Ms. Grinch
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through my body
My nerves were all stirring; I needed a toddy.
The folks would soon be gathering at Grandmother's, where
They'd all gossip & whisper of whether I would be there...
Perhaps I'm a grinch - I've slowly been evolving toward grinchdom for many a year now, although for my daughter's sake, I still do the whole christmas (a.k.a. winter solstice) tree thing and lights and presents and yeah, go see "the family" as much as it pains me.
Before the season had even kicked off good (calendarly, not commercially), my bible-thumping hypocrite of an aunt shows up on our uninvited doorstep one evening bearing gifts, since, as she put it, "we didn't expect to see you at Grandma's this year."
"Well," I wanted to say, "I was at Grandma's for Thanksgiving. Where were you?" (Only because Grandma wasn't feeling up to driving into the city for a Thanksgiving social and decided to stay at home, but that's beside the point.) Instead, I bit my tongue as she scurried skittishly back outta the door from whence she came. --I'm nearly certain that she only went thru the trouble of finding our house to see how I was livin' seein' as how I'm all married up to a lawyer and such. After all, she never gave a rat's ass where or how I lived in the nearly 7 years I struggled as a single mom of a disabled child - before or after my back surgery... Coincidentally, she also never phoned me to ask for money until I up and married the law man.
So F you Lady and next year, please keep all your preachy fundamentalist Jesus gifts; they'll only end up in the garbage, again.
We ended up skirting around the whole dramatic christmas fiasco by visiting with Grandma on the 24th when the atmosphere was relatively calm(er).
One thing I really despise about the christmas holiday, and in all honesty set me on the road to grinchdom almost as much as relatives, hypocrisy, and the whole pompous commercialization of it all, is the feeling of being obligated to buy a bunch of crap I can't afford for a bunch of people I don't even like. This, however, I have overcome; I only give gifts that a) I want to give, and b) that I can afford. Which means I generally resolve the inner conflict by deciding that no one gets anything, besides my daughter (now children). The only thing worse is getting a bunch of stuff I don't want from a bunch of people I don't like because I feel like a giant ass throwing anything useful away and I really don't have time to figure out what to do with it all, let alone, clean my friggin' house. [*sigh*]
And then, the only thing worse than that… is getting money from the one uncle I've always loved, who has always been kind and fair to me (the one who takes anti–psychotic meds and has no teeth), and not wanting to take the gift of money because I know he needs it more than I do and not wanting to insult him nor hurt his pride by refusing… and feeling like a big giant ass for not giving him a present too.
"Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do."
--Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
posted by A. Xoe @ 15:20
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