This is my first Christmas without Mom.
If you didn't know her, you'd have thought my mom was a cynic. She tended to expect the worst in all situations and she never bought into the conventional wisdom on any topic; she always assumed people were lying. And yet she had such a sentimental streak, and would break down and start crying at the most unexpected things.
Nothing brought this out like Christmas.
When I think of Mom at Christmas time, I think of two things. One is the annual Christmas Eve drive she and I would take to look at Christmas lights. This started when I was a kid, and continued, off and on, until last year. Sometimes other people would be along for the ride, but usually, it was a little ritual that just she and I did.
She'd keep up a sarcastic running commentary as we'd go from hopuse to house. One year I pointed out that a Nativity scene on someone's lawn made it look as though the Wise Men were roasting Baby Jesus, so Mom immediately dubbed it The First Barbecue, the term she used every year thereafter to describe any Nativity scene, and a standard she'd use to describe the relative lameness of anyone's decorations. ("Well, it was okay, but it was no First Barbecue.") Many of her comments were ironic deployment of song lyrics ("Oh look, they hung a shinging star upon the highest bough" or "See the tree, how big it's grown"), all post-modern without realizing it.
Despite the snarkiness, the fact remains that we were driving around on Christmas Eve looking at lights, a holiday tradition, steeped in sentiment. Which brings me to my other favorite Mom-based Christmas memory, again something that would happen every year: The inevitable phone call, Mom weeping uncontrollably, having just watched Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. Every year she'd warble a few lines from the song "A Hand For Each Hand" and start crying all over again, proclaiming, "It's sad." Well, I'd say, you know it's sad, you didn't have to watch it. "No," she'd answer. "I had to."
So she did.
Things are stange this year. It's freakishly warm, not like Christams at all. I feel weirdly detached from the whole season, anyway. There'll be no trip to look at lights this year, no Mr. Magoo-based phone call. Just memories, kept at a distance to keep them from overwhelming me.
