Christmas Tree

The day I arrive home from college, my family does not come to the door. I find them in the kitchen. Rising quickly, my mom fumbles an apology. “Oh, honey! I wasn’t sure when you’d get here.” I told her, twice, but that's ok. She hugs me and asks about the trip. “Good,” I smile, “no traffic.” My dad is already out the door, popping the trunk. He’s more of a doer than a talker, that's ok. There is no sign of my little brother in the kitchen. There is no sign of him anywhere, actually. That’s ok. 

Eventually, they trickle to other parts of the house (something about laundry), leaving me alone. A thick film drops over my eyes - switching the vision from colored to black and white. From fake to real. My new party trick.

I greet my surroundings with a bleak stare - the living room, the stairwell, the dining room. Everything is completely normal. How dreadful. Dreadful, because it's December. December 20th, to be extant, but it might as well be the middle of June.

Christmas was not only my favorite holiday, it was collectively cherished within the household. We were the tacky inflatable Santa (13 in counting) house. We were the real tree - suffocated in nostalgia and colored lights - house. The annual Christmas card house. That was just who we were.

Were, and now, are not. And what do you do when your house is no longer your house? Do you blame the house, or do you blame what lies outside it? Maybe, you don’t blame anything at all, because of course your house is still your house. I don’t mention the decorations. I sense my mother's gratitude - a mental wink we share.

I make a cup of coffee for myself (the drive was, in fact, not good), and shuffle out onto the back porch. Out, into dull, dull, dull. 

Usually, we have snow by now, but not this year. This year is just cold air and the effects of cold air. Yellowish remnants of grass speckle the yard. I can’t put a finger on what disease it reminds me of. The living blades huddle in patches - protection from the soils bite. Usually, we have snow by now.

The trees, shrubs, and potted plants are stripped to gray twigs. Dead, grey twigs. But they aren’t really dead. Not completely. I find that cruel. This merry-go-round nature endures. Millions of partial deaths, never a complete one. A tree, prosperous in summertime, come fall, dies partially again and again as each leaf decides it can not hold on any longer. And the leaf falls, and the leaf rests. But the heartwood, the branches, and the roots - they do not fall. And winter comes. Mocking that which must remain. Mocking the continuation of life. 

But this cold has always depressed me. I shuffle back inside, back into the empty kitchen, and it is ok. I can’t remember if i’ve eaten today, that probably means I should. I open the fridge door, void of its Christmas cards and alphabet magnets, and let out a faint “oh.” Its inhabitants include a half eaten bagel and a handful of outdated condiments. Despite the barrenness, a smell, thick and rank, stings my nostrils. I close the fridge door. 

My parents met at a cooking class (Hallmark-y, yes I know). My dad was the instructor. He majored in culinary arts and had six years of experience in a professional kitchen. This particular class covered “homemade farfalle,” did I mention he is Italian? My mom, attending her first cooking class, was not particularly gifted in the kitchen. What she was gifted in, however, was spotting arrogance in others. She always just knew, an internal radar, flashing in proximity with the overtly puffed-up. And my father was indeed puffed up. The story goes, after rambling about the great length he took, perfecting his scratch farfalle, my mom made it, well, perfectly. 

But isn't that what we all need, crave even? Someone to see right through us? How can you truly love someone if what you love is only fractions of their personhood? The capacity to see someone, to see all of them. The beautiful and the hideous. The actors and the crew behind the curtains. That to me is love. 

Or at least I thought it was. Now, I’m not so sure. What I’m not so sure about, that too I can’t decide. Am I not so sure that ‘to love’ is ‘to know?’ Or, am I not so sure that, if it is true, the definition of love presented, that it is sustainable. Is love sustainable? I was so certain it was, but being here, with my parents, in this house, I’ve begun to hear a whisper. A rumor, telling me love can come and go, telling me love is fickle. And fickleness sounds an awful lot like “undefinable.” And when something is undefinable, it might as well not exist, right? 

Female footsteps descend the stairs, pricking me out of my daze. I’ve been laying on the couch, not sleeping but laying, for an unknowable amount of time. Around the same time, I hear the garage door push open, my dad shuffling off his boots. Ignorant of my presence, they wander to other places in the house - separately. They don’t linger together like they used to, they are avoidant, not only of each other but of me. I know why.

It’s because I haven't left our house. Not this house, our real house. The one I grew up in, the one we formed a family in, the one which froze that hazy day last September. My little brother, he was a leaf that Autumn. He was chosen to fall - to rest. And now, winter has come again. And I, a gray twig, am mocked by the cold. Mocked by this unknown house and mocked by the continuation of life. But maybe houses don’t really change. Yes, of course they don’t, they are just houses. Yes, of course this house is the house I’ve known. And it is ok.