Learn From It

Today I am missing my family back East. Christmas Eve was always the bigger night—well, after we became adults. Or after the notion of Santa Claus was exposed as a clever ruse. That's when we started opening presents on the Eve instead of the Morning, because sleeping-in was a better present after all, I suppose.

Being from a mostly Polish family (technically, we're just a bunyak family, eastern-European mutts whose true nationalities are lost to border dynamics during the 1800s and 1900s), we naturally and unconsciously capitalized on the wiggle-room in all Catholic traditions by borrowing from the more orthodox (and Orthodox) elements of the old cultures by abstaining (from meat) from the morning of Christmas Eve until after we'd gone to a Christmas Mass (which, borrowing from American Expediency Culture and Vatican II, could come as early as 4:30pm Mass on Christmas Eve). This resulted in a tradition among us Polacks (bunyaks) of a meatless dinner for Christmas Eve. A dinner far separated from the bigger Christmas events, the bigger Christmas idiom. It was for family. Family is what permits it to exist and to continue. And it's solely about the core family, that part of the tree that starts at Jack and Marie, my parents, and includes progeny, their spouses, and further progeny.

I have had this dinner on my mind for some time now, knowing I would not be there. I suppose I had wished to keep it as abstract as possible in my head, as a way of not belaboring any anguish over my absence.

My Mother, setting aside the gifted thinker that she is in favor of the even more gifted Mother that she is, just posted pictures of the table setting. She set out pictures of Sam and me, of my brother Anthony and his fiancée, Jess, and a picture of the grandchildren, all of whom have become the most piteous of creatures, it seems, because of the most pitiful mothering I've ever seen.

It's a solemnity my mother is creating, a sense of occasion neither happy nor entirely sad, but serious. Important. Dignified. A profound gravitas. It's a rich life we've each and all led in my family. My younger brother Sam, myself, my older brother Anthony. We all had the most splendid environment to grow up in.

My nephews had mostly the same, up until their lives went pear-shaped a couple of years ago. It could have been mostly restored, but that wasn't allowed to happen and they're the ones to suffer the most.

Though I do not celebrate Christmas for its own sake, I do appreciate it for my own sake.

I'm privileged and honored that Sam is here with me each and every day for the rest of our lives, but I miss the rest of my family...parents, brothers (and sisters), nephews. I love them all so much.