Saturday, December 24th

107.)

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house

Not a crinkle was heard, nor from me or my spouse

The panties were tossed in the trash without care

In hopes that St. Nicholas would not find them there

The Littles were diapered, taped firm on our hips

With plushies all cuddled up and pacis 'tween lips

And Blossom in her onesie--

Wait... did that mean Blossom was my spouse in this scenario? That was quite the logical leap; I just couldn't think of another rhyme for house.

I was zoning out a little bit, watching It's A Wonderful Life for the twentieth time. That wasn't hyperbole; I had twenty Christmas Eves with my mom, and it was tradition. I felt like every year I noticed something new about it. This year, it was that Uncle Billy's pet raven only seemed to appear when George was about to get bad news. I thought Uncle Billy was kind of tempting fate, keeping this omen as a pet. Then again, there was something rather poetic about the Baileys being friends with bad news. Like, they can always see it coming, and they make the best of it.

"I hate this part..." my mom said, sinking into the sofa in a way that made it very evident where I got that habit.

The part my mom hated was the end, with the town all coming together and helping George. She hated all the parts of any movie that made her cry, and she was already tearing up.

"I love this part," I laughed, already wiping my own tears. I hated crying as much as my mom, but I'd done it in front of her so many times that it didn't bother me anymore.

"Distract me," my mom said, her eyes still glued to the TV.

"Uhhhhhhhh." Every tactic I had to distract her eloped with my creative thinking in a huge polyamorous exodus to Somewhere Other Than In My Brain.

"How's Lin?"

"With her family," I said. "So, terrible."

"She should honestly just stay here..."

"And listen to her mom passive-aggressively bring up how her daughter didn't come home for the holidays for the rest of the year?"

"The worst part about being a parent," my mom said, "is hearing about other parents. Do you remember Mrs. Statton?"

"Oh boy do I..."

Eliza Statton was a girl in my middle school. We were best friends for two years until she moved. But wow, her mom was so controlling. Worse yet, her mom hated my mom. Raising a daughter with no father? My stars and garters!

"But could I say anything?" my mom went on. "Noooooo... because that's being critical of others' parenting styles. Which is apparently the eleventh commandment Moses forgot to bring down the mountain."

"Kids are like toys," I shrugged. "Parents don't want to be told how to play with their own toys."

"That's cynical." My mom paused. "And apt."

We were only a few seconds out from the rolling of the credits when she asked:

"Do you think I screwed you up at all?"

"Uhh..." I wasn't sure how to answer that. Tact wasn't something my mom and I had in spades. "Not really? I think you did the best you could with what you had, and what you had was me."

"You're too hard on yourself," she said. "I should have been more supportive, or at least imparted the total inconsequence of most of our actions."

"The only thing you should have done differently is kept me out of public school. Whatever fucked me up wasn't at home."

My mom reached over and wrapped an arm around me. She kissed me on the side of the head and asked:

"How's your therapist quest going?"

"Blossom thinks she found one in Maine, if our insurance works out of state."

"It should. As long as your therapist is credentialed with our provider..."

"Well, then I would say it's going very well."

Another pause as the credits rolled. I was tired from crying.

"You didn't ask to spend Christmas with Blossom," my mom observed. "I thought you might."

"She has her own stuff with her dad," I said, giving a half truth. Then I gave the other half: "But I had plans anyway."

"Well, I'm glad those plans are still important to you."

"They are."

My mom got to her feet and gave me one last kiss on the forehead. She was exhausted, and it was almost midnight.

"Merry Christmas, kid," she said. "Don't stay up too late waiting for Santa."

"I won't."

Even though I was twenty years old, my mom still insisted that Santa was real. Maybe it was because I didn't have any siblings, so she always had a strong defense. What did a ten year old know that she didn't?

One time, when I was fourteen, I got kind of mad about it. I knew Santa wasn't real - enough kids at school had told me that. Also, it didn't make any sense? But when I brought it up to my mom, she kept it going. No, Santa's real. No, he really does go to every kid's house in one night. Every time I tried to challenge her assertion, she would refute it with something crazy.

What about houses that don't have a chimney, like ours? One magically appears, of course.

What about the Jewish kids, or people who don't celebrate Christmas? He respects other denominations and doesn't want to interfere with their household traditions.

How does Santa feel about appropriating the birth of Our Lord And Savior Jesus Christ? Badly, but sometimes traditions are less about the origins and more about what those origins represent.

After fighting about it for a while, I asked for the thousandth time: "Why do you keep lying to me?" And she said, "Lying and being wrong are different things, Amanda. Lying requires an intent to deceive, and I'm not trying to deceive you. I want you to find your own answers in life, even if they aren't the same answers as mine. When I say Santa is real, I may be wrong, but I am not lying."

It took me a long time to understand what she meant by that. It was probably high school that broke me, to be honest. Not every fight is worth having. Not every hill is worth dying on. Not every truth needs to be evangelized. Letting my mom believe in Santa wasn't really any different than letting Payton from school believe in God. And just like Payton from school, Santa meant something to my mom. It meant to her what it probably meant to me for those first ten years of my life. It meant that anything was still possible.

In a roundabout way, that conversation led me to finally accept that I was Little. Am I a little girl? Yes. I might not be right, but I'm not lying either.

On our seventeenth Christmas together, I got my mom two gifts. One from me, one from Santa. That look on her face, seeing something appear in front of her as if by magic... that look on her face told me everything I ever needed to know about truth. Truth isn't what you find in books; it's what you find in others.

My mom probably knew that second gift was from me. But maybe, just maybe, a little part of her still wondered. And all those gifts I get from Santa every year? Maybe, just maybe, my mom watches me open one that she doesn't remember buying for me.

After that final kiss on the forehead, my mom went to bed. I stayed up a while longer, because I still had two presents to wrap and stick under the tree.