A day like every Christmas I had experienced for exactly half my life, yet it felt strange, more strange than it did last year, when the novelty of a return to a Jewish style Christmas trumped the feelings of loss. This year, I was plagued by inexplicable pangs of nostalgia: for the long and tedious ride to Michigan, for the last minute Christmas shopping at an overcrowded mall, for the endless hours sprawled in a food coma watching a continuous loop of A Christmas Story while awaiting the next leaden meal.
I suppose I will one day grow accustomed to the occasional holiday spent without my children, but, for now, it's all still raw. The thought of them cavorting in the enemy camp, feeling warm and fuzzy in the embrace of those who have heard all sorts of nasty things about me, the thought of someone else occupying my favorite chair, all these things stir in me decidedly "unChristian" feelings. And a decidedly un-motherly desire for my kids to have a lousy time.
All this negativity in spite of a perfectly lovely day filled with good food and a few hours watching a young Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window in a downtown theatre that took me back to my childhood with its uncomfortable seats and ornate walls and elegant red velvet curtain. Even the weather was lovely -- sunny and unseasonably warm. I secretly reveled in the noticeable absence of a single snowflake, content to know that if I couldn't enjoy a traditional white Christmas, nobody could.
The kids return today, and, tomorrow, we will celebrate Chanukah with a fanfare grossly disproportionate to the minor status of the holiday. I will be armed with gifts to rival anything they found under the tree, I will stuff them with grotesquely fattening food, I will have cookies decorated with sickeningly sweet blue icing.
And, no doubt, I will continue to do such things, until the ghosts are put to rest.
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