Christmas gets more complicated with each passing year. I think back to the fall of 1981, when my sister and I and both our fiances made a day trip up to North Carolina, where her beau's family lived. The four of us squeezed into Ken's red Chevrolet truck and trawled through the mountains, having a rollicking good time laughing and then eating and visiting with his family. We'd have to hire a double-decker bus to haul all of our progeny these days. Add to that my brother, his wife and six kids and we might have to get a Marta train to take all of us. I think we're numbering around a hundred now. Once a year, Christmas Eve, my side of the family gets together. I remember in our early years, we'd all go to lunch after church. There's not even a Golden Corral that could handle us now. As Mama's house has gotten smaller (she now lives alone in a garden-type dwelling, with no parking), she has continued to try to have Christmas Eve there. This year, a persuasive granddaughter convinced her to do it at her house, a much larger venue. We trekked up there last night, with a majority of the family bringing their casseroles, desserts and Christmas joy.
My kids and grandkids were supposed to come over tomorrow; we were going to break from turkey and ham to have taco night while we opened gifts. Alas, one of the sons' families is suffering from the domino-effects of a stomach virus, so we're still deciding on our strategy. Do we go ahead without them, or wait another week to be all together? Either way, Christmas day feels mighty sad today. The Fear-Of-Missing-Out runs strong in my veins.
Ken and I have a long-standing Christmas tradition of eating breakfast at the Waffle House. After a leisurely morning of acting like irresponsible newlyweds, we moseyed there to find the parking lot spilling over like so much lava. I said I'll just make pancakes at home, but Papa had the brightest idea: "Let's go over to the RaceTrac. You can get their good coffee, they have hotdogs and Krispy Kremes there -- and we can watch people." So that's exactly what we did. He didn't even bother to park in a proper place -- just pulled up to one of the pumps and left the car while we did our "shopping." We bought hotdogs, snacks, donuts, coffee. He still didn't move the car, and we ate all the junk, every last crumb, while we laughed and watched the parade coming in and out of the doors. Ken always has hilarious commentary: what people are up to, their clothing and what they might be thinking. I felt transported back to when we were "just friends" and would sit in the church parking lot talking for hours. After awhile, when there was nobody but us (sitting in that sexy red truck), the cops would inevitably pull in and ask me, "M'am, are you okay?" I'd think about the hunky guy next to me and wonder what it might be like to kiss him. Eventually that happened. We blinked and landed in the RaceTrac parking lot today, four kids, four in-laws, twelve grandkids and many, many meals and miles later. Yes, I'd tell the cop. I'm okay.
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