FCKMA

9 - I Do Something Forbidden

Christmas Eve was always something I had given little to no thought to. To me, it was always a pathetic excuse for people to have two holidays instead of just one. It was an illegitimate reason for people to have a little more alcohol and eat a lot more food. As for people who allowed their children to open 'one present' on Christmas Eve, well I didn't have much respect for it.

I don't know, maybe it's just that I feel like any premature celebration of something takes away the importance and that sheer giddy excitement that one gets around the holidays or anything they've been waiting for a long time. I mean, people wait all year for Christmas. It's a three hundred and sixty-four day wait to gather with family, open presents, and celebrate the birth of Christ. Celebrating even the slightest bit of Christmas the day before feels like a waste of the anticipation and the excitement.

Whatever, I'll just stick with that saying 'to each their own' and allow everyone to be entitled to their own opinions. Perhaps I was unusually more biased this year because of the extra preparations my mother was making me do. I was just happy to see that my father wasn't making as big of a fuss over this party as my mother was.

"Are three cases of wine really necessary?" I asked, carrying them into the house shakily. My mother, who had made a checklist of all the things she wanted done by the beginning of sundown. It was a lot of work, much of it superfluous, but my mother also ignored my logic in saying that it was cloudy and snowing, therefore we were unable to see the sun.

"Should you choose to get drunk again, I'm sure that it is," my mother retorted, as she helped me prevent the boxes from falling. I put my hands on my hips, hoping to catch a breath, when I fully registered my mother's remark. "That was mature," I said, breathlessly.

"So was getting drunk," she said sarcastically. I blew air out of my nostrils angrily. "Fine," I said. "I get it. Can you please let this go and not mention it to every single one of your friends tonight?"

"Now why on earth would I do that?" I was suspicious of my mother answering my question with a question. I narrowed my eyes.

"Because mothers do that when they're together, they gossip about their kids," I said. "At least, they start talking with the original intention of bragging about their kids, and it suddenly becomes a fifty-person discussion of my most recent failures."

My mother raised an eyebrow at me. "You're funny, Ally," she said. "But seeing as you are not a mother-"

"And you have been so kind to remind me of that again," I chimed in a feigned sing-song voice.

"-you wouldn't possibly know what mothers talk about with their friends," she finished, ignoring my interruption. "Granted, we do talk about our children," she paused, visually critiquing my father of whatever task he was doing- "but we do stray to other points of conversation, such as our husbands most 'recent failures', as you put it."

My father looked up at this. "Is there something I'm doing wrong, Susan?" he said, placing down a dusty box of Christmas decorations. The Christmas tree, and the rest of the house, had been long decorated for this holiday season. However, my mother had opted for more decorations seeing as she was hosting so many holiday parties this year. I shuddered to think of the cost of all the food she had bought.

"Yes! Do not put that dusty old box on my kitchen counter!" she shrieked. I covered my ears instinctively. My father picked up the box again. "Alison, go get some old newspapers from the garage, so George can set the box down on that," my mother said, still very upset over the few wisps of dust floating around on the counter.

I jogged to the garage and found some discarded newspapers, which I grabbed and brought back inside the house. I set them down, and my father was grateful for the back relief setting the box down had given him.