A Very Special Christmas…

At about 4 pm on Christmas Eve, just as I was stepping out of the shower, a massive cold front blew in, and blew our power out with it. Snuff. Out went the electricity, along with any chances for me to blow dry my hair. It flickered on and off and then it just went O.F.F.

I got my makeup on with a flashlight and prayed for lights. We tried to decide what to do, skip church, or wait it out, and finally my mom said, “oh, just put a hat on.” So, that’s exactly what I did. I heard all kinds of peanut gallery comments on the way there. Robert said “just gel it down before Christmas dinner.” Great. I am not going looking like Princess Diana in 1992. My mom said, “just SCRUNCH it up.” We went from Diana, to the late 1990′s. The wet, gelled, scrunched look? I kept the cap on. My mom tried to make me feel better. “You’ll set a new fashion trend for sure!” Bahahahaha! If the ‘your power just went out’ look comes into style, thank me! Yep, I sang Silent Night with a lit candle, hoping the lady behind me didn’t get to close to my cap and catch my head on fire.

Church in a hat.

After church, we always have a family dinner at a nice restaurant. For years, we’ve had the dinner with my mom on Christmas Eve, and with my dad a few days later. This year, we decided to go all out and have one big dinner. We went to a very nice restaurant, all of us one big happy family.

Me, Robert, the boys.

My mom.

My dad.

Mom and Bob

My step-dad.

Jay (my step-dad’s best friend, who is super nice, but looks sort of like a serial killer.)

Paul, a family friend here from England, who probably wondered about half way through the evening where the hell he had landed.

Can’t you just feel the love here?

Imagine the 9 of us, at a fancy dinner with candles on the table and dimly lit rooms, my step-dad Bob at one end of the table, my crew at the other end, and the rest of us in the middle.

My mom had been looking forward to this forever, this was her big treat for all of us, her dinner.

My children inhaled the calamari.

My dad inhaled the escargot.

My mom inhaled the wine.

My step dad told a Tiger Woods joke about Tiger having too many HO, HO, HO’s, and I thought it was hysterical, until the kids spit the punchline out and I realized they knew as many HO jokes as he did.

My dad ordered a $75 bottle of wine, which was fabulous.

Imagine my mom’s eyes when he ordered two more.

What she didn’t realize was that my dad had slipped the waiter his credit card on the way in, so he could cover the dinner.

Me and Dad, gelled hair (on me, not him.)

So, my dad’s ordering expensive wine, my mom was drinking every last drop of it and thinking that SHE is paying for the wine her ex-husband is ordering like it’s free Sprite refills, my kids are telling Tiger Woods HO jokes with my step dad, Jay is on his I-phone asking me how the hell the pictures I’d just taken of them are already on Facebook, and Paul is in the middle, looking at all of us, and my husband was slurping up snails. Hmmm.

Imagine the chaos when the waiter brought the bill, my step dad tried to pay, the poor waiter broke the news that beat them to the tab, and my mom had by then consumed most of that expensive wine and was two shakes short of standing on the table and giving a speech. Or a dance. We’ll never know, thank goodness.

When Nana’s voice got loud enough to hear at the front of the restaurant, I told the kids, who were by then hysterical with laughter at the whole scene: their grandmother, my step dad and my father with the waiter in the middle, each cramming a credit card in his face, that it was time to head home and they should go say good night to Nana.

Just as we pulled out of our parking spot, the rest of our group piled out of the restaurant. I rolled down the window to say goodbye, only to hear my mom say, “BYEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

The kids telling HO, HO, HO jokes.

I thought the kids were going to just pee in their pants at that point.

We headed back the house. About half an hour later, my dad showed up looking whiter than Christmas snow and said, “I think your mom is mad at me. She threatened me bodily harm for paying that tab.”

It’s okay dad. It’s not the first time she’s done that.

If you’ve read this far, imagine that chaos.

And then imagine how lucky I am to have both of my long-divorced parents at Christmas dinner with my children and husband, with my step-father and our friends, the only thing missing was my brother and his family.

I’d call that our own little Christmas miracle.

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