Christmas is often an odd time of year for me. I tend to be consumed by envy with the idea that everyone else but me is having a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas. I bemoan my small, irreligious but lovely family.
My family is not your typical, greeting card family. It doesn't help that the left half is Jewish, the right half completely non-conformist, and the middle easily distracted by foam swords. It is also a family that is scattered like dandelion seeds, distant like planets. We orbit towards and away from each other. Sometimes a planet has many moons and sometimes we don't see Pluto for years, but the arc of our lives always casts a glimmer throughout the familial galaxy, even if we don't sit down for turkey dinners (many a vegetarian) and bottles of wine (recovering alcoholics and teetotalers), even if we see each other only every couple of years.
Often when I go out on Christmas, I do so with a sense of furtiveness, a mild sense of shame. I fear that everyone can see that I am not rooted in a firm family hold, held by a tether to the emblazoned fir tree. Today, like most years, I walked the icy streets but today felt different. I saw sleepy parents with bright eyed children, lone men carrying skates and paper bags, Indian, Turkish and Pakistani couples out to enjoy the distant sun. I saw a young mother and her gap-toothed teenage daughter, sharing a joke at a bus stop. I saw bus drivers tired and bus drivers cheery. And it all made me feel like I was part of the big bustle of humanity, in all of its complexity, in all its variety.
I have made peace with the shape of my family, with the planets, the stars and the comets, the seeds and the roots. I hope you do, too.
Happy holidays.
