January 2nd

It’s January 2^nd, and it’s official: I have survived the holidays, which for many reasons were absolutely formidable this year.  

Unable to find a new rental on short notice over the holidays, I am still stuck rambling around alone in the empty house where I nursed my friend, Leslie, to her final days in just before the holidays.  Her sister then came and took the tvs and lamps and most the furniture and turned off the electricity leaving a dark, cold, cavernous feeling (even though Leslie had specifically told the family I was to be allowed to stay here for a few months while I regroup and find new lodgings.)  

As much as I wanted to put up a tree or do something festive, I didn’t see the point of trekking down to the storage unit and digging the stuff out and hauling it back to the house to set it up just to turn around the next day and if I find a place to rent.  

So I decided to forgo doing any merrymaking preparations around the house, which in retrospect, of course, was a big mistake.  It might have helped stave off the depression.

Everywhere you go, people ask, “Are you all ready for Christmas?”  

“Have your tree decorated yet?”  

“Are your kids all coming home for Christmas?”  

And I think of the empty shell that I temporarily call home right now and curl inwardly.

Then, of course, there is the aching pain in my neck that began with the hit-and-run car accident in the end of June.  A semi ran me off the freeway and rolled and totaled my car.  The pain in my neck never went away.  In fact, it worsened in late October while taking care of Leslie, getting her in and out of her wheelchair, and by December was often unbearable.

The instability and pain was such now that when I tilted my head back to wash my hair, my neck went “clunk” and my head fell backward in a painful bump.  The same thing when I tilted it to the right.

It was also causing my neck to swell and my vision to blur and causing all sorts of other symptoms.  I had to wait six weeks to get in to see my general doctor who didn’t pay much attention to what I had to say.  She just said sounds like I might have arthritis and maybe I should have an MRI.  She sent me for an MRI a week before Christmas and scheduled me to see an orthopedic doctor the day after Christmas.

So here I was in a cold, empty house - unable to sleep much at all for the pain and instability in my neck - with no tree,  

no decorations, and just a pile of gifts for the kids sitting on the table in the entry way,  mocking me. 

My girls live in San Diego, both married.  One has two children and doesn’t speak to me or my son Nick, for reasons nobody understands.  The other is on speaking terms, and married to a wonderful man, but is just very busy and has a whole other family of in-laws now that take precedence.

Several phone calls to her failed to connect and we never did manage to set aside a time to get together.  So there their gifts sat, undelivered….

And I have just spent too much time in a house alone without speaking.  I think there was a study done somewhere where women just need to use so many words in a day to remain mentally healthy….  

Well, I am woefully behind, as I’ve been finding myself here at home for days on end at times not speaking a single word to a soul.  And that is not good for me.  I am a social being that needs people!  (Who’d have thought that the office closing down for two weeks would be a bad thing?!  LOL)

But Christmas Eve I managed to get myself spruced up and (with my neck brace on) drove up to what my Orange County friends call my “Saturday Friends” at John and Betsy’s house in El Monte, along with Lili and her clan: Sean, Carrie and Darren (and Little Ava to come) and Jamie and Jason, and my son Nick.

It was so nice to be among my ‘family’ even on a day when I longed for all of my own children.  I am so blessed to have such a sweet  family of friends – who even understood my tears.

Then Christmas day we gathered again - this time with my other "family": my friends, Alice  and Tony and their children: Zack and Crystal, Josh and Robbye, Noah and Alissa, along with my brother, Chris, and son, Nick. 

I would have rather stayed home under the blankets, but Nick called and made me come, and I was glad.  It was so nice to be back ‘home’ in our tradition.  The food, the friends, the ‘boys’ (now all grown men!) out back playing bocce ball, the games of Rummikub… We had been spending Christmases together since the boys were in cub scouts together.

I drove home that night relieved.  It was over.  I had made it through Christmas – the time people put all the pressure on you about family.  The time when all the cracks and fractures show.  That’s not what Christmas is supposed to be about.  About our failures as a family…. 

Or is it?

Christmas is about the birth of baby Jesus, yes.  But why did baby Jesus come down to this earth?  

To die on the cross… for our sins.  To die for the forgiveness of our sins so that we would no longer be separated from God our Father.  

He came to this earth as a baby to save the human family.  To fix it.  To put its fractured pieces back together so that they wouldn’t have to celebrate in different cities….  Or different parts of the universe.

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