the habit of being

When I was a young child, I went to visit my grandparents in Wilmington, Delaware, every Christmas. My grandfather bought me a ticket and I flew alone. I had to wear a button that said I was an Unaccompanied Minor. The button had red and white stripes. I carried my Madeline doll with me on the plane and chewed gum to help with my ears. Stewardesses gave me pins with pilots’ wings, a touch I liked after I realized my initial terror that I was going to get real wings, as in grow them, was unfounded. I got to ride on carts that beeped down the terminals at the connecting airports, Atlanta or Charlotte. Once I even got to go to a special room with other Unaccompanied Minors while I waited for my second flight. After that trip, I just faked being 12 so they’d leave me alone.

Going to visit my grandparents seemed like a special treat to me. It actually snowed there. They spoiled me. We watched old movies on their huge TV until late at night. I got to pick the movies from a notebook my grandfather had put together listing them by Title, Star, or Year. My favorite was Cleopatra. I played The Oregon Trail on my grandfather’s computer for hours, I went swimming at the JCC (even though we weren’t Jewish), there were always special desserts, and I slept in my mother’s old room, which was blue.

It never occurred to me that the reason I went up there every year was because my (single) mother had to work. She couldn’t afford to take time off, so instead she worked double shifts on Christmas Day, a huge day for admissions at Willingway, drunks lining the halls. She’d try to call me and my grandfather would brag to her about all the nice presents he’d given me, the clothes from Nordstrom’s in California. Then there was the time I didn’t wait for everyone else to get up before opening my presents. He screamed at her about it for an hour. On Christmas.

Later, after my mother remarried and our finances allowed it, we all went up. My little brother was a baby. “I am a GOOD mother,” my mother yelled at her father, and ran up the stairs and slammed the door and cried.

After that, we spent more Christmases in Georgia. We always bought the tree on my mother’s birthday, December 20th, and left it up until mid-February, when we were absolutely sure there was no Christmas Tree Smell left, and the whole thing was brown. Our many cats broke our many ornaments.

On Christmas Eve, I started making my yearly appearance at the Tillmans’ party, perhaps the only time I’d see my father’s people all year. My other grandfather wore mismatched plaids and drank too much scotch. We usually prayed for my father, in another of his Bad Spells, as part of the blessing, and my older half-sister would start dabbing her eyes. Someone invariably jokingly offered me a glass of wine.

Back at home on Christmas morning, we all got up at 6 in the morning and I made the coffee for my parents. We opened our presents, went back to sleep, and then went off to visit my stepfather’s family, in front of whom my mother and I would try very hard to act normal.