Good evening.
This was supposed to go out on Christmas, but of course festivities got in the way. In the morning light, I always imagine I’ll have energy to write after my family goes to bed. Tonight, that’s true. But on Christmas Eve it wasn’t. So here we are, on the day after.
Today I bring you part four of a Christmas piece—part fiction, mostly truth—in which the ghost of Christmas Past makes an appearance as he usually does this time of year. I hope you all are enjoying your holidays. I know it’s a complicated time for many. This string of memory is evidence of that.
Yesterday, we left our narrator with her strange spirit guide, a buck that has led her to a crossroads in her childhood, her last happy Christmas. If you’re just joining in, start here.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The buck was breathing slowly, his clock hand heartbeat weakening. She watched his breath rising in the growing dark night around them. The images were fading too, once colorful and detailed memories giving way to blurred ones, things she hadn’t thought of in ages. Small holiday disappointments—a pink fuzzy journal when she was too old for such things and the drooping look on her mother’s face when she opened it—wove themselves juxtaposed between explosive nights of chaos when he was still around.
Sleeping in the car by the old Blockbuster down the road, then sneaking back in after he had fallen asleep. The refrigerator, dented from a punch after a bad day at work and a night at the bar. That time she had called the police because he was yelling and working himself up to hitting. His intensity gave way to reason at their knock on the door. He managed to talk them down and laughed at her after they left. Silly rabbit.
And still, his departure had left a loneliness in her family life that she could not make sense of, like he had carved away a space where only he lived. In that dark hole where grief should have been, anger filled out the edges. His years of mood swings and violence had been so loud that when he left, their new quiet world felt like a tomb. Her anger had nowhere to go except to the one left behind.
“My mother.”
“Do you want to see?” the deer asked, his voice crackling, embers rising with his breath.
She sat up and looked at him. His eyes were heavy, the color in them faded to ghostly white.
“Show me spirit.”
The buck opened his mouth and exhaled, a strange light escaping from the darkness. It surrounded her, twisted around her limbs, the air suddenly warm. She could hear waves of sound. Children laughing, a busy store, her doorbell ringing and a childhood friend asking if she could play. Insults screamed between herself and the neighbor boys, rollerblades on broken sidewalk. Cricket song in summer, the scribble of pen on paper, the school bell and the ensuing noise at the end of the day.
“These things happened too,” the deer whispered.
There was the smell of chocolate. Cut grass in the summer. Pizza and art supplies and rented movies and library books. Guinea pigs and long walks home. Afternoons at the park and banana smoothies. She let it all wash over her. Her sun warmed skin and the sound of the creek, carrots for the horse that lived across the street, black widow spiders and pancake breakfasts.
The before.
And then, late nights and car lights in the window. Murmurs that turned to shouting. The TV on at all hours and trash bins filled with empty beer cans. Country music and late night snacks. Bodies that breathed but never talked, forever silent in his presence, the house laid out with paths of egg shells that woke him if you walked, even on tip-toe. The bean stalk cut. Nowhere to run. And then, silence.
The after.
I could see my mother, alone, wrapping the few presents she had bought at the drug store next to her work, her eyes tired. They were cheap. Not good enough. His girlfriend laid on piles that year. He moved his big talk and cowboy hats and bright Christmas lights to her place. The punches came for her after all, but not until the next year.
She laid them out carefully, and when she turned I saw a hollow where her heart was, a cuckoo clock bird perched, waiting to burst out singing. Instead of flesh, there was wood. Heavy snowflakes fell on my head, tiny lumps of them piling and freezing there. I was in the woods.
“Spirit.”
I looked around, but the buck was gone. A tree with a hollow glowed, lit in strings of yellow light. A tiny yellow bird was nestled there, asleep. My feet were bare, and I shivered, recognizing this piece of forest at the edge of my neighborhood. I stared for a moment at the tree with its gaping heart hole, and saw that even in the dark, dead places of the world, a home could be made.
I turned, and ran towards mine.
I don’t usually write a followup after my stories. I prefer to let you all come to your own conclusions, see your own images. That’s easier to do when the images are not so closely held. As stated from the onset, this story is based on memories. They aren’t exact. I’m trying more than anything to make you feel as I do when this time of year rolls around. Doing so has been more difficult than I imagined.
How can I take you there, to those engrained places, probably tainted over years of recollection. Half of what I remember may very well be fantasy at this point. But the sense is there, the color, watery, but visible in my mind’s eye.
I read on some Instagram post that the Christmas magic you felt as a kid was really just your mother’s love, her effort reflected in your life. It rubbed me the wrong way. I think it’s because I have a mother who loves me, and a complicated, sometimes painful relationship with holidays.
But in writing this I realized that I can agree, just in a different way. My holidays were my parents. They personified them—their feelings about the world, themselves, and their place in it. As adults, and especially as parents, it’s easy to feel deep shame around the holidays. Maybe you can’t afford the right food, or your kid wanted something you didn’t have money for. It’s easy to look around and hate the life that you created, the little hollow in the world you’ve carved for yourself, your friends, your family.
I hope that when you read this, you can look at yourself with love, the way I look at my mother now as I reflect. Maybe all you have is nothing, an empty space left by someone who was supposed to love you. Maybe your life is dark right now. Maybe you’re all alone. But with time, those gutted places can turn into safety, for you and for others. My mother had her heart stabbed out a thousand times. Her pain didn’t stop where I leave this story.
But I see now what I didn’t see then. She was still growing love around me in the only way she could, making something out of the little that she had. Doing better than her parents did for her. That was my home. That was my start. Those were dark days, but I don’t run from them now.
Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.
Wonderful retelling
Yes, thank you for sharing this Shaina. Both the story, a beautifully fantastically imagined passage of life from waypoint to waypoint. Some terribly painful but all instructive and all seen as they imprinted the narrators future. And then your post script which I found deeply personal and brave. I found it such a privilege to read. It certainly will affect how I approach your future work.