Tuesday, January 4th, 9:31pm

This year, in the lead up to the holiday season I had a lot of people gently asking me, ‘Are you ok? You always go back for Christmas…’   That’s not entirely true. There have been a few years when I haven’t gone to Minnesota for the holidays,  but the difference this year is that for the first time it wasn’t my choice. It’s funny how that changes everything.

Frank Sinatra crooning ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ was enough to bring tears to my eyes...the lyrics taking on weight they’d never had before: “Someday soon, we all will be together, if the Fates allow. Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow.”  It became one of my little mantras of the season, when I felt like I was failing I’d remind myself that this year it was enough to just ‘muddle through somehow.’

For the first time in my life, there wasn’t a generation older than me around the Christmas table. We spent Christmas Eve just the three of us and on Christmas Day we went to Bruno’s sister’s house to be with her, her husband and their two daughters. It was simple and in the end really nice.  With no parents and no grandparents around, it was all just up to us, for better or worse!  Up to us to decide if we wanted to clear the table to put down the nice table cloth, up to us to cook the whole roast or just part of it, up to us to decide the timing of things and up to us to make it feel like Christmas.

One of the upsides to it being just us this year was that things were slower paced. I had the time to take Elliot shopping with me, and the two of us went together pick out a Christmas present for Bruno.  We chose a bonsai in a beautiful stone pot. It was heavy for me to carry home and Elliot was my special helper handling both of our metro passes, holding doors, pushing buttons in elevators, and managing the keys to our apartment.  When we got home Bruno was still out, so we quickly made a little cardboard fort in the corner of Elliot’s bedroom by the window, so the bonsai would have light coming through but be hidden from view.  Bruno came home and Elliot surprised me by being totally casual and very convincing saying, ‘Shoot, Papa, we didn’t find anything for you!’ I took my cue from him and chimed in, ‘Yeah, we didn’t find anything we liked but oh well. The most important thing is just being together.’ I was excited! We were going to pull off a real Christmas surprise for once!

Later while we were having lunch Elliot was acting up a bit and I said, ‘Buddy, you were such a nice helper this morning. Can you show me that you can keep being a nice boy and be polite at lunch?’  Bruno says, ‘Helper? I thought you didn’t get anything?’ Oups. I attempt to cover by saying vaguely, ‘Yeah, but he was still a nice boy helping me look for gifts and stuff.’  At which point Elliot pipes in with, ‘Yeah, I was such a good helper! I did the metro passes, I did the doors, I did the keys, I did everything, all you did, mom, was carry the plant!’ I look at him and just say, ‘Elliot!’ and he continues, ‘What?! It’s true, I did allllll the other stuff, and you just carried the plant!’

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Polaroid photo and full text available at: http://polaroid41.com/a-merry-little-christmas/