wakeangel

Just so you know, this is not my favorite time of year. What does Christmas/Hanukkah mean to you? To me, for more years than I can count, it has been a time of dissappointment. Mostly in my family or in later years where my life has lead as each year has passed. It would seem that nothing has really turned out the way I thought it would. In my early years my father did everything possible to avoid any responsibility in raising my brother and I. As I got older my mother also began this process. In my teen years family would come over and drink alot, watch football games and scream racist and horrible things at the tv when someone dropped or a ball or missed a tackle. The older I got the more disgusted I became with my family. There never seemed to be much love there. Oh sure we all love each other in our own way but it always seemed so disingenuous, so... fake. No one ever really took the time to get to know each other. As I moved into my twenties the chasm between my family and I grew to epic proportions. My brother, mother, and stepfather moved away and I heard less and less from any other members of the family. By the time I was twenty-one my mother started spending Christmas with her husbands' family and my brother and I were not invited. She would call when passing through Dallas on the way to North Carolina and say I'm in town for an hour let's have dinner. Gee mom, are you sure you can spare the time? This changed when my his parents passed. This is what my mother had to say a couple of years ago, "Now that John's parents are dead it would be nice to see you for Christmas again"... hmmm. Not the most compassionate of people my mother. My father on the other hand is one big, walking, cowboy dressing bundle of emotion. Over the past several years my father has made peace with himself and perhaps finally realized his mortality and has decided to take an active interest in his son's lives. This I am deeply greatful for. I love my father dearly and always have, even when it was hard to. I think I am more forgiving of my father in these later years because he seems so much more sincere than my mother. For the first time my dad came to see me this summer and I enjoyed this visit beyond words. I did things with my father that I'd always wanted to do. We went to dinner, we went to bars, we did touristy things around Oregon. Things I'd always wanted to do, but have never done with my parents. My mother and stepfather never really took us anywhere of great importance. Mostly down to the coast in Texas or the occasional ski trip (well three times). They usually went on vacation by themselves. Oops, I'm getting off topic a bit. At any rate as the years have gone on Christmas has been a time for me to relfect on how I'd really like things to be. I've always wanted to be in love, to marry the woman I love, to build a life together, to be a part of each other's dreams, hopes, passions. To have children and give them all the love in our hearts. Show them how the world works. To be there on christmas morning and watch them scream with delight at the toys, show feigned interste in the clothes they get and then as teenagers, the utter dissappointment that they didn't get a car or something (teenagers... jeez). This is what Christmas means to me, or rather what I'd like it to be. A time when the family I never had would eventually become the family that I build or become a part of. There are worse things in this world than waking up in house alone on Christmas morning and there is much to be thankful for. As I listen to and read the news from around the world I see that there are thousands of people in Pakistan and the Kashmir region who are are beginning to freeze to death because their goverments can't take care of them. There are millions of people in Africa infected with HIV, malaria and other diseases. Watching their children die from malnutrition. Being slaughtered senselessly by other ethnic groups in so called "revolutions" to over-throw corrupt governments and then replace them with even more corrupt and destructive governments. There is a nation of truly good, hard working and caring people who have become monsters in the eyes of the world because of one man and his cabinet of robber-barons. And for what? To have more shit than you will ever need in this world? So this Christmas I say there is little to be merry about and much work to be done. But I'll raise a glass and say a prayer for those people that are doing something. Those unsung hero's that go to the ends of the earth to help where it is needed. To the angels on the shoulder of humanity I say thank you and Merry Christmas!