picture because I wasn't "perfect" - as if such a thing exists anyway, I did a much greater disservice to my kids. I may never like how I look in any of them. But I'll never, ever be ashamed of how I loved. And now they have the photos to prove it.
I typically shy away from most "traditional" Christmas music, opting instead for silly, fun stuff that keeps the mood light on the holiday season no matter what is going on.
Needless to say... I don't mind a little irreverence...
The way I see it Christmas is a time where we all get to be kids again, no matter how old we are. Christmas is timeless - and so are we. How awesome is that??
I suspect I get this from my mother, who thought this song was the funniest song ever, even though she was a happy grandma when it was released.
So make me laugh and keep it light... those are the songs that I love most of all.
Okay. So I haven't been able to live-tweet these movies like I've wanted to. My bad for putting such an ambitious project in the middle of all the other stuff we have going on. But the Whoovie-thon is still in progress, and tonight (after the epic BIG BANG THEORY moment this Shamy-lovin' fan has been waiting years for, which I WILL live-tweet, schedules be damned) we're going to watch one for Brittany, who loves an atypical Christmas movie brought to you by the demented but beautiful mind of Tim Burton. This fits my theme for the day better than any movie I could bring you.
Another casualty to the busy season, I wasn't able to make anything for today's #bakeitforward. But never fear... I have a recipe to share nonetheless, in honor of my mother.
Today's treat: Strawberry Bread.
Strawberry bread was a staple around the holidays thanks to my Aunt Gertrude, who first made this yummy treat in the early 1980s. My mother, who loved the bread, carried on the tradition throughout the decade. I, myself, haven't made the recipe (yet,) and in fact thought that the tradition was long buried in lost recipe books. But thanks to the Internet, I found what looks to be the same recipe, though I'm fairly sure that my Aunt put red food coloring in hers, which was a moist, delicious dessert bread.
Either way, you can find the recipe on my Pinterest board I created in honor of my mother's favorite things.
In keeping with my not-so-Christmasy theme... a not so Christmasy freebie. My novel TASTE OF BLOOD is unlike most of the books I've written. It was adapted from My Immortal to fit the story idea presented to me by a director I worked with in the mid-2000s, who wanted a gritty urban tale that mixed the movies "Se7en" and "Interview with a Vampire." He loved my flawed heroine, which I got to really twist around in the novelization of TASTE OF BLOOD. Instead of being reincarnated from a vampire, like Adele was, Reese Mackenzie is an unwilling and unenthusiastic clairvoyant, whose scary visions and unusual psychic ability get her into trouble more often than not.
So if you want a scary tale of suspense, download TASTE OF BLOOD, which is free today, December 17th.
What do you have to lose? (If you don't count sleep.... O_o)
An excerpt:
Reese tried to still her racing heartbeat with a few deep breaths. She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. She counted backward from 20. She softly sang the Alphabet Song. Finally she reached for her purse sitting right next to the bed. As she dug for her meds, she came across the pen recorder. A moment of indecision passed before she pulled it from her purse.
With a click, it started to record. Her whispered words came out in staccato bursts. “Black veil. Bat. Girl from morgue.” She gulped. “Dead.”
She jumped as Brody grumbled in his sleep. She stopped the recording and tried to determine if he was awake, and more importantly, if he had heard what she said. He simply turned toward the opposite wall. Since he still had one foot on the floor his entire body went tumbling off the bed with a loud thud. “Brody!” she cried out as she lunged for him. He didn't even wake up as he curled into a ball where he lay.
She had to smile. He was being a good sport about things, considering. With a sigh, she took off the top quilt from the bed and tossed it around his body. She placed the recorder back into her purse, right next to the pills that she decided not to take.
The morning sun found Brody on the floor. He awoke with a bit of confusion as to why exactly he was down there. He glanced up at the bed, but it was empty. His eyes scanned the room until he finally saw her; asleep on the ledge by the window. She had been awake when he had drifted off to sleep, although she had pretended that she wasn't.
She fought her own personal war against sleep – and somehow he knew it had dick to do with the job. She wasn't trying to muscle him out of a byline. This girl was running from the demons that seemed to lurk in her sleeping mind. He knew that because of the little bottle of pills she had needed even after the airplane ride, and the way she'd moan in her sleep after she succumbed to them.
He had no doubt that she had fought sleep bitterly throughout the dark morning hours, finally crawling out of bed to sit vigil at the window until sleep had overtaken her.
On his way to the bathroom, he noticed her camera sitting on the dresser. He hadn't told her about the ass-chewing he'd received from Martin regarding Reese's little stowaway stunt, and he knew she hadn't answered her own phone to face the music either. It was as if she knew a pink slip waited for her when they got back. She'd risked everything to get away from something that still chased her.
There was one thing he could do to help ease her mind.
He was going to save her job.
He threw on some pants, grabbed the camera, and headed downstairs.
As he bounded down the last few steps, he called cheerily to his innkeeper. “Hey, Olga. Where's the nearest place I can use the Internet?” The words trailed off when he caught sight of the old woman, who scattered seeds at the doorway of the inn.
Off his look she replied, “Vampires must count seeds whenever they see them. This will keep him at bay.”
“I didn't realize vampires were obsessive-compulsive,” he responded with a good-humored grin. Olga took a folded newspaper from under her arm and swatted him in the head with it before she threw it at him.
With one look at the cover he knew Reese's insomnia was about to get a whole lot worse.
Reese and Brody were back at the morgue just after ten o'clock in the morning. A heavy police presence was there already, and tape blocked off most of the building. A crowd had gathered and tried to press in, which kept many of the officers busy with crowd control. The tabloid reporters used this chaos to their advantage. They crept around to the back of the building and discovered one of the ramps that delivered the dead out onto the loading dock. They pushed through the door and climbed up the incline until they reached a darkened part of the morgue. Voices echoed through the hallway just outside the cold, sterile room where they hid behind the door.
“What are they saying?” she asked him in a hushed whisper.
“Dunno,” he responded. “Murder, vampires, and police jargon aren’t exactly taught in conversational Romanian.”
“We gotta get into that room,” she said and she glanced around. White lab coats hung on pegs near the door. They both shared a smile.
The hub of the activity was in one of the examination rooms. Official people milled about like confused ants, so it was easy for Reese and Brody to camouflage themselves as they made a direct path for the room with the brightest lights and the loudest noises.
Brody exclaimed an expletive under his breath when they finally got a peek inside.
The pristine white walls were stained bright red with blood. It was so much blood it looked like the victim had literally exploded right in the middle of the room. In the corner, under a black tarp, was the figure of a person – no doubt the victim whose blood now dripped from the ceiling like ghastly scarlet raindrops.
As if in a trance, Reese stepped further into the room toward the body. She really didn’t want to know who lay there, but she knew she couldn't leave that room without seeing for sure. It was in this very room just the day before she got a violent, brief glimpse of white tiles bathed in thick blood. It had been so gruesome that she had quickly tried to suppress it – but now she stood there in that room facing an unthinkable reality. The remnants of her dream nagged at her subconscious, and though it terrified her, she knew she had to verify once and for all her dream wasn't a dream at all.
It was a premonition.
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