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“Turn it up, Mom!” I shout, our laughter echoing in the small quaint living room of our old townhome. Mom likes to keep the heat obscenely low to save money, but that’s okay, because this Christmas Eve we’re dancing.
Mom smiles and turns the volume knob. The speakers come alive with the lively beats of holiday hip hop, modern renditions of classic Christmas songs with an energetic bass. I can’t help but laugh as my mother shakes her butt to the beat against the tree.
“This is how we used to dance back in the day, Violet. Back when boys and girls actually danced together and weren’t twelve feet apart.”
“Just so we’re clear,” I giggle. “You’re dancing to Run DMC with a Christmas tree.”
“But back in the day, this Christmas tree would have been a good-looking boy in a pair of Levis and Adidas sneakers.”
“A boy like my father?” The question slips out of my mouth before I can stop myself. My father is not a topic that the two of us discuss because he’s been out of the picture since I was four-years-old. I know little about him. Just that he was my mom’s college boyfriend and, for reasons unbeknownst to me, he chose not to be a part of my life.
“Yeah, sweetie, just like him.”
Maybe because it’s Christmas and I’m feeling wistful or perhaps because I just watched an over-the-top Christmas movie, I clasp my mom’s wrist and ask her a question I’ve always wanted to know but was always too afraid to ask.
“Ma, were you in love with my father?”
The look on my mother’s face changes from jubilance to melancholy.
“Your father and I cared a lot about each other once upon a time.”
“But?”
“But we were freshmen in college, too young, and we definitely weren’t in love.”
“And how do you know when you’re in love?”
“Clearly, I’m no expert, but I believe true love is what you can lean on when everything in your life seems like it’s gone to shit. It’s nobody’s fault, but me and your dad just didn’t have that.”
“And other couples do?”
“The lucky ones.”
“I’ve never seen an example of one of those lucky ones.” I think about all the high school couples plus a few college ones I’ve seen come and go. And even though I have a guy I’m seeing right now, when I examine all the surrounding examples, it all seems like a lot of sex and heartache.
“Maybe it doesn’t happen in our family, but there are definitely couples who make it. Like really make it.”
Mom then holds the star we always put on the top of the tree, taps it to my forehead, and closes her eyes as if she’s conjuring something.
“And my Christmas wish is that you shall find genuine love one day, my child,” she says in her fake Egyptian Pharaoh voice.
“I see that someone’s been watching a rerun of The Ten Commandments again.”
She laughs and says another line from the movie in the same voice. “So let it be written, so let it be done.”
“Will you please?” I cackle. “And stop wishing silly stuff on our Christmas star. Why don’t you ask the star to help me pass my classes next semester instead?”
“You think my request is silly? Humph, you never know. I may have just broken a generational no-love curse with a ten dollar Christmas star blessing.”
A new song plays and the two of us dance around the room, grabbing ornaments from my Grandmom’s velvet-lined box, each with its own story from Christmases past. My mom’s salt and pepper colored “phony pony” as she calls it, swings along her back as she moves, contrasting with my deep brown natural curls that shine under the tree’s ambient light.
“Remember this one?” I hold up a porcelain angel. Her wings chipped at the edges.
My mom nods, a nostalgic glint in her eyes. “Your grandmother gave that to me when I was about your age. She said it was to watch over us–always.”
“Wow, these ornaments must be very powerful,” I jest as I place it at the very top of the tree, just below the star. “One will ensure I find true love and another works as a conduit of the dead.”
Mom chuckles.
