the rix mix

Dunkin' Donuts closes midafternoon to 10 pm Christmas, a real kindness from employer to employees, that's business lost in this neighborhood. The bagel shop across the street from it will open in the morning. Pathmark closed at six & is closed all day Christmas, cars were still pulling into the lot when the doors were locked, but up the street Shoprite is open until 11, & there was a line of cars all headed up there from Pathmark. Not everyone does Christmas early on Christmas Eve. A former girlfriend's family sat down to their big, official Christmas dinner around 4 on Christmas Eve day, which was not only peculiar to me, but unsettling, & I never got used to it. In my family, Christmas Eve was mostly preparation for Christmas Day. Later, as a teenager, when I dated a Catholic Girl, I encountered a Midnight Mass routine. At one AM her immediate family - enough kids to have repopulated Ireland after the potato famine - was dipping into boxes of Russell Stover chocolates, & the mom was frying bacon & eggs for anyone who wanted breakfast, & then they went to bed & got up at 6 am to open presents, & in the afternoon sat down to eat a giant ham. Her dad declined every chance to get off the swing shift & work days.

I pissed off my dad when i was about 19 & worked in record store. Christmas Eve afternoon was fairly busy, but I was the low man on the list at that store, so it was me, a cashier, & an assistant manager scheduled until 8 as a few late customers wandered in. With some begging, I managed to talk the boss back to 7, expecting to drive directly to dad's & joining a dinner in progress with the food still abundant & warm. Just before I left, dad called the store hopping angry that I was late for dinner. So when I arrived I had to face a bug-eyed father & a house full of annoyed people from two families who had been delaying their dinner for me. Perhaps it was my fault for not being clear about my hours, but for heaven's sake they all knew I was in retail. That sort of thing was quite typical of my family. I named it the Doctrine of Mary's Assumption: That since Jesus is God he always knows what the family expects without being told.

My mom expected all four of her grown kids to show up on Christmas afternoon for years after she was incapable of cooking & hosting toast & coffee for herself, & when all the marriages & divorces & remarriages - not in my generation but in her's - made it impossible to schedule everything in one 24 hour period, what with all the in-laws & step-in-laws competing for one of only two "official" Christmas possibilities, & being insulted if requested to have their events the preceding or following weekend. When my sister's kids were little she got so frazzled by it that she announced she was going nowhere, holding one big open house event on a date decided by her, & she'd gladly cook institutional quantities of food to make it happen, & everyone was free to come or not come as they pleased, & if the various ex's couldn't get along that was their problem. My reaction at the time was, "Thank God, someone is sane." I was dealing with my girlfriend's family's Christmas Eve afternoon thing, & beyond that I just wanted a strong Irish coffee & a chance to enjoy an alleged Cuban cigar a friend gave me annually from a bunch that he bought from someone he knew in, ah, diverse organized alternative business enterprises. It was always a pretty good cigar, wherever it was from.

Labels: growing up, holidays