The Lie of Christmas
Now I could say that my upbringing was the root cause of my troubles, but that would only be half true. Don't get me wrong, my folks were good to me and my brother. They provided well for us and we always did things together. But, as a kid, you're not really conscious of the social dynamics at work in your family.
My mother was not always happy and the root cause of this was my father's irresponsibility, but I was unaware of these things. Only on a small childish level could I see something was wrong. My mom would cry sometimes and I didn't know why. She would fight with my dad a lot, which was a scary thing, but they never involved us in their quarrels or became physical with one another. I saw other kids parents do the same thing so it was not something I thought of as odd. There was only one time that my mother did something that truly frightened and confused me, and it was one Christmas morning when me and my brother had been fighting over a record player that they had given us.
You know how brothers can be. I wanted the record player, but my brother wanted it, too. I don't remember who actually received the record player as a present, but our fighting obviously ticked my mother off and she grabbed it away from us. My father came into the doorway of our bedroom and asked my mother what was going on and then they started arguing. In the middle of their argument my mother threw the record player on the floor and began to stomp on it until it was nothing but pieces. Me and my brother were like stone statues in our beds, not moving or even breathing. I had no idea why my mother destroyed the record player, and I felt a huge confusing surge of guilt, which was probably what my brother was feeling as well, because we both started crying. Finally my mother walked away and my father just stood there, looking at us. It was in this moment that I realized something profoundly disturbing about my father; he did not know what to do, and in his face I could see the weakness of this indecision like cracks in a sidewalk.
Christmas was a strange time. I think it is for most people. You're not really sure what it is your suppose to be celebrating and the premise that it's about a fat guy in a red suit doesn't really wash, unless you're a total idiot. Unfortunately, most kids are in this regard. We depend on our parents to teach us the truth about these things and when that truth is distorted and we discover the lie we loose a portion of the trust we had in them.
It was a different Christmas. Me, my brother, and my folks were over at our neighbor's house. A woman who I can only remember as having a very kind face surrounded by a huge bush of troubled black hair was serving us punch or something. Everyone was talking and I was at the huge picture window that looked out over the empty field between our two houses. I was staring at the window to our living room, watching anxiously to see the big fat guy in the red suit, because I wanted to see him as he put presents under our tree. My parents told me he was real and I believed them. My parents would always get agitated at my anxiety over the fat guy. I couldn't wait for morning to come so I could brainlessly tear open wrapped boxes and ogle over the material objects I had been given. My brother was the same way, but in a less psychotic manner. When we were finally home I laid awake for what seemed forever, and then I had to pee. I got up and walked out into the living room and there were my parents, placing the wrapped objects under our tree. I stared at them and they stared back at me. There was a brief interval when nobody moved. I can still see them in my mind, frozen like some horrible Kodak moment gone wrong. It was my parents who moved first, and they did so slowly, walking over to me and then leading me to the couch. To tell the truth I can't really remember how I felt. I have a vague sense of something heavy and sinking as I listened to both of them try to explain the reasons for why they lied. Which, for me, was really quite confusing. I mean, if the jolly red fat guy wasn't real, then why did they tell me he was? What was that all about? I couldn't understand, and hearing them try to explain it as if it was something that couldn't be helped made it worse.
I was the one who told my brother, and I have no idea how this made him feel because we have never discussed it since, but for me that was a turning point of sorts. I did not trust my parents for a long time afterward, and whenever they told me something I wondered if it was a lie and if I could ever believe anything they said again. It was terrible. But that is the magic of being a kid; you can overcome stuff like that and move on. It's just too bad you can't carry that ability into adulthood.
[excerpt from the novel, Sojourn, by D. C. Wayne]