Shut Up and Be Merry

I left on Friday afternoon for my first trip home since February. Before I was even out of cell service range, I had whined to Hotass that I didn't want to go home. I wasn't in the Christmas spirit and the trip home only spelled more frustration, awkward silences, and to be honest, a lot of uncomfortable memories.

I spent Friday night with my dad and stepmom, enduring 24 hours without cell phone service, my father switching back and forth between wrestling and FoxNews, waking me up twice before 8 a.m. to ask if I was ready for breakfast, and asking asinine questions like:

"Do you ever go out to Germantown?" Dad asked out of the blue over lunch. Germantown is the affluent suburb of Memphis, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Huh?"

"Do you ever go out to Germantown?"

"Yeah."

"Do you party with the Germans?"

"What?"

"Do you party with the Germans??"

"What Germans?"

"The Germans in Germantown."

I was at my wit's end and I popped off that there are no stupid Germans in Germantown.

On Christmas Eve, I went to spend the night with my mom. I kept losing cell phone conversations because I was in the middle of nowhere and because the phone was out of juice and the car charger kept coming unplugged.

As I bent over while I was driving to retrieve the charger from the floor for the tenth time, Hollywood took over my brainwaves, and I saw myself in my own Christmas movie.

The man disillusioned with Christmas returns home for the first time in months. Tolerates crazy father and eccentric step-mother. While driving to his mother's, he shouts "Goddamn!" when the cell phone charger unplugs for the tenth time, he bends over to retrieve it. He runs off the road. Gets knocked unconscious when he crashes into someone's Christmas light display and three spirits visit him to show him his own Christmas miracle. And snow falls on Christmas morning.

I had been in the door barely five minutes until both my mother and one of her sisters both commented that I had put on weight. Then they insisted that I have some cheese and broccoli soup followed by a slice of homemade chocolate pie.

I had just put my fork down when the phone rang. It was my cousin, Anita, obviously hysterical because Mom had to ask who it was twice. There'd been an accident. They think Adam's dead and my mother needed to go stay with my aunt.

Adam was leaving work and skidded off the road, hitting a tree. He was killed instantly. I didn't know him that well. He was 22 years old, married and had three little girls, "stairsteps" as my mother kept calling them, ages 3, 2 and 1.

Adam's grandmother tearfully unwrapped the Christmas gift she had gotten for Adam. It was a mirror etched with the 23rd Psalm. My loony Aunt Iva Dell passed it to me and asked me to read it out loud.

Now while I didn't have a religious experience, but I did see my reflection in the mirror and I saw what an insufferable and unpleasant Scrooge I had been.

Last night, my mother and I exchanged gifts. She gave me a space heater, which is something I said I wanted. I gave her one of my paintings and a lavender-scented hand lotion/soap set. I showed her my pictures from Las Vegas, and she showed me the pictures from her retirement party. We ate broccoli and cheese soup and ate homemade coconut pie. She made me check my blood pressure which was sky-high. I made her a CD while we watched Home Alone. I went to bed at 10 and read Brokeback Mountain for the second time.

We got up this morning and had a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats while we watched part of A Christmas Story. I was back home in Memphis by 3:30.

It wasn't fancy. It wasn't steeped in tradition.

But this weekend did point out to me just what a whiny brat I've been about Christmas, and I was reminded that sometimes I just need to shut up and be merry.

So if you missed the moral of the story...Get over yourself and be happy for the moment. Be thankful for what you have, and quit whining about what you don't have. Be thankful for the friends and family in your life, and fuckin' be nice to them.

Oh, and make friends with the Germans in Germantown

Merry Christmas.