In a year when people are getting trampled to death for cheap wrapping paper, when cities are under siege, when the stock market is wiping out 401K’s, when my husband is damn lucky to still have a job, when my kids are *this* close to outgrowing that magic twinkle in their eyes that only December can bring, I thought it was high time to shake up my holiday traditions.  This year, I’m channeling the ghosts of my Christmas past, present and future in order to rediscover what it’s all about, and I’m dedicating this whole week on my blog to just that.  Because, really, in the end, what we do and what we give can reflect what Christmas is about for you, and what it’s about, for me, is this:

It’s about putting a song in our heart

About what’s precious

About wishing on the brightest star

About supporting our friends

About laughing so hard we pee a little

About keeping the magic alive

About creating

About discovery

And about remembering why it all matters in the first place.

Hope your holiday was fantastic.  Hurry home, and travel safe, kids.

It’s officially, as of today, three full years since I’ve talked to my father.  I knew we should never had agreed to have our first big entire-family Thanksgiving.  Won’t be making that mistake again, I assure you.

I alternate between missing him, being completely, fanatically* pissed off at him and being filled with bright green oozing envy at my brother, who still talks to him.  I mean, my poor brother sent me a video that he shot of his kids opening a present that Popup had mailed them, and I COULD NOT watch it.  Was my dad in it?  No.  Do I miss my niece and nephews so much it hurts?  Yes.  But the thought of my dad completely ignoring my kids for most of their lives, and doting on my brother’s?  It INFURIATES me.

My brother, just so you know, is going to leave a comment to the effect of ‘karmic retribution for being the fucking golden child growing up, ho’ and he’ll totally be right, so don’t yell at him.  We love him.

Anyway, I was falling asleep last night, trying to decide where I’m at with the old daddio, and I got to thinking about what really was keeping me from moving on.  I move on rather easily in most situations, but this one has me hanging.  Why am I still so mad, three years later?  Is it because he rejected my pathetic excuse for an apology?  Is it that he, like my mother, just never asked even one question after I walked away?  What is it that’s really got my chonies in a knot?  And then it hit me.

3 Cabbage Patch Dolls and a BlowPop.

When I left my mother’s house, I had one small suitcase and two small backpacks to cram 16 years of stuff into.  Everything else had to go in the dumpster outside so that when she came home the next day, there would be no trace of me left in her house.  I wiggled and jumped and bounced on those bags, packing them as tightly as I could with what little clothes and shoes I could fit.  But I could not, not in any small way, bear to throw away the 3 Cabbage Patch Dolls my father had taken me to get when they first came out.  Against my mother’s orders, we stood in line for hours to get those freaking things.  It was the only abjectly defiant thing I’d ever done, and those sonsofbitches were coming with me.

I also brought a goodie bag from a sleepover I’d attended a few years before.  My friend Alisha had a big sleepover at her house in Philly when I was, oh, maybe 14, and I’d never actually been to a sleepover before, so I totally went.  I didn’t really know anyone there, but I grew up with Alisha; she was more like my sister than my friend, and her mom more like a mother, you know?  I was totally fine on my own.  At this sleepover, she had goodie bags.  Everyone’s had makeup in it, but since I wasn’t allowed makeup, Alisha’s mom had filled mine with candy and stickers and stuff.  I ate all the melty candy and did something with the stickers, but I kept the BlowPop that was in the bag, and I kept the bag, too.  I packed them and brought them to Colorado with me, too.  They meant something to me, I just couldn’t put my finger on what.

My father had a box in his garage where my old stuff was kept, just one little box in the back of the garage.  I’d gone to get it out a few times, but I could never get to it.  He’s got one of those garages where you open the door at your own risk, if you’re dumb enough to even try.  Finally, when he was moving, he cleared the whole thing out and I came over to get my box, with all my old clothes, my suitcase, my dolls and my blowpop, and it was gone.  The 25 boxes the shippers packed in 1986 full of coupons for KFC and newspapers that were laying around his apartment were all still there 17 years later, but my one box of super important, never replaceable tokens of my past hadn’t survived the cuts.

Aside from the monster of a parent he was, aside from the shitstorm he dropped on my brother, aside from the way he made 2of3 cry every time he saw him, that is what I am not ever, ever going to forgive him for.  That is the source of my anger.  I had only 4 pieces of my history, only 4 items in the whole world I could hand to my children to share a piece of my childhood with them, and he told me he’d keep them for me.  And instead, he threw them in the trash.  That day, in my heart, he became no better than my mother.

And I am really, really thankful that it only took me three years to figure that out.

*You know you grew up in Philly when you think fanatic should be spelled with a ‘ph’ and no amount of spell check is going to convince you otherwise.

Happy Turkey Day.  I hope your holiday is even close to this good.

I’m not much of a dog person.  I’m not much of an animal person, truth be told.  Every now and then, though, there will be some animal and our paths will cross and that animal will have to be mine.  Like this one.

I was picking my oldest up from kindergarten one day and the mom of one of his classmates had a box of puppies.  But not just any puppies; they were more like Silver Dollar puppies.  They were *this* big.  Tiny.  Barely hatched.  Cotton balls, I’m not kidding you.  I checked them all out, because I’m not that dead in the heart yet, and one of them waddled her little butt over to me.  That was all it took.  She was ours.

I named her Izzi because the person I hate more than any other person in the world had just pissed me off beyond all belief, cost me a job I loved and a few very important relationships, and I had to get her back.  So I named my dog after her baby.  Yes, I am that much of a bitch.

She is rumoured to be a Pekingese/Chihuahua mix, and I’ve always assumed there was some Terrier in there, but she’s never looked like anything other than an 11 week old golden retriever.  When we brought her home, she was so small she could fit in The Donor’s coat pocket.

We took her to the store to get a leash and collar, and the clerk laughed at us and then took us to the cat section.  Her food bowl was an olive oil dish you use on the table to dip your bread in.

As she grew she learned that she liked to pee like a boy and sleep on her back.

She also figured out one day that if you fucked with her, she could kill you in your sleep.

Her life was a-okay.  We lived in this little tiny apartment with lots of other very large dogs, and she made loads of very big friends that taught her how to bark, how to catch a ball, and how to stick up for herself.  There was a guy who lived upstairs from us, and she loved him and used to break out of our apartment to go scratch on his door until he let her in.  She ate his food and peed on his floor.  We ended up kind of sharing her in a weird sort of ‘strangers in an apartment building’ way, (he babysat her, I scrubbed pee out of his carpets) and now he’s my kids godfather.

She liked to sleep with us.  When we first brought her home, she cried and cried and cried (for 10 whole minutes) until we caved and drug her in our bed.  And there she chilled out happily for a long time.

Until, one day, when she realized it was way more fun to sleep in-between momma’s legs while she snored and snored and snored, which was not awesome.  But there was no stopping her, until one day when we fucked her whole world up.

She knew I was pregnant before I did.  She started sleeping at the foot of the bed, right on the floor under where was stomach was soon to be.  She started walking underneath me all day long, she got really crazy territorial around me, and ultimately she starting getting protective.  And by protective, I mean she started biting.  Everyone.

She nipped the boys, she snarled at the mailman, she peed on every.fucking.thing.  She drove me CRAZY.  I couldn’t tell if she was defending me or jealous of the baby, but either way, it was getting out of control.  I started thinking that maybe we couldn’t keep her, what with the baby coming.  And then she got hit by a car.

I realized that screw it, I love that damn dog, and I’m keeping her even if she won’t walk on a leash to save her ass, even if she hides her little turds all over the basement, even if she chews holes in the middle of my mattress.  She stays, period.  And then The Donor got transferred to Canada.

We had to decide if we were willing to bring a dog across a border who bit, whether or not she could handle that transition after having to deal with a baby (whom she actually really liked in the end.)  We ultimately decided to leave her.  We asked The Godfather to take her, but the timing sucked for him.  We asked our neighbors, but they’d just gotten a dog.  The Donor’s aunt finally agreed to take her, and then it happened.

She was across the street, visiting with the neighbors and their new dog, when the cable dude came by to hook something up.  He tried to give her a treat and she punctured his hand.  He was really cool about it, but we knew we were running on borrowed time now.  This was too far, too much.  We decided we’d have to have her put down.  That night, very randomly, my friend Marge came over to visit.  I cried on her shoulder about the whole thing, and she left a few hours later and one dog heavier.

Izzi has been with Marge since June of 2006, and she’s never been happier.  Marge and her family are 4-wheeling, Jeep driving, mountain-living people with loads of cats and dogs for Izzi to be friends with.  I miss her sometimes, but really, she’s so much happier there.  It’s a perfect fit.  She loves them, they love her.  I couldn’t be happier about any choice I’ve ever made than to hand my dog to her that late night in June.

And that’s where the guilt comes in.  See, Izzi, well, she kind of got eaten last night, and now my best friend is bearing the brunt of the sadness over the loss of my dog.  Our dog.  We had a dog together. She had to pick up her, wrap her, bring her in from the cold, call me, and all I can do is sit here and write a stupid post about her. I was home for a year and a half and I never once went to visit Izzi, I didn’t send her a treat on her birthday, nothing.  I gave her up, and she died last night, and my friend is hurting bad from the loss, and I feel horrible about it.  But damn, it was good while it lasted.