Is there a hole in that washtub?

I do not know whose Christmas we are enacting. It does not feel as though it belongs to us. Just as we've never had an adult vacation until Portland (which was still sans my mother), we have not had Christmas without children since it would be fair to call us children still ourselves. This is untested ground.

On Christmas Eve, my mother says she needs us to decorate for Christmas with her next year. Doing this without the children depressed her. She promises to bribe us with dinner, though I do not need food as an incentive. The image of my mother softly (or not so softly) weeping as she hangs candy canes is pathetic enough that I would sacrifice a Saturday to prevent it. (But I will readily accept dinner as well. Who can be sympathetic on an empty stomach?)

This Christmas was not sad from my perspective. We were frustrated that tech would not accommodate our money tree with the niblings. The Bamily was napping at an awkward time, meaning we had to hurry up and wait for them. They did not credit my parents with the gifts my mother had been sending them for months, instead having them be unlabeled or from Santa. It does seem tacky, but what can you do? Most of my gifts to Dan's family were in the form of gift certificates.

I feel I have to treat my mother delicately in the absence of her grandchildren. However, she had more resilience than I credit her. She does not break down or seem emotional at our Christmas, beyond the underlying resentment that Dan has taken the children and is not playing ball by making Christmas run more smoothly. This is not unreasonable. There does seem to be a willfulness on my brother's part, though it doesn't affect me much. I miss my niblings, and my communication with them could be more robust, but I do not mind lingering longer by the Christmas cookies.

Is this the nature of our Christmases going forward? I can't know, though it is likely short of Bryan marrying and spawning, both of which are unlikely in this coming year -- and perhaps going forward. He is constantly busy working as a psych nurse practitioner in a prison (where he sees the residents who have "graduated" from my juvenile detention facility) and taking classes to get his doctorate in nursing. Somehow, this does not make him a doctor but a God Tier Nurse. One's romantic options dwindle in one's very-late thirties, as everyone who was in the mood for pairing off did so a decade prior. All that remains are divorcees with children, which is not a demographic that appeals to him. He has friends all over the country whom we will never meet, none of whom are people he would consider bringing home for Thanksgiving, all of whom we presume to share his monomania. (Several are dirtbags who waste his time and money, leaving him dejected and alone, but he does not see it that way.)

We open presents quickly. Several of my gifts were for Amber but had been tagged otherwise. That does not matter. They are all going to the same place, and it is not as though I do not have some use for ball jar lids. (Keeping ball jars closed.)

I purchased my gifts for my family from artists instead of a rain forest named website, which made them both unique and encouraged creatives to prosper. My father received a light-up sign with his HAM radio tag. My brother got a fleece embroidered with his name and professional title, along with a brain and the caduceus. I had a Russian artist make an Emmett Otter from wool for my mother. Even Amber was impressed with my thoughtfulness and prowess this year. I hope I haven't set my bar too high for future holidays. I can't promise I will always be inspired by what is relatively low-hanging fruit.

I do not mind this Christmas dynamic, no matter how my youngest relations charm me. I do not know if others who shared this Christmas with me would espouse the same. We can only see what next year brings, if we develop new traditions, if our family changes. By then, my second eldest niece, Leelee, will be working in a theater in the city. We hope she will snatch Yannah, her older sister, from Texas to do makeup -- New York City is more her speed than Nowhere, Texas, anyway. Perhaps they will pop by, bribed by dinner.

last watched: Alice in Borderland
reading: More Happy than Not