I never expected to be greeted with tidings of comfort and cheer, but I thought if I carried on as if nothing were amiss, no comments about the hair would be forthcoming. Of course, I was wrong. Perhaps fittingly, Mother started in first. Mother, whose eyesight isn’t the best anymore, let out a low, guttural titter that meant she was laughing at someone. That someone was me. This was approximately two seconds after she walked in the door on Christmas day. “Did you do that to your hair on purpose,” she says in greeting, actually snorting as she finished the question. It was less a question and more a statement of disbelief.
“What’s wrong with it?” I respond, trying to play it cool. I knew I had gotten a rather unfortunate haircut, but I didn’t think it was that bad.
“It’s terrible,” Sibling #4 chimes in. Then, because she does not share the same issues with personal space that the rest of us have, she swoops in right behind me and raises her hands up behind my head like an overly dramatic mime, if there is such a thing, imitating a cone. “From the back it makes your head look like a cone.” She doesn’t have to add that I have a long head to begin with. That’s understood. The long, horse face comes from Mother’s side of the family.
“Well, at least I don’t look like Laura!” I retort. Laura was our great aunt. She only wore black, wool coats on the rare days she ventured out, even if it was a hundred degrees outside. Her face bore a fairly constant scowl of disapproval. The appointment of a non-Italian pope caused the look to become permanently etched into Laura’s features. I now frequently see that same expression flit across Sibling #4’s face with greater regularity. Because she is Sibling #4, she doesn’t seem sufficiently concerned by this. Instead, when I bring it up, as I frequently must because I know she can’t help the expressions she makes, Sibling #4 adopts both the vocal tone and the facial expression with frightening accuracy. Perhaps this is only fitting. It was, after all, Sibling #4 that sensed something was amiss and called us from out of town to check on Laura, only moments before the hospital called to say Laura hadn't survived the surgery. Most people drink wine at family gatherings and take lots of pictures they can put up on facebook for all their “friends” to declare how stunningly lovely they are. We happily mock long dead relatives and attack each others Achilles heel. “At least my hair will eventually grow out,” I can’t help but to add. That is, if it doesn’t all continue to fall out from the stress.
Once we greet each other in this fashion, we all make haste to get the food on the table. The sooner everyone eats, the sooner everyone can go home. Like I’ve mentioned before, we don’t quite understand parties. Sibling #3, the host for this year’s Christmas non-event, is so eager to get us all fed, that I suggest next year we simply prepare to-go-boxes. Whoever is hosting, can have them ready so that the lunatic visitors need only pull up to the curb, roll down the window, and be on their merry way. As Sibling #3 likes to think she is the more social of the bunch, the only way to understand her eagerness to have us all gone is to either take it personally, or to assume that the stress of hosting a gathering is such that she can’t wait to slip out to the garage and don an entire tinfoil outfit. Who knows? Maybe she has even created one that looks like a Santa suit for the occasion.
After we eat, we get the out of town siblings on the horn. We are always slightly resentful that neither Sib ling #1 nor Sibling #2 has to endure the planning and execution of a lunatic holiday. We do our best to get Father on to a political topic when he is on the phone with them as this will guarantee they get to spend quality time with their Father on the holiday. Mother, meanwhile, lets out a snort every time she looks at my head.
After this, we reminisce about Christmases past. We mock Sibling #2’s globe like eyes that scanned the sky for Santa far into junior high and perhaps beyond. Inevitably, Sibling #3 always mentions how she was sent out at the age of six or seven to purchase Sibling #2’s present that would magically appear under the tree on Christmas morning. Sibling #3 has more of the martyr syndrome than the rest of us, although coming immediately after the golden child, perhaps it is understandable. Then, Sibling #3 begins to cackle as she recalls how Sibling #1 would buy candy bars for everyone as a present and when he’d get mad, he’d show us our present and eat it in front of us.
I remind the siblings of the quilted velvet dresses Mother had made for us that we would wear to midnight mass. “You mean the one with the green skirt and the cherries on the top part? That was mine,” Sibling #4 states. “That’s the one I wore when I won the Miss Peanut Queen contest”. Everyone needs something to be proud of so I don’t mention the picture of her wearing this dress in which her body looks like the size of an ant and her head looks like a giant balloon.
“No, not that dress. There were at least three of these quilted dresses and we would all wear them. Don’t you remember?” I prod.
“Wasn’t the dress pink?” Sibling #4 asks. And then Sibling #3 begins to cackle again as she very clearly remembers the pink dress and her role in ruining it. The pink dress was a long number that for some reason, even though I generally wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress, I loved. Sibling #6 was wearing it for my First Communion. As we were late, Sibling #3 and one of the other siblings were on either side of a very young Sibling #1, holding her hands as they ran along towards the church. They ran through the bus barns, which were right next to the church, and didn’t notice that they had dragged Sibling #6 and my pink dress through what was apparently a massive oil slick. As if we didn’t all look crazy enough running in late for my First Communion, there was poor Sibling #6, quite literally covered from head to toe in black oil.
The quilted dresses nobody remembers are quickly forgotten as, by this time, we all need air and head out for a walk. I’m guessing this is when normal people up their intake of alcohol. We simply escape for a while. When we have sufficiently soothed ourselves with a minor endorphin release, we head back to the house for dessert. Shortly after, we are all resting comfortably at our respective homes, sated and truly looking back with fondness on our family gathering, at about the time most people are only sitting down to their Christmas dinner.
A friend passing by in a car earlier today, stopped to chat and see if the kids had gotten what they wanted from Santa. There had been some question as to whether or not Santa would be able to acquire a popular electronic device that was seemingly out of stock everywhere. The friend was far more relieved than I was when he learned that Santa had come through with the device. When I suggest Santa would have just left an I.O.U. if he had failed to acquire it, the friend is clearly horrified. “What?” I ask in response to his horror. “One year Santa gave me an I.O.U. for a sweat suit from the Sears Outlet. I was probably seven or eight and I didn’t mind. I was happy enough with that. I think I even got the sweat suit eventually. What’s the big deal?” The friend just shook his head and said that explained a lot.
Of course, I have spent the days since Christmas studying my conical hair in a mirror. completely perplexed by how to remedy the situation aside from wearing a hat constantly. That, and wondering just how it is Sibling #3 is in possession of a photo of me from when I had the mumps. The Nephew, demonstrating the true Christmas spirit, happily posted the photo on the fridge for all to see. "You look like a guy," he says with a giant smirk. Actually, I look like a young man on steroids due to my massively swollen glands. The hat which I have taken to wearing, I am relieved to say, is a polyester blend mix. I have yet to fashion my own out of tinfoil, though I think we'd all understand if I did.
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