The Holidays

[Guest guest]

I remember going to my mother's house last year for a week during

Christmas. She was calling me in the airport before take-off; she left

me tons of voicemail's asking me to call her to when I make my

connection. Then she called me on the train asking me to guess what

she's making in the kitchen and that my stepfather rented movies. All

this sounds like a caring, concerned mother. Nada was jumping out of

her skin to see me. Now that I'm there; I felt alone, more alone than

I've ever felt in my life. My sister calls who is no contact and can

tell what horror I'm living. When I arrive that is when it all starts.

She makes remarks like, you look like a homeless man that hasn't

shaved, why don't you go shave. I even laugh with her as starts

chipping away at my soul. Then I notice her questioning my

step-fathers judgment on a menial task that he must of messed up, he

takes it in stride; being her passive henchman/hound of hell. Then she

miss places her car keys, which automatically leads to her ambiguously

accusing me of messing with them, this anxiety that I have comes from

these situations. She rushes around the house demanding everyone's

effort in a search party finding something that she misplaced, all the

while making hints to my guilt in the disappearance of whatever it is.

My stress raises, I feel like I have to redeem myself and make

everything better by finding it. She finds it and sometimes laughs

other times she'll say that's not where I left it. Sometimes she

apologizes to me, saying " are you going to leave your crazy mother all

alone someday? " I usually laugh. After these episodes then she moves

to make her food. I'm left with my socially inept stepfather, being

around him makes me feel like Symonds or something, the guy

doesn't talk. He also has a bunch of children that he never

communicates with, all he has had is a dog which he loves more than

anything. He loves this dog so much that he feeds it better food than

what most people eat, he loved it so much that after the vet had told

him repeatedly not to feed it anymore people food he kept on until it

died of fatty cancerous tumors that attacked from all over the body. I

miss that dog, but it was also an extension of the illness in that

house. Anyway at this time the house and hollow occupants are starting

to feel bankrupt of any emotion, all the cheery glare of my arrival

has turned into disconnected repetition. Nada is in the kitchen making

tons of food that no one will eat and the sink water running for 7

hours straight so she doesn't have talk to me her hands red from the

hot water, I don't where all these dishes come from? My stepfather is

out in the driveway snow blowing cement. Me, I'm stuck in the window

asking why does it have to be like this, crying on the inside (maybe a

tear or two on my turtleneck) this is the only thing that could make

me cry, the thought of Christmas.

Never again...