I think perhaps I have had an epiphany and figured out where this Christmas dread comes from. It's a long, pathetic story and I'm not going to go all into it here but I think it has to do with me being a little girl who did pray and who prayed all the time and especially at Christmas for a father to show up and a world that kept telling the little girl that Christmas miracles do happen, especially when it's a child praying for them because Jesus, he was a child and God, he was a father, and what could be more fitting than for a father to show up for his children? What more worthy miracle to perform?The miracle never happened, the father never showed up.
I hear that once he WAS on his way from Tennessee to Florida, where we lived, but only got as far as Tallahassee where he left the woman he was traveling with and went out on a bender and she, left behind in a strange place and probably insane, too (I present as evidence that she was traveling with my father) and abandoned for days, hung herself in the motel room where he'd left her.
And then my father was arrested for possible murder and jailed for a bit until the powers-that-be let him go and well, I guess by then he wasn't in the mood to come see his children.
And it's probably all for the best that he didn't.
Doesn't it make sense that in one fell swoop, the belief in god, the belief in Christmas, the tolerance for the true meaning of that particular holiday was destroyed? That all those Christmases when what I really wanted wasn't a Barbie or a Chatty Cathy or a new bike but a father, my father, as useless and toxic as he was because he was, after all, my only father and that his continued absence killed something inside of me?
Listen- there are many ways to kill and many things to kill. Souls and spirits and hopes and faith and dreams. And women and children left abandoned.
And I suppose this could explain some of my bitterness, some of my dread.
I wish that now the Christmas miracle would happen. That now, because I know why I feel the way I do, I could heal this old heart, I could let it open up to some of the joy that the world seems to feel Christmas offers.
Forgive the father for never coming. Forgive the mother for never trying to figure out what was going on in my heart. Let go. Let god. Etc.
I will talk to that little child within and see what she says about all of this.
If I can find her.
If she'll talk to me.
I'm not holding my breath.
