Christmas Lessons

"Hija, staring at it won't make the lights magically put themselves up."

The smart-mouthed remark from my mother was like burning salt to my wounded ego. In the glacial twilight December air, I had been scowling at the staple gun for at least ten minutes, cursing it into oblivion. How sad, I was 22 and still couldn't use the damn thing. You would think that, by now, its design would have been reimagined, so the trigger didn't feel like wrestling with Hercules.

My mom always bore this saying into me as a child; no one is perfect, it's okay to admit when you can't do something. I'll be damned if I didn't do everything in my power to avoid that. Pride is my weakness and asking for help was like telling the Pope that he must admit that religion is a farce for control as an alien species threatens to obliterate the planet; he'll only do it if he has no other choice.

Eyes shifting from the staple gun to the Christmas lights littering the weathered, goop gray front porch, I knew I was out of options if I wanted this done today. It was the same every year, but that never stopped me from trying at least.

"Fine," I groaned as my shoulders slumped, "I'll get dad."

I quickly stepped through the front door and was immediately greeted by balmy air sending goosebumps racing through my scalp and down my legs. I must have been outside longer than I thought because my cheeks protested and cheered at the sudden contact with the new atmosphere. Swirls of emerald and garnet decorations flooded the whole first floor of our home. The left-over sticky sent of fresh honey bread lingered in the air refreshing my taste buds of the fluffy goodness making me want to take a quick coffee break. Mom and I had really gone all out this year. Christmas was our thing, we always wanted to give Mrs. Clause a run for her money for best decorations of the season.

The TV pulled my attention back with blaring Spanish commentary for a Colombian soccer game. Ant-sized players dashed across a vale of crisp turf in colorful uniforms, I recognized them well; it was the third time this match graced our living room. My father sat in the recliner directly across from the 62-inch screen. I wondered why my father did this. Always re-watching the same games over and over again, day after day. It's not like the outcome would change if he watched it a fourth time. Maybe it just gave him something to do. Maybe he liked to pretend that he was a player on the field, sweating and breathing in the adrenalin. Or he just needed sothing to fall asleep to. He was just blankly staring at the screen; I wasn't even sure that he was even watching the game.

"Dad?" I called out to him, wondering if my voice would reach him in his zombie-like state.

"What." He never looked away from the screen.

"Can you help us outside with the Christmas lights?" I tried to sound nice and respectful. "It's too hard for me to use the staple gun."

"Christmas lights? Again?! What for?" He exclaimed finally facing me and standing from his chair. His wrinkles etched themselves into the sides of his mouth with a glower as he continued.

"Christmas is only one day! Why do you and your mother ha to hang up lights every year? What's the point?"

Every year was the same bad attitude when I asked for help. The same disdain for anything that was Christmas related. It was draining trying to work around taht type of energy. And I was just about out of patience. At the time, I was damn proud of myself for putting my foot down as I did.

"Because Dad! IT'S CHRISTMAS!" My heart writhed. I had expected him to complain. Maybe whine that it was too cold or that we were interrupting his game, but not this. Tears burned the corner of my eyes as I yelled.

"Lights are part of Christmas! And they're pretty! And make people happy! They make mom and me happy! As if you would give a damn about that." Words had power, and I let the ones that bit the hardest find their target. I couldn't and wouldn't hold back my temper. The dragoness had unleashed her fire, and it felt good to see her prey's face contort.

"Don't talk to me like that; I'm your father, you will respect me." His tone was stern, but I could sense a layer of hurt that he tried to hide. Good.

"If you don't want me to talk to you like that, then don't act like a jerk." His eyes grew wide, never breaking contact.

"Being my father doesn't just get you a free pass to say whatever you want, especially when it hurst my feelings or insults something that means something to me." We stared at each other. His wounded heart was plain to see for anyone who might come in.

I looked down at my feet, no longer able to look him in the eye. My anger that I had fet I so righteously wielded, faded into a shameful simmer. It's amazing how letting things out always seem to take your will with it. Just seconds before I felt like I was finally able to put him in his place, and he would realize that he had been wrong. Now, I just felt like an asshole.

I didn't like talking to my father that way, honestly; I loved him. He was still my father, but I was not about to let him ruin one of the things I loved most. I get that there are people who don't like Christmas, but at least, he could respect how I felt about it and try to make the most of it.

I don't know when, but he grabbed his coat and brushed past me. I turned just in time to see him shut the door as he walked out. The thump of the door echoed in my mind, my breathing faltered, and I faded into a Christmas from long ago that I had buried but never forgotten

***

"But daddy I wanna go with you!" My screechy 7-year-old voice resounded through the narrow hallway chasing after my father who was trudging his way for the front door, luggage in hand. His bags were filled with anything he would need to spend December and most of January in the Colombian tropics. No one told me he was leaving; no one thought it would matter because I was only seven. But it mattered because I was seven.

"You can't come with me. You would miss too much school." He grunted, stumbling as he adjusted his backpack and the suitcase. His response held no hesitation, maybe a little annoyance, but I never heard it.

"That's okay; I can make it up! Mommy can talk to the teacher, and she can give me the work like that one time!" My little heart pounded in my chest as it filled with the hope that I could convince Daddy to take me with him.

"Right Mommy!?" I wanted to be with my daddy! I glanced at my mother as she stood near the door to her room. All I got was flushed cheeks and eyes that could not keep my expectant gaze.

"I already said no." His firm voice manifested his impatience as my hopes sank to the ground.

'No. It's not fair!' Dread set in as I saw how close my father was to the front door.

"But Daddy, you're not fair! You're gonna miss Christmas, and New Year's and my birthday!" My face heated as my heart raced and ached from panic and hurt. I began to shake as tears flooded from my eyes.

"You're gonna be gone again! You leave every year! You always miss everything, and I want my daddy with me!" My voice shook and broke, my tears now falling in fat drops hoping to quench and fill my father's Death Valley heart.

"Please Daddy...I just want to spend Christmas, and New Year's and my birthday with you...please...you're never there..." I stammered and gasped, my lips shuddered with my pleas.

'I want my daddy. I want my daddy with me. Why was that such a bad thing? Why doesn't he want to be with me?'

"Enough. Stop your crying and your dramatics. You know I go to Colombia to spend the holidays with the family." My heart was mauled at the sharpness of those words, and I double over. I couldn'tell if he was looking at me, I couldn't tell if he saw what he did, I was sobbing too much and too hard and my eye were too swollen to tell. How could a grown man say that to a child?

"BUT I'M YOUR FAMILY! MOMMY AND I ARE YOUR FAMILY! WHY DON'T WE COUNT?" I shrieked at the top of my lungs as I rushed to his legs, hanging on and digging my nails into his stiff, worn jeans.

'Why don't I matter!'

He said nothing, peeling me off and pushing me aside as he made his way to the door.

"No!" My heart pounded, the distress and agony melding past the point where I could tell which one was worse. I dashed to the door as fast as I could and clamped my hands around the doorknob so he couldn't open it.

"IT'S NOT FAIR! PLEASE DONT GO, DADDY! PLEASE!" I screamed, throwing my head back to look up at him and securing my feet to the ground. I won't let him go! If he can't open the door, he can't leave! In my mind, I thought I could do it; I thought I could keep him there by sheer will. If he saw bow determined I was, then maybe, he would stay.

"Move." His voice was unyielding and, from what I could see though my waterfall of tears, his eyes were as cold as the snow that I used to make my snowman just days before.

"NOOO!" I sobbed and screamed and kicked. His calloused hands skinned my weak and petite ones from the doorknob. The searing pain of my heart was pouring from my eyes, giving company to may wails. I fell to the carpeted floor along with my heart as we drowned in the realization of our value.

"DADDY PLEASE! PLEASE DON'T GO!" My crying and pleading never creased and only got louder, making my voice hoarse as I desperately clawed at the suitcase that was dragged through the threshold. The only response to my gaping wound was the firm and final click of a closing door.

***t

My mind was ripped from this scarred over memory as frosty, gentle hands held my face.

"Hija, what's wrong?" Creamy, honey eyes framed with crow's feet bore into mine. They were the salve to my sores. "Don't tell me you fought with your father." Her voice reflected concern mixed with mild chastisement.

"Yea." My mother's lips pursed but said nothing.

"Just leave it mom, please. Let's finish the lights"

The next few hours were awkward, with minimal interaction. I wanted to entomb the memory and the wounds that still seemed too raw to deal with.

When every little decoration was where it was supposed to ne, the three of us stood in front of the house under the star-speckled sky. We watched how the colorful array of lights engulfed our home and created a new world, no matter how temporary. I was ecstatic to see the ballet of illuminating color, but my heart had the weight of 40-pound dumbbells. The moment was bittersweet as I secretly eyed my father.

I wish I had said something. At the very least, sorry. I had hurt him; I know I had. I wanted to hurt him; I wanted him to hurt as much as he had hurt me. But somehow it bothered me, but I kept my mouth shut. I saw the spider silk think hair taht was whiter than I remembered; I saw the wilting shoulders that spoke of too many years of overnight shifts at the paper mill factory; I saw the deep fissure like wrinkles that were too jagged and too overrun by liver spots. For once I didn't see my father, as my father, but as a man. An old man. A tired, old man.

He was more than just a father. He was a man, a friend, a cousin, a brother, a son, husband, and who knows what else. Each role has its own rules, its own trials, and its own set of life choices. While I was so focused on one side of him, I never considered the other people he had to be. I never considered the life he might have had outside of his father role or the life he had before me. I realized that just as I had been a child, he too was once a child with parents that he made gray with his antics. He was a scared, doubtful teen once, trying to define himself and his place in the world. He was a defeated young adult once, just hanging onto life and trying to find his way.

He was a person trying to make the best decisions he could in the only was he knew how. Just like me, he is only human, and no one is perfect.

I never asked why he left me behind crying on the floor. I'm not sure he even remembers the Christmas that left me so full of resentment. I probably won't ever ask him and besides, you can't fix trauma with an explanation. However, I have learned to see my father for more than just the person who hurt me.

I won't say I forgave him, that would be a lie. I also won't say that I apologized because I didn't. But I will say that I never held my father's past choices against him again.

"Merry Christmas, Daddy."

"It's not Christmas yet."