It occurred to me, as I drove my daughter home from school today, that what I need in my life right now is a Christmas movie. I don’t need to watch a Christmas movie…years of Christmas junkiedom have necessitated watching each of them enough times to memorize most of the major monologues and touching scenes. No, what I need right now is to live in a Christmas movie. Just for a few days, to gain some perspective. This thought came to me as I barked angrily at the fifth driver in front of me on my ride home tonight, sure that if he could hear me, he would repent and sign himself up immediately for a driving course: “Are you going to actually take your foot off the freaking brake, or are your taillights a sight I can look forward to seeing the rest of the way home?”. My daughter, Zen Buddhist in the backseat, said calmly, almost sounding bored, “Mom, do you need a hug?” My shoulders were scrunched, my forehead furrowed, and my fingers were gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to leave dents.
We zoomed into the parking lot of King Soopers because I forgot to buy the food over the weekend needed for the stupid Christmas box that I always get suckered into helping assemble. I threw bread, onions and celery into the wire basket angrily, resenting that my slippers and a place to rest my butt were so far away from the shopping cart with the wheel that wouldn’t roll. Back in the car, as we raced along toward dinner, I caught site of three boys pushing their sleds up a hill in the darkening twilight. It must’ve only been about 25 degrees outside, and yet they laughed as their knees sunk into the crispy snow.
My yuletide temper tantrum is a hard pill to swallow for a woman who a year ago couldn’t be trusted around any pine tree past the first of December. I need some holiday help, so let’s start here: tonight, as I sleep, I would appreciate if I could be haunted by three ghosts. Christmas Past can come and show me the Christmas nights as a child when I was too excited to fall asleep, so I lay in bed, staring at the tiny tree I used to keep on my dresser. Or maybe it can be even nicer and show me the Christmas that I flew to Mexico with my boyfriend and we celebrated the occasion drinking Tecate from a can on the beach, under the stars with our shoes off. Christmas Present might be wise to take me to the houses of the people whose names I cursed my entire drive home because they didn’t drive the way I thought that they should. As soon as I see them collapse through the door, exhausted, and push on through the dinner preparations, I would think twice about throwing the word “idiot” about so liberally within the safety of my car. Christmas Future. Well, show me thirty pounds overweight, alone and eating a turkey pot pie out of an aluminum tin while I watch the Rose Bowl Parade, and I’ll shape right up…promise
But I want more. After all of this, I want to jump into a cold river and be saved by a bumbling, but extremely well-meaning angel named Clarence. He can show me around a Colorado Springs where I never existed. He can make me tear up by taking me to the spot where my poor pound doggie was buried because no one came to take him home and save him from lethal injection. He can show me my students, frozen solid in room 227 of the high school because there is no teacher who is as equally cold-blooded to constantly bitch to the building administrator on their behalf about the never-ending lack of heat. And he can show me my ex-husband, a crazy, homicidal alcoholic because his life was never graced by the cool voice of reason that I provided during the eight years of our marriage.
That should have me feeling pretty good, but let’s go one step further. Slip me into Nation Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation” for an hour or two, and I will slip right out of it relieved and thankful that a) my in-laws live in Florida b) I’m not married to Chevy Chase and c) I don’t talk much to any of my backwoods cousins, and none of them drive a dilapidated RV that they plan on parking in front of my house this year.
Yes, right about then, I will probably be saying, “It is a wonderful life, and God bless us, everyone.” But as it was a rough day, I’m going to ask for one more chance to sneak into Christmas cinema. Tomorrow, let me oversleep in my attic room and awake to find that the rest of my family has gone off on a plane without me. Give me a few days to putter around my house all alone, eating junk food, shooting my b.b. gun at my daughter’s big-boobed Barbies, and watching old black and white gangster films. Let me sleep in, order a pizza with toppings that only I want, and then, right after I victoriously conquer the bad guys and chase them from my house with buckshot in their rear ends, let all those that I love appear on Christmas morning, presents in hand, for a tearful holiday reunion.
Is it asking too much to insist that this time of year take on a movie-like quality, or are those days gone once you learn the truth about Santa Clause? I’d like to think that after I manage to battle the elements and get some lights strung up outside the house, my Christmas outlook will improve drastically. But maybe it will have to wait until two weeks from now, when the last final is given, my mom has come to rescue her animals that I keep threatening to BBQ, and my daughter and I have a chance to settle down for a long winter’s nap without the constant patter of dewclaws on the linoleum. Maybe it won’t come at all this year, and I will just have fake my way through it. Or maybe, I should take a cue from my four year old and shift my focus to the payload that Christmas morning always brings in our house. One thing’s for sure, I need to spend more time in front of my television, putting all of my mental energy into channeling Jimmy Stewart. I need the type of epiphany right about now that he had. I’ve hung my bell on the tree; now if it would just start ringing.
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