If you are from a large family that suffered from a tumultuous, alcoholic background, you may understand this blog. Going home for Christmas can be a little tricky and volatile at times. Amid all the beauty of fresh, sugar-white snow; the crisp, sweet smell of the decorated tree; the lovely faces of your nieces, nephews, children, parents, etc., there is a sort of shadowy sadness that tugs at your heart. You have to navigate slowly and carefully around each other. You have to be tender to those who know you the best, yet at times seem to be a million degrees separated from you.
Everyone knows that holidays are emotional. That's a given. Memories can be bittersweet. For instance, visiting a sibling who is in assisted living, or witnessing a crying jag from another sibling, or trying to cope with a (still) recovering OCD, alcoholic father. Thrown into all of that can be political and religious differences that can and do exacerbate everything else. I have all of these circumstances in my family, plus my family is comprised of racial and socioeconomic differences, as well. Sometimes when I come "home" for Christmas, I feel like I'm entering a muted, yet still resonant, cold war. The past is lurking and clanking about like a displaced poltergeist, fusing with the present, creating a surreal atmosphere. A psychotherapist would have a field day with my family trying to deconstruct all the angst and simultaneous joy from which I derive the most complex parts of my personality.
Yet I have to be grateful. I have the most adaptable family I know. We are so canny at adaptation that we are like chameleons. The only thing I have not figured out yet, is whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing. All I know is that chameleons survive. And they don't have to work too hard at it either.
