Growing up in New England, it's hard to imagine another time, with the exception of the start of Autumn that I got more excited about ever year. After all, how could I not? December brought with it the snow, which meant no school, getting outside and sledding or playing football for hours on end, then coming back inside for hot chocolate and curling up in big warm blankets afterwards.
It also meant looking forward to presents and seeing grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It meant going to Midnight Mass with my Nana and usually falling asleep by the time the homily started, but I figured that was part of what the whole season was about.
I can tell you the exact moment when my affections for this time of the year vanished. It was Dec. 20, 1989. I'm 12 years-old, living in Ayer, Massachusetts, and have been coming off a really rough year. My mother and I had relocated there a few months earlier as we began living with the man who's now been my stepfather for 20 years. For the fifth time in seven years, I'd had to start over in a new town with a new school and meeting new people. We were still about a year removed from getting away from my first stepdad and I'd watched my mother and older brother butt heads over just about everything during that time.
It got so bad, in fact, that my mother decided it was time to do something fairly drastic. Despite his almost being through his senior year of high school, my brother was sent off to live with our dad, 3,094 miles away in Oregon. He and I had never really been apart in our lives and being the youngest, I took it pretty hard, because even though we annoyed the hell out of each other half the time, he was also the only consistent friend I had through that whole period of moving around like we did.
I know my mother thought she was doing the right thing in sending him off, but what it also did in the long run was make me even more uncontrollable, because for all the havoc we both admittedly created, we also were the others safety valves in some ways. At least, he was for me at that time.
He was gone in June and by the time December rolled around, whatever measure of peace my mother was hoping to gain by splitting us up hadn't come. If anything, it'd had gotten worse because I'd gotten worse. I was angry because my brother was gone. I was angry because I hadn't figured out how to cope with what had happened with my stepdad. I was angry because I'd had to say goodbye to more friends, pack up and start all over again when all I wanted was to just stop and have as normal a life as a 12-year-old kid can have.
Fairly or unfairly, I took it out on my mother and her boyfriend and they responded in kind sometimes. In their defense, I deserved it, because I said and did things that warranted their reaction. But I felt so lost inside my head, and at that age, when you're just stepping into puberty and both your mind and body are changing in nanosecond increments, I doubt I'm the only one who feels that way.
I remember one night, my mother and I got into it again and in a flash of anger I told her that if I was so terrible that she should get rid of me too. So she did.
December 20, 1989 was when I was told by my mother that I was leaving and joining my brother and dad in Oregon. "I can't teach you what you need to be a man," she would say in justifying her decision to either me or herself. "You have to go somewhere else to do that."
Two days later, I had to say goodbye again to the small group of friends I'd made, and the girl I'd begun to get attracted to in the way first crushes usually go. My english class gave me a signed card with little notes from each of them. I ended up keeping that for a long time and might even still have it somewhere.
I spent my last Christmas with my family a few days later, doing the rounds through the small towns they lived in and saying my goodbyes while opening presents. To me, it felt more like going to a series of funerals than ringing in the holidays. Some of those people I wouldn't see for nearly 20 years and our relationships were never really what they could've been had I been able to stay.
Dec. 27, 1989, my mother took me to Logan Airport, put me on a plane heading for Atlanta, then Seattle and finally to Portland and that was it. To give you an idea of how different a time it was, I did the whole thing myself. Twelve years-old, three airports, three cities, at Christmas time, solo. Because of issues with the planes, I actually didn't arrive in Portland until nearly dawn the next morning. I wouldn't see home again for five years, and even when I went back, it just wasn't the same place anymore.
So why am I explaining all this? Because this is what I'm reminded of every year when December comes around and it's the reason why I have such a hard time enjoying Christmas.
Now, over the years I've had more than my share of good times during the holidays and that's not to say it's been all one horrible experience. I've also been given the usual, "Just get over it already!" schpiel from a lot of people over the years, including my mother.
Our relationship has never been the same. It's part of why we don't speak to each other anymore, and in all honesty, it may be why I might never see her again. From her perspective, she thinks what she did was right because she had to make a choice between having the life that she wanted or losing it because she had an out-of-control kid to take care of. I don't envy her the decision she had to make and part of me would like to think it wasn't an easy one.
But to me, she gave up. Had she been more understanding of what was happening with me, I'm sure things could've ended up differently for the both of us. Even though I was too young to understand how divorce worked when my parents split, I never had any reason to believe that I would grow up with anyone other than my mother. I remember sitting in my bed as a six-year-old, consoling her because her father was in the hospital after having yet another heart attack. As a 10-year-old, I swore I wouldn't let anyone hurt her after both seeing and hearing how my first stepdad degraded, insulted and abused her. I know how hard she worked and how frustrated she got and I didn't exactly make it any easier.
But I wasn't a bad kid. I was just in a really, really bad place and that was a time when I needed her to step up, understand and help me. Instead, I got a plane ticket...and I got it at Christmas.
I've never gotten over that. I don't know if I ever will, and about this time every year is when I start to really feel it. I do try to make myself happy and not let it bother me, but I don't do much of anything for the holidays anymore. I don't decorate my apartment or buy a tree. Being by myself, I don't see the point, really.
If anything, I get a few presents for friends and people I care about, but even this year, I don't know if that's something I should really do. I'm not expecting to get anything from anyone this year either and I stopped making wish lists a long time ago.
If there's one thing I want this year, though, it's this.
I wish, more than anything, that I could learn to forget.
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