Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

The Last Christmas

Christmas came and went,
and with it
my hopes for having the kind of Christmas I’ve always wanted.
I picked my father up on Christmas Eve
from the Jewish Community Center.
His weekly poker game didn’t happen
so he had been sitting in the lobby for three hours.
I guess some of the men must have gentiles for wives
or else they like a good cup of eggnog
as much as the next WASP.
When he got in the car,
he acted like some kind of geriatric Scrooge,
telling me about his headache
and asking me where I had been
and why hadn’t I gotten him the second he called.
I had been dealing with a whole different crisis.
Seems he was overdrawn at the bank because the check my sister sent bounced
because he had been using his ATM card and we didn’t know he was using it.
So now, he’s yelling at me,
and I’m running around to closed banks
trying to get home before my mother sets the Christmas tree on fire
or decides to jump off the roof like the Flying Nun.
By the time we walk in the door he is in full
screaming mode
telling me he wants to go back to his apartment and
“to Hell with Christmas.”
Great.
I’ve been planning this thing for days,
running around to stores to buy Russian chocolates
and flowers and fresh pasta with Bolognese sauce
just so he won’t gripe there’s no meat at the table.
Meanwhile, my mother is trying to calm him down
stuttering out a few words about Christmas
and peace and my dead dog.
I shove a pizza in the oven hoping the smell
will bribe him in to staying.
I manage to get him to sit down and eat.
He gripes that the pizza is too spicy and
that I am a terrible person and an awful daughter.
Then my mother and I try to sing Christmas Carols
while my boyfriend plays the piano.
We make it halfway through Silent Night
before my father starts yelling in the background that we are giving him a headache
and he wants to go home.
Twenty minutes later
we are in the car taking both of them back to their apartment.
Christmas Eve lasted all of two hours.
I hadn’t even unwrapped the firewood to start a fire.
The stores had barely closed
and there were still cars in the parking lot.
On the way home
I thought about all the other Christmas’ he had ruined for me.
Maybe it’s because he’s Jewish/atheist
or because he believes religion is the root of all evil.
I don’t know and I don’t care.
For one night I wish he’d just shut up.
I mean it’s not like I’m hanging crosses on the wall
or have a manger scene set-up in my living room.
All we’re doing is drinking eggnog and eating cookies
and singing.
All we’re trying to do is make memories.
New memories.
The next day I made Christmas dinner,
and brought my mother over to eat with us.
I brought my dad a To Go Plate.