Maul Out the Holly

Few things bring a family together (or tear it asunder) like a holiday celebration.  The gathering together of any family unit tends to bring to the fore an endless supply of emotions, and for better or worse, a single day can ignite a powder keg of hostility, forever marring the collective memory of an occasion, and as such, entering the realm of Family Legend.

One of the consequences of living in America has been the gradual disintegration of time-honored family traditions; increased access to personal motor vehicles over the past century has allowed people to finally do what had long been a secret fantasy - escape the restrictive clutches of their families' grasps.  For the first time in human history, leaving one's old life behind is as easy as jumping into your car and driving as far away as your gas tank and wallet will allow.

Imagine, for example, if Romeo and Juliet could have hopped into their FIAT and simply driven out of fair Verona, escaping the tyranny of their controlling families.  They may very well have avoided their star-crossed tale of woe, and spared scores of high school students the indignity of enduring any number of poorly adapted or acted student renditions.

The relative ease of fast relocation has allowed people to start their lives anew, free from the fetters of in-person familial interaction.  This has spared millions of people like myself - those who would rather endure a Tommy Gun-capacity volley of Tetanus shots, rather than spend an entire day immersed in a seemingly never ending deluge of family engagements - the horror of a bland holiday feast amidst the deafening din of that inevitably accompanies large family gatherings.

As for myself, shortly after reaching the age of majority, I made my best effort to strike out on my own.  To be fair, as time has passed (and elder family members, along with it), the unifying bonds that once held our families together, ensuring that all but the most far flung family members returned with homing pigeon reliability, retain little of their adhesive properties.  No longer do the out-of-state family members drive six hours out of their way to spend a single afternoon languishing in nutmeggy fumes, pretending that the drive was worth the cost and effort.

My parents divorced when I was four, leaving me with two separate family holidays to celebrate.  To my way of thinking, this afforded me the opportunity to make a real killing, as far as presents were concerned.  Being a child of the 1980s, I wholeheartedly took up the mantle of the Me Generation, greedily accepting - nay...expecting - to be presented with gifts, as if I were, in fact, the baby Jesus.

While virtually every child attempts to manipulate their way into receiving more gifts, not many children, at the time, had the luxury of doing so twice.  The further inclusion of my step-father's family meant that, come Hell or high water, I was certain to get everything I asked for, plus several things I never knew I wanted.  So long as the presents continued to come, I didn't hesitate to accept them with all the grace and civility of a pig being presented with his evening slop.

The holidays were, however, celebrated differently on each side of the family.  Being the least family-oriented member of both parents' parties, I went out of my way to ensure that my displeasure at being forced to attend these gatherings was well-expressed and plainly written.

My mother's family home would become the very picture of what I still consider to be the "Family Christmas."  Christmas at the Ayersman household resembled, to some degree, a meeting of Branch Davidians.  The guest list was comprised primarily of family - grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins - no branch of the family tree was too flimsy to warrant an open invitation, and there was no end to the swirl of activity.

Devout Pentecostals, the Ayersman Family never made available an alcoholic beverage, and yet, despite the lack of intoxication, the chaos would reach a fever pitch by the three-quarter mark of the evening.  Children ran throughout the house, virtually unchecked by their otherwise engaged parents, and were only brought to heel if their behavior in any way inconvenienced one of the adults.

On my father's side of the family, holiday fetes extended beyond familial ties, and out into the entire neighborhood.  My grandparents were heavily invested in the First Ward community, in Morgantown, WV, and had made friends whose last names were known by every member of the Hopkins household.  Come Christmas Eve, friends and neighbors would walk, drive, or fly to attend the annual Christmas Eve Cocktail Party.

More than just holiday celebrations, Walter and Mary Ann celebrated a daily Cocktail Hour; their youngest child's arrival was, actually, heralded over martinis, and I have visions of my grandmother gently sipping her cocktail as her water broke, and only surrendering it from her well-manicured hands at the insistence of a matronly nurse, just before being asked to kindly extinguish her cigarette prior to delivering the baby.

This kind of drunken revelry was a daily occurrence; that a holiday served as the reason for a gathering only meant more people were around to join the party.  Regardless of the occasion, the Hopkins Residence more closely resembled a busy airport terminal, rather than a family home.  Any and all comers could stand assured that, were they to stop by, they would be both fed and plied with alcohol.  Guests would arrive sober, and teeter out of the house hours later having little recollection of what or how much was imbibed, over the course of the evening.

If the Hopkins House served as the den of iniquity for drunken soirees, my mother's family home served as the picture of chaotic sobriety.  That said, it was expected that all guests, regardless of their age, comport themselves with dignity and a certain sense of decorum - when one attended a Hopkins gathering, it would never have done to behave as if one were at a frat party.  The Ayersmans, however, held with no such pretense, and no one's behavior was censured.

Perhaps it was the greater insistence upon the family unit that kept my mother's family coming together for so many years, but for whatever reason, it was the Hopkins Family that was the first to break apart.  The death of my grandfather in 2003 served as the linchpin whose pulling led to the rapid dissolution of the Hopkins family unit.

The holiday season, in particular, presented potential guests with an uncomfortable conundrum - how does one address the elephant in the room?  Further to that end, for how long is it appropriate to offer condolences, knowing that each holiday is spent in the absence of the family patriarch?  When one-half of a power couple dies, events that were once co-hosted become glaringly singular efforts, leaving the onus of gracious hospitality upon the sole survivor.  There's truly no easy way to move forward with those types of celebratory events without someone inevitably, and usually inadvertently, turning it into a memorial service.

No one felt this awkwardness more so than my grandmother.  Within a few years of her husband's passing, she effectively abandoned the practice of hosting holiday festivities.  Even before his death, neither of them really had either the interest or the energy required to even erect the giant tree to which we'd become accustomed, much less to put together an in-home event for up to fifty people.  Left to conduct business on her own, the monarch of the family simply stopped putting forth the effort, though never once did she turn away a friendly face.

As the tide of guests tapered out to a depressing low, the Christmas Eve Cocktail Party was the first tradition to fall to the ravages of time.  Eventually, the slow trickle petered out to an intermittent drip, until even family members stopped bothering to attend.  Children had become less manageable, as their parents became more permissive, and the family friends whose names had worn even treads across our lips either passed away or simply faded into memories, sending their well wishes in the form of cards, rather than dressing in their finest.

Amplifying the loss of this time honored tradition was my grandmother's relatively rapid decline into Alzheimer's Disease.  But, while her short-term memory quickly eroded, her silver tongue remained rapier sharp, the serrated edges no less finely honed by the haziness of her mind.  If anything, Alzheimer's gave Mary Ann the freedom to speak without her carefully tuned filter, turning her into a dagger-mouthed harpy delivering unfiltered personal jabs, each incision executed with surgical precision, every verbal slash a fatal stroke, designed to swiftly disarm what I can only assume she perceived to be a mental fencing opponent.

Family tended to be the only visitors she entertained, and so this muted sense of decorum inevitably resulted in wounded pride and deep offense.  No relative escaped her overt hostility, and over time, even those most understanding eventually reached their saturation point and stopped coming around, altogether.

The last Christmas I spent at the Hopkins House was in 2010.  After a decade of calculated avoidance, I finally made the effort to travel back to Morgantown to visit my extended family.  My then-partner had accompanied me, because I wanted him to meet his potential in-laws; his secondary function as a support system was just a welcomed surprise.

Some of my fondest childhood memories involve arriving at the Hopkins House a few days before Christmas.  Christmases at the Hopkins House were more than just neverending cocktail parties.  In a community where decorating one's house was the way of the day, the Hopkins Family went out of its way to ensure that everyone in the neighborhood knew of its holiday supremacy.

The winding stone steps leading to the front door were lit by the brightly gleaming colored lights wound 'round the handrail, bulbs so big and energy inefficient that Mon Power went into overtime providing the electricity.  The shrub tree around which the railing spiraled was equally festooned, so overlit, it could be seen by overhead planes.  The living room's picture window, visible from the street atop a short rise, completed the picture, opening onto a monstrous tree.

The eight-foot tree was always perfectly centered in that window, and every square inch was adorned with family ornaments, collected for most of the 20th Century, each representative of successive generations, lit only by the glow of the brightly colored lights woven throughout the tree.

Gifts spilled out from underneath the tree, the first of which having been shoved so far back and up that they actually wound up tangled between the tree branches.  By the time Christmas Eve arrived, every available surface served to hold the overflow, and walking through the living room had become virtually impossible.  Eventually, as ever more parcels continued to pour in, piles were formed behind every piece of furniture not fully flush against the wall, and after that space had been exhausted, every room save the bathroom was used for present storage.

As a child, and well into my teen years, I would marvel at this display, inevitably giving in to temptation and rooting through the garishly wrapped presents, myopic in my hunt for any "To:" label with my name attached to it.  With each new discovery, I would violently shake the gifts in hopes of dislodging the contents enough to give forth audible clues that might lead to their positive identification.

Come Christmas Day, I would tear through the hundreds of presents, collecting every gift meant for me, and wait for permission to open each one.  My Fisher-Price Little People Main Street playset that accompanied my inherited Little People Play Family Action Garage playset; my first Nintendo Entertainment System; the copy of Mega Man III from my father - almost every Christmas gift I remember receiving was opened in the Hopkins House.

In the late 90s, my grandmother finally put her foot down, and insisted upon "classier" small, white bulbs for the tree, and it was then that my love of Christmas started to die.  The walls and ceiling, once so softly cast in muted rainbows made from reflections of the metal ornaments, and in their place, the unforgiving glare of white light, casting harsh shadows, rather than subtle glows.

After a day of driving along snow covered West Virginian backroads, the house we pulled up to little resembled the house of my childhood memories.  The house stood out against the overcast sky, not because of any garish decorations, but because of the void created by its lack of jollity.  Gone was the shrub, the handrail devoid of any light.  The curtains were drawn in the picture window, and through the slight gap, I could see that little remained of "my" Christmas.

In 2010, there were no mounds of presents to ransack; no hordes stampeding through the house to offer their season's greetings; just my grandmother, my partner, and me, sitting in the living room.  The eight-foot family tree had been replaced with a four-foot tree placed atop the marble top coffee table, beneath which laid no wrapped boxes.  The living room, once rendered impassable by the tsunami of gifts, was haunting in its cold emptiness, devoid of all, but the barest decorations, and even those seemed to be swallowed by the emptiness around them.

Despite having been forewarned of my grandmother's progression into Alzheimer's Disease, I was wholly unprepared for the reality that visiting with her presented.  While I expected the frailty that comes with old age, her inability to retain new information caught me off guard, as I fielded her usual barrage of probing questions, each one asked not once, but four or five times.  Having some experience working with dementia, I put forth my best effort to remain jovial, rephrasing answers I had proffered not five minutes earlier.

Shortly after my partner and I arrived, my aunt and her family joined us - the only family members who chose to visit the matriarch on Christmas Day.  But, even this company served only to further divest me of my childhood memories, as she, too, had fallen prey to the ravages of illness.  Accompanied by her oxygen tank, her husband and children helped her into the house, and for the first time, I began to realize how poorly our family had weathered the passage of time.  Her now teenaged daughters little resembled the children with whom I'd once romped, and the only person who remained virtually unchanged in appearance was her husband.

Shortly after their arrival, I excused my partner and myself to go see the view from the back porch.  He and I walked to the edge, and gazed out across the snow covered hill overlooking the Monongahela River and the Morgantown Lock & Dam.

And it was there, inundated by the systematic dissolution of my childhood memories, that I began to silently weep.

This was the last Christmas I got to spend with my grandmother, and I will fully admit that I came away from the experience looking like a complete and utter cad.  My first real interaction with my extended family in a decade, and it was all I could do not to dissolve into a blubbering mess and make the occasion all about me, and my emotions.

When it came time to leave for our hotel, I didn't leave, so much as flee from the house, after which I attempted to drive the car through my haze of tears.  My father called roughly fifteen minutes after I had left to tell me that I needed to go back to the house, as my grandmother had forgotten to give me my Christmas present - $200 - which meant that I had to muster together the effort to comport myself to a presentable standard.

Accepting the cash gift from my Alzheimer's addled grandmother left me feeling both humble and small, and took from me the last vestige of Christmas cheer.  Having wept all the tears I could stand, I took both my partner and the cash to "the" gay bar in town.  We were the only two customers, there, and we spent the evening sipping cocktails, while he listened to me speak of my devastation.  That he was such a supportive partner speaks highly of him, and for that night, I will be eternally grateful.

To this day, I can't think of any Christmas outside the context of my childhood experiences, and the absence of those traditions, as well as the subsequent family skirmishes that have followed in the wake of my grandmother's death, still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.  The house that served as the center of gravity for our family is now up for sale, and there's no small part of me that doesn't wish I had the money to buy it, outright, if only to preserve, and hopefully restore the family traditions that once held us all together.

It's an odd switch, for me - someone whose idea of "family" was once an annual inconvenience.  That I have this strange desire to play the family patriarch - the Fairy Poppins to my wayward family - creates in me a sense of dread, not because I fear that I'm getting old, but because I always saw a lot of myself in my grandmother.

I'm cynical, at the best of times; "curmudgeonly" is an adjective I've often heard in conjunction with my comportment.  From my grandmother, I inherited my rapier wit, stiletto tongue, and baselard gaze, but managed to escape without any sense of appropriate timing.  What I lack in decorum, I make up for in brutality.  At thirty-two, I already behave in much the way she did toward the end of her life, and yet, I don't have the convenience of being able to blame overt hostility and acerbity on Alzheimer's.

And that, in and of itself, makes me sad.  I do want to revive the Hopkins Family Christmas Eve Cocktail Party, and if I'm ever in a position to make that happen, I shall.

To this day, I can remember waking up in the middle of the night and wandering out into the living room to look at the Christmas tree, the colorful lights transforming the room into a kaleidoscope of red, orange, magenta, green, and blue.  I would open the front door, and gaze out into the silently falling snow, turned pale orange by the street lights along Callen Avenue, only to turn around to find my grandmother, sitting in equal silence on the couch, the burning tip of her cigarette leaving intricate trails as she smoked, unable to sleep.