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On Christmas Eve we would drive to my Aunt and Uncle's house in the first dark of five o'clock. My stomach bubbled and butterflied the entire way: a mix of terror of strange relatives, the excitement of Christmas and the dread that within a day Christmas would be over. The only adult comparison that has ever come close is the wait between the home pregnancy test purchase and its color-blocked revelation.
I knew I would feel embarrassed every time I went to the bathroom and had to fumble with unaccustomed tights, hanging lower and lower between my angry legs throughout the evening.
I knew my parents would have that proud look the entire night that made my sister and I become nice and well-behaved much more than the ususal threats. We were suddenly on their team once an audience and competing parent-child dynamics came into play. We were never more loved than in front of other families. This was not disingenuous, just a collective, thank-god your mine affection.
I knew that all the adults would push back their chairs from the dining room table and slouch in the candle light with coffee and stories and hands absentmindedly sweeping piles of crumbs together on the red tablecloth. We would come back in only to ask for one more cookie and scurry away with shocked good fortune that the answer was yes.
I also knew, in a vague way, that someday I would have my own Christmas. The decorated house would be mine and the friends and family would be of my own choosing. I loved the idea of that day.
It hasn't yet come. Instead, I linger in the Christmases of a generation past. Sitting in the back seat of my parents' car, I still lean my forehead onto the cold glass of the window, watch the red and white lights blink by and think next year I'll have my first Christmas. Or at least, the year after that.
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