The Joys of an Imperfect Christmas

Seven years ago on December 23, 2000, as I drove my two-door Saturn along I-80 to visit my family in Iowa for Christmas, I complained to my friend, Loren, who had agreed to ride with me to Iowa City where his parents lived, that I was weary of the same old Christmas routine. At 36 and single, I typically drove to Iowa for the holidays, and spent a week absorbing my mother’s perfectionism and anxiety, observing my siblings’ families celebrate together, and mourning my singleness. I was hungry for a change in scenery – not just at Christmas, but in my life in general. And for some reason blamed this on my mother, who took upon herself a frenzy at Christmas, wanting everything to be perfect for her children and grandchildren, cleaning and decorating the house obsessively, shopping 24/7 to find the perfect gifts for every family member, planning the traditional holiday meals, and basically doling out packages of stress to everyone around her. Perfectionism – the gift that keeps on giving.

Mom’s Christmas frenzy was often hard for me to take. I wanted her to sit down and just BE. I craved peace at Christmas, not perfectionism. I now realize while her perfectionism drove her….so did her love. She wanted Christmas to be the perfect experience – for us. But at the time, I couldn’t see that. Seven years ago, she was the easiest one to blame for what I perceived as the sorry state of affairs in my life. I longed to be normal and married, like my siblings, who traveled to see in-laws every-other Christmas, leaving me as the pathetic “single” who hung out with her parents like an unpopular high-school student left at home to play Scrabble with mom and dad on prom night.

I think back on the conversation in the car with Loren and the guilt overwhelms me. I wanted things to be different. Be careful what you ask for. About an hour later my life changed irrevocably when my brother told me, as I talked to him on my cellphone in the frozen parking lot of an Amoco station, that my mother had died of a heart attack at approximately 11:00 that morning, as she was wrapping gifts to make our Christmas perfect because she loved us.

I thought about that Christmas seven years ago, as I do every year, as David and I drove to Dallas to visit his parent. Yes, I now have in-laws to visit, but it's not the scenario I imagined.

My mother-in-law has Alzheimers. I don’t think she knows who I am. At our rehearsal dinner the night before David and I got married 2 and a half years ago, she turned to me and asked “Is it somebody’s birthday?” I laughed as I helped her cut her pizza. It was sad and funny, but I was in too much of a wedding daze to let it affect me.

She has declined since then. She now lives in an assisted living home, recently broke her hip, so she can no longer walk. Someone has to help feed her. She barely talks, and when she does, it like an infant babbling. Her life has come full circle.

As David and I drove through sunny and flat Oklahoma, I thought about how much my Christmas routine has changed. To be honest, I was dreading this holiday. David and I were going to stay in his parents empty house (it’s going on the market soon), visit them in the assisted living home, and try to play peacemakers to his feuding siblings. Fun Christmas.

I had imagined a mother-in-law who would become a friend. I imagined Christmases with the two of us cooking up a meal in the kitchen together, and hearing stories about my husband’s childhood. Maybe even a confidant, a second mother with the luxury of less baggage than a biological mother. What I got was a mother-in-law who doesn’t even recognize me.

But there were gifts found in unexpected places throughout our week in Dallas. It was sunny and I felt my normal Christmas depression lifting as I sat out by the swimming pool and the sun warmed my face. It was too chilly to swim or sunbathe, but just having the sun on my face lifted my spirits. And the week was a lesson, for me, on learning better how to love. I knew it would be a difficult week. I wasn’t expecting much. So I took Anne Lammot’s words to heart: “We’re not hungry for what we don’t have. We’re hungry for what we don’t give”. So I decided I would do the giving.

On Christmas Day I offered to cook a squash lasagna. My sister-in-law, Kelly, and niece-in-law, Chelsea, are both vegetarians, so we collaborated to make some great veggie dishes for Christmas dinner. It was a gift spending time with them in the kitchen, as I got to know them better and all three of us talked about our love for animals and how we became vegetarians. We put together an awesome Christmas dinner, with lots of veggie dishes. We had brought David’s mom and Dad home from the assisted living home, and they seemed to enjoy the time with their family.

Then a few days later my niece-in-law’s daughter, who is only 2, spiked a high temperature and became really sick – so I went with the two of them to Emergency Room. We spent 5 hours there, and I got to know Chelsea, a single mom, a little better and fell in love with Rylie, her daughter. Rylie and I are now best buds.

On Friday David and I want to the Assisted Living home to visit his parents. Emma Lee, David’s mom, was sitting in a room full of basically catatonic Alzheimer’s patients. They were all fully dressed, and some were sitting around a table. We could tell all of the patients were cared for and loved. But what do you do with a room full of adults that can’t talk, walk, or even interact, really?

We wheeled Emma Lee into the hallway and tried to talk with her, which wasn’t easy. But she smiled occasionally and we struggled to make conversation. We sat next to a piano, and I tentatively started playing hymns from a Baptist hymnal. I can only play songs with no sharps or flats – and only the right hand notes. This after 7 years of piano lessons. My mother, who was an accomplished church pianist and wanted me to be one, too, would have cringed.

I started with a few Christmas carols, like “Silent Night” and “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” Then we moved onto old Baptist standards like “At Calvary” and “When We All Get to Heaven” and “Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded.”

Emma Lee tried to join in singing a few hymns. I saw a spark in her eyes, and she seemed to come out of her Alzheimer’s coma for a few minutes. David started crying.

And I felt my mother there with us – my head is filled with images of her sitting at the upright piano, playing hymns from the Baptist hymnal, much more eloquently than I was playing. It seemed fitting that my mother and my mother-in-law were there together at this utterly imperfect Christmas, as I eked out hymns about a Christ-child who gave us the gift of himself that we might have hope. Then I realized I no longer felt hungry.