Sad, Sad and More Sad
Christmas no longer means very much to me. It's meant to be a time of family celebration but I no longer have a family in the conventional sense. My siblings and I have managed to make such a hash out of our love lives over the years that we are left with each other and the broken bits of our adulthoods trailing behind us like so much tissue stuck to the heel of our shoe.
It also doesn't help to have a sister-in-law for whom this is a second attempt at a marraige and therefore a second chance live out a fairy tale family life that she seems to have concluded we grew up having, largely based on the outsized presence of our late mother.
The problem is that Mom set a very high bar for parenting and her children spent the last twenty years of her life trying to pay her back with the various rewards that come with college educations, good jobs, and not too distant memories of how things were done in the late 1950s and early sixties. Even with dad's alcoholism heading for its inevitable implosion, Mom managed to carve out a middle-class life for us that was full of Thanksgivings, Easters, Christmas dinners of almost Dickensian scale, all of it prepared by her own two hands.
It all came crashing down when Mom passed away at age 98, six years ago.
For a while, we tried to scoop up the broken pieces. But it was never the same and the ever-growing presence of two in-laws, neither of whom were particularly queer-friendly, only added to the yearly tensioin around the holiday season.
The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-2022 pushed the pause button somewhat on in-person gatherings. I say, "somewhat" because even at the heitght of it, I can visualize my sister-in-law wanting to kiss and hug everyone during the funeral service for Sis' husband. It was as if there was no escape from the ties that bind even in death.
And there's been a lot of death lately. The nieces and nephews that should be gathered around and made fusses over are flung all over the country and now with families of their own. Mysteriously, my sister-in-law has an entire family of her own, consisting of sisters, brothers and- presumably - nieces and nephews - that she never talks about and has never spent a single holiday with for as long asI've known her. Consequently, we spend a lot of time catering to my sister-in-law's expectations and secretly mourning the people who are nolonger with us.
That is why I am so relieved when this season is over and I can go back to being queer again.
It also doesn't help to have a sister-in-law for whom this is a second attempt at a marraige and therefore a second chance live out a fairy tale family life that she seems to have concluded we grew up having, largely based on the outsized presence of our late mother.
The problem is that Mom set a very high bar for parenting and her children spent the last twenty years of her life trying to pay her back with the various rewards that come with college educations, good jobs, and not too distant memories of how things were done in the late 1950s and early sixties. Even with dad's alcoholism heading for its inevitable implosion, Mom managed to carve out a middle-class life for us that was full of Thanksgivings, Easters, Christmas dinners of almost Dickensian scale, all of it prepared by her own two hands.
It all came crashing down when Mom passed away at age 98, six years ago.
For a while, we tried to scoop up the broken pieces. But it was never the same and the ever-growing presence of two in-laws, neither of whom were particularly queer-friendly, only added to the yearly tensioin around the holiday season.
The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-2022 pushed the pause button somewhat on in-person gatherings. I say, "somewhat" because even at the heitght of it, I can visualize my sister-in-law wanting to kiss and hug everyone during the funeral service for Sis' husband. It was as if there was no escape from the ties that bind even in death.
And there's been a lot of death lately. The nieces and nephews that should be gathered around and made fusses over are flung all over the country and now with families of their own. Mysteriously, my sister-in-law has an entire family of her own, consisting of sisters, brothers and- presumably - nieces and nephews - that she never talks about and has never spent a single holiday with for as long asI've known her. Consequently, we spend a lot of time catering to my sister-in-law's expectations and secretly mourning the people who are nolonger with us.
That is why I am so relieved when this season is over and I can go back to being queer again.