christmas eve

christmas eve:

i plugged the tree in while i wrapped presents. it was after midnight. the neighbors had a very loud party. there were colored lights pouring out onto the street like their living room was a disco. i heard a d.j. talking in spanish over salsa music for maybe 2 hours. a big pre-christmas party, i guess.
i had just retuned home to feed the cats and wrap gifts and attempt to pack. i went down to newark, de, which is where i spent the majority of christmases in my life. not to see my mom, but i passed the neighborhood that was home for almost 15 years. about a minute up the road from where my mom once lived is where the haines have a house. i've never spent any holidays with them. they knew my mom for about 25 years, almost as long as i knew her. they've known me that long as well. their home is very cozy. when i arrived they'd just opened a big bay window in their living room to let out some of the heat from the wood stove they had going. a big, natural tree stood in the center of the room, covered in ornaments. rose, the mom of the family, had been giving her 2 daughters ornaments every year, a tradition my mom started when i was maybe a teenager. right now i've no idea where any of the ornaments are. chances are they got carefully packed up and put into storage when my mom cleaned out my room in preparation for them selling the house that i used to go home to. this is before she got sick, when they were getting ready to fully relocate to maryland last summer.

at the haines i ate dinner with them and played christmas carols out of big books of music. there was singing, not me, i play the flute. the one daughter, elizabeth made cookies from cookie dough---mom and i used to do this. they smell the same as they did when i was 8 years old. i guess holidays are a way to organize memories from your life---rituals act as mile markers. my memory is terrible otherwise. but here i am thinking of all these things that happened on repeat every winter--cookies, tree ( though it changed from real to plastic at some point in my teens ) the ornaments that i made in first grade mixed in with nicer ones mom collected over the years.

they were so very nice to me. they don't act like it's the family plus one, they act like i've always been there. i guess it helps they've known me so long, and i have spent a lot of time at their house---even if most of that time was 15 years ago and before. the two daughters, whom i grew up with, looked like how i remember, only taller and more like women than girls. but they still laugh the same, act goofy and treat me like nothing has changed in all this time. this is comforting. not too much lately has felt familiar.
i wonder what it's like to grow up in a family like theirs--it's really all 4 of them, every year for the holidays? and it's always been like that? and they all get along pretty well. it seems pretty amazing, how relaxed it all is, and how sweet they are to each other while still very much doing their own thing. i'm glad to know families like this exist. they come together and share music, play with the dogs and cats. seems like a good balance of things.

they encourage me to stay and stay.
"you have to go back tonight?" they say