From Halloween to Valentines Day

At this time two years ago I was in Florida feeding my mother raspberry tea with a spoon. It seemed to be the only thing she liked enough to ingest; she made icky faces at the apple sauce loaded with crushed pills that the nurses forced into her. I’d been planning to leave her for a few days, to go to my daughter’s in L.A. for Thanksgiving, but I realized I’d just be a wreck, and wouldn’t be free to just be a wreck around some of the guests, people I didn’t know all that well. My brother, whose house I was staying in, went off with his wife to the house they’d just bought further inland to host a dinner for friends; he was fairly useless anyway, not having the fortitude to spend much time at the hospital. And my sister was doing whatever it was she was doing in San Diego; she didn’t come to Florida until the funeral, since “I can’t bear to see her that way.”

I’ve always had a hard time around these fucking holidays. The problems began in childhood, when my non-religious Jewish family thoroughly confused me with presents but no tree on Xmas, and ignored Channukah completely. When I got married I figured I could finally do whatever I wanted–but when I hung a wreath on the front door my husband ripped it off in a fit of Jewish rage (you can see how well we knew each other pre-marriage). By the time I got divorced and was theoretically free to do the holidays in my own way, I found that I didn’t know how. I bought a Xmas tree, but didn’t know how to make it stand up, and I abandoned my pathetic decorating attempts mid-way. The holidays were now something at which I felt incompetent–plus, I could barely afford the tree, much less the rest of the Xmas extravaganza.

Ironically, my ex-husband remarried, to a Christian woman, and turned into a Xmas maven, so the kids started going there every year for Xmas week. I rejoiced in my solitude. Mothers of young children tend to rejoice in solitude. But most grandmothers spend so much time alone, they don’t even use the word solitude anymore: now it just means lonely.

My complex feelings about the holidays got even more complicated when people close to me began to die. As my friend Christine noted, “They do seem to start dying around the holidays.” A few days after Thanksgiving 1979 my father had a heart attack, went into the hospital, and died there on January 2, 1980. He was only 64; I was 33, and his death was the most shocking, painful event of my life. I was still deep in grief nearly a year later, when John Lennon was shot on December 8th. During the rest of the decade, several acquaintances died, including my son’s one and only girlfriend. AIDS began taking its toll. On January 14, 1989, Marco Vassi, who I had loved and been lovers with sporadically for 25 years, died of AIDS complications.

A few years ago I tried to express my holiday angst with humor, in a performance piece titled Chumbug! It was great fun to write, and even more fun to perform at Xmas Sucks, a San Francisco reading that happened for three or four years in a row, but Chumbug only touched upon my story. I theorized in it that Xmas lasts from October to January, but nowadays it starts with Halloween and, because of my dead, it doesn’t really end until January 14th, when Valentines Day cards appear in the stores, restimulating the pain for at least another month. I suspect The Holidays are one of those phenomena, like mother-daughter relationships, I’ll be trying to resolve for the rest of my life.

But Thanksgiving was one of two holidays I actually enjoyed ( the other was Passover). I almost always hosted dinner for friends and family, the bigger the better; when we lived a semi-hippie lifestyle, Turkey Day was often communal, but still my home was the setting for it. Now I live in a studio apartment; although I’ve managed to cook Thanksgiving dinner in kitchens smaller than this one, my daughter’s family wouldn’t be comfortable here. Besides, she inherited my holiday neurosis, and she hates Thanksgiving: her husband’s a vegetarian, and her sons are picky eaters who don’t like one single thing on this menu. For several years I managed to guilt-trip her into making the dinner anyway, but this year I had a kind of epiphany: I thought about the facts laid out in the previous sentence, and concluded that it’s unfair of me to force her to make Thanksgiving dinner just so my son and I won’t be depressed. She was, needless to say, greatly relieved.

And so today I’m remembering all the years when this Tuesday was spent making pies and sweet potato casserole, going through recipes and lists, running to the store for whatever I forgot on the big Monday shop. I’m also remembering my father’s heart attack, and my mother in the hospital, soon to be transferred into a hospice facility. My brother sent me a “Happy Thanksgiving” email yesterday and told me he’s hosting dinner for my sister, who now lives nearby in Florida, and my cousin and some friends; he asked what I’m doing. I told him that Daryl and I are going to Mel’s Diner and a movie, hoping it wouldn’t inspire his pity–but, I admit, I do hope he might feel ashamed that neither he nor my sister have ever invited me to visit them in their splendid new retirement castles.

I don’t feel sorry for myself. Daryl and I will have an okay time doing Mel’s and a movie (a comedy for sure). A few years ago we ate at Mel’s after delivering turkey dinners to homebound seniors. I thought of doing that again this year, but I don’t have a car anymore.

I woke up this morning crying about my mother, as I frequently do; on December 1st it’ll be two years since her death. Two years was about how long I grieved intensely for my father. I’m resolved not to fake being jolly, and not to apologize to anyone for “bringing them down” during their precious celebrations…of what, by the way?

For me, it’s cryin’ time again. But please don’t feel sorry for me. Just feel your own feelings. I know I’m not the only person on earth with holiday baggage.