On This Day: Your History

[ER]

December 8, 1989 It snowed three inches overnight, which made my dad late in coming home from his trip Washington DC, because the roads were bad. I think I spent a third of my childhood worrying about him when he was away. My mom was trying hard to teach me to play piano that day, a perennial project of hers, but I resisted because I didn't have any interest, and the DNA of her own musical talent skipped me entirely. Maybe my brothers would've been fine musicians like her, but I sure didn't have it in me. I knew I was badly disappointing her, and I hated to see a sad look on her beautiful face, so I said sorry and asked if she still loved me and she said, "Of course I still love you, but I'd also still love you if you learned to play the piano." Couldn't argue there. I didn't learn to play piano, didn't become a nun, seems like I was always letting her down.

[ER]

December 9, 2007 On one of the foggiest, mistiest nights I'd ever seen, including some "sea fogs" in New England, so foggy your eyes misfocused while looking at it, my maternal cousin Celia called me out-of-her-mind drunk, whining and ranting until she passed out on the phone after a rambling diatribe that was partly about raging against almost everyone she knew and partly seeking reassurances I didn't feel like giving her that she was doing fine and no one was upset with her. In fact she wasn't fine and almost everyone was justifiably upset with her. Although I was catching on that she was narcissistic, I didn't yet grasp that she was a genuine psychopath, only got that she was an eighteen-year-old alcoholic who seemed to get herself into a lot of troubling situations that had her using and hurting (sometimes ruining) other people, and only caring whether people thought less of her, not showing any remorse for her actual misdeeds. (She lived to bask in praise and adoration, and if she lost someone's regard she'd hate the person for ceasing to think well of her, and would sometimes go after the person either verbally or worse.) She'd never ask, "Did I hurt them?" Only: "Do they hate me now?" Everything was about her. A dangerous person, Celia.

[ER]

December 10 2009 My mom watched my daughter while Landon and I went with my dad, his second wife, Barbara, and his stepson, Todd,  to see a stage production of A Christmas Carol, and also got tickets to see Titanic done on stage at an out of state college later in the season. It was a bitterly cold night, about fourteen-above with gusty winds scissoring into the valleys, but after the play we still walked around the deserted park up to a historic WPA-built amphitheater on a hilltop above the serpentine river. I was disgusted by the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize that day, saying that compared to past recipients, this person hadn't done anything to deserve it, but all everyone else seemed to want to talk about was the local college football coach deserting his team before the biggest bowl game in the program's history, in order to take a job elsewhere, which did seem a little red. Sadly I think everyone had something to gripe about that last Christmas season of the decade. I came home and hugged my daughter, and only when she jerked at touching me realized I was doing it while still wearing a leather jacket as cold as the night.

[ER]

OK, wuddeye got today? Ah, here we go.


December 11, 2021 Slept a little late since I was up keeping watch with the touch-and-go bad weather which threatened to reach our area, but flipped on the TV as soon as I woke up to see sights of horrible devastation in southwestern Kentucky. We escaped with just hard rain and a lot of tense hours, but the morning news was reporting the terrible storms overnight may have left 150 dead in Kentucky alone. An Amazon facility was hit in Illinois, as was a candle factory by the same mile-wide F-4 tornado which stayed on the ground for possibly 227 miles. In response my daughter Daisy and I went to the food pantry again, ahead of schedule, since it was having a special call for people to assemble supply boxes to send to communities in the storm's path. When we got home I watched a documentary called Star of Bethlehem with my family, and prepared to depart early the next morning for a memorial service in Virginia for a former co-worker from the '00s who died because he waited nearly a year to seek treatment for his testicular cancer, which by then had spread. The longer I sat with my loved-ones that evening, the more I didn't want to be away from them yet again over something job-related, but I ultimately did go anyway, as it was surely going to be the last time the old team was ever all in the same place, together.

[ER]

December 12, 2012 The date read 12-12-12. I went to a Hanukkah choral event at a temple with my friend Edie, and heard again how mellifluous the gargling consonants of Hebrew become when sung. Afterward, as with every Jewish event in history, there was a "nice spread" in the reception hall. I talked there with a man I'd previously met named Dan, one of the most knowledgeable religious scholars in the city, but also someone who seemed to be perpetually angry. I guess the fact his diabetes left his bones so brittle walking was dangerous for him may have contributed. Edie kept making these inside jokes about still having her birth nose, and implied many other women there did not. The bra I was wearing was so tormentingly uncomfortable all evening I actually took it off in the temple's parking lot, inside my car, under my coat, glad for the dark evening. Caught the end of a Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas show when I got back, and came home bearing bagels the size of silver dollars, having been informed that those dimensions meant they were authentic bagels and not at all a parsimonious attempt to save money. Strange culture sometimes, gathered Jewish people: not at all completely normal like my own kith and kin. (Ahem.)

[ER]

December 13, 1998 I was back home after being away with work, and while in town I was staying with Brian, with whom I'd been in love across the 1990s, and on that day we only had about three weeks of time remaining together, ever. We got up that morning and he asked me to go to church with him, because since his return from a terminal illness in 1996 his once fast-living father had gotten deeply religious, and Brian always met him at Sunday Mass: something my daughter and I still do today. I said I didn't have anything to wear and he said I was fine, just come with him, so I did.

Advent is a pretty liturgical season in the Catholic Church, vestments and altar cloths a lovely purple color, and the "Christmas is coming" themes were uplifting. Instead of looking toward the service, I found myself watching Joe, Brian's father, seated at my left, and he seemed to find spiritual nourishment from being there, like it was repairing him. He closed his eyes for a long time, squeezing them shut to the point wrinkles formed in his otherwise smooth skin. Despite everything he'd gone through with his health, he didn't look a lot older than his son, even though he was about the age then that I am now.

I saw he gripped a rosary in his hands so hard the jet beads were denting his flesh, and as I watched I got a strong feeling that every second of his existence since his unlikely recovery he had dwelled with an awareness he was in a state of "extra life" he didn't expect to have and to which he probably felt he wasn't entitled:  life granted by God, as he saw it. Even in my cynical heart there was something awe-inspiring in watching this surrender to gratitude that seemed to let Joe channel something beyond himself in a church filled with people who mainly seemed to be going through the responses to the service as if by rote. It was like he had found a connection to a higher power the rest of us weren't perceiving.

After that Sunday I wouldn't see Joe again for two years.

[ER]

December 14, 1995 It was the homestretch to Hell Week at my school, the twice-yearly time of soul-shredding exams, and my dad said I wasn't taking it seriously enough, so he came home early to study with me. While I resented it then, in retrospect it wasn't really bad, since we'd also fix banana smoothies and talk, and full of facts as only 11th graders can be, I asked if he knew scientists were warning of a three-percent chance that AIDS was going to mutate to become airborne by 2015. He said three percent wasn't anything to get gloomy about but it was a scary possibility and said we were overdue for a pandemic. He reminded me that when I was younger I used to say that when I got a doctorate in biology I might like to get into research on diseases like HIV.

When I was finally done studying, I got a call from Brian in Florida and he was going to go to a club with his sister, Clare, for a pre-weekend party, so I asked what the girls in Florida were like and he said where he was in the interior of the state the ones he'd encountered were dumb hicks who didn't know how to dress. (Oh, mean!) I asked if they had scabs on their knees, which made him laugh and shocked him, because despite everything (and "everything" covered a lot) I think in some corner of his mind he liked to think of me as innocent.

He said when his sister, who majored in dance, was on the floor everybody watched her, she never got tired and moved like a pro. He said, "And of course she's cute as button."

I thought of pictures of her I'd seen, this girlish girl with her bobbed hair and a button nose and sky-blue eyes and yellow-blond hair and a slim, long-legged body, and while I thought it was nice that a brother would describe his little sister as "cute as a button" I also thought that was more apt for someone under ten.

I asked if he had to fight boys away and he said, "No, they all seem straight."

I'd MEANT fight them away from his sister....

[ER]

December 15, 2015 My husband paid off his crew, gave out bonuses, and closed everything work-related down til after new year's, then took the kids Christmas shopping while I went off alone and spent my rainy-day fund on a warm stone massage with a sonic scrub, then put on a dark mask and sipped green tea with coconut milk while listening to recorded pan pipes. Because it was warm for December, I strolled a bit on a bike trail that meanders above the riverbank for almost a hundred miles along a converted railroad track upon which Lincoln's funeral train once traveled, and saw a fox sniffing a mound of deer poo and was able to actually get within maybe thirty feet of the fox before it trotted back into the bushes. We all met for dinner at Applebee's, because my husband's mom, whom he and the children ("Daikeagity") stopped and picked up on the way, liked to eat there. They gave out balloons and I kept inhaling helium to talk like a Martian til the room spun and I almost passed out in my salad, which amused the kids more than the Martian speech had. We then went into the Christmas-crowded mall and walked around til almost closing time. A Scientologist with a glistening forehead offered us a personality test; we said no. It was a nice day.

[ER]

December 16, 2004 I was in Ireland, on leave from my work, tired of drama back in Austin, tired of drama back home, tired of two men I cared about constantly wanting to kill each other---frankly one of them wouldn't have stood much of a chance against the other---plus just plain tired. RTE One did a show about Oscar Wilde, and while I was over at her house earlier in the day I'd told my grandmother I was going to watch it and she wrinkled her nose and said the only admirable thing about Oscar Wilde was he had the decency to become Catholic on his death bed, but she was sure he'd stay in Purgatory til Judgment Day for all his sins. My cousin Eonne asked me to help her make tie-dyes for Christmas presents, and my Aunt Sarah invited me to come to a poetry slam later in the week: an Irish poetry event being really quite something. I wasn't taking calls from almost anyone back home but I did phone my dad and he asked if I'd changed my mind about my plan to stay over there for the months of my leave, and I said no, not this time. He said, "I don't think you will. Ireland is only fun in small doses." And he was right, I did come back in January, long before I had to, work-wise, but being overseas made for a nice pause after a hectic year.

[Alex]

16th December 2021. I got a phone call today telling me that I'd be cancelling my holiday plans and instead spending my time in some as yet unknown part of the country. The five days notice I was supposed to receive, was cut down to 24 hours and 10 minutes. 5 of those hours would need to be spent travelling. The section that was supposed to provide transport to get me to where I'd to report to the next day was spectacularly unhelpful (to the point where for the first time in my career I said "You know what, I've done what I can. I am going home, and if I can't get there in time tomorrow, it is someone else's problem." When I told my sergeant about the situation he was pretty p**sed off with MT and got me transport sorted out sharpish). I got home late, spent what little time I had between packing for a deployment of unknown length with Kristi and Ash and we opened our presents early in the assumption that I most likely would not get home until at the earliest, February.

I've had short-notice deployments before, and for much worse reasons. For reasons though, this one really bit hard. Harder than any other one had. I remember exactly how I felt when I saw my name on the list to go to Afghanistan (didn't bother me much to be honest, it was more an inconvenience than anything else. We worried more about friendly fire from the Yanks than rocket attacks from the Taliban, especially after Dave's brother had been shot up by them) I'd been debating how much longer I was going to stay in the air force for several years, but this was the thing that tipped the balance and decided for sure I was going to leave. I wanted to spend time with my family and was no longer prepared to do the whole "service before self" thing any more. For years I'd increasingly felt that the people I had sworn to defend and protect simply weren't worth the sacrifice and it was time to concentrate on those who were, and pay back the support they had given me.

[ER]

That's wrong. Bitterly, stinkingly wrong. Think of the day you'll be able to give them the finger while watching them recede in life's rear view mirror.

[ER]

December 17, 2005 Went Christmas shopping at lunchtime with my mom and my Aunt Christie and my year-old Chinese-born cousin Alba.

My friend Jessica wanted me to meet her to hear a John Lennon/George Harrison tribute band, but I'd been out with her the night before and twice in one weekend was over my limit. She was an inveterate party girl, taking every chance to shout "Woooo!" about almost anything, and she had never blended into a crowd in her life. Instead of going out, while she smoked a jay on her end of the phone we talked about whether it's better to be attractive or interesting. Both are important, of course, and if someone has both qualities, well, she's set, but I pointed out that history's great mistresses, like Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's favorite, and Nell Gwynn, who turned Charles II into her boy toy, and later Edward VII's longtime companion, Alice Keppel, were not the greatest of beauties, but rather women who interested those kings for their own qualities. If a king could have anything he desired but chose wit over looks, well, case made for the importance of being interesting.

Landon picked me up and we went to SOHO Japanese Bistro, and then saw King Kong, which I thought was far too sad. Fug sake, I almost cried! Afterward we drove around and looked at Christmas lights, and there were lots that year, as if people were saying nevermind the stumbling Bush economy, let's go all-out. Back at his place near the river, with the city skyline to the north bright in the night, that view accounting for half the property's value, Landon told me he thought it was sweet that I seemed to enjoy being sad sometimes.

I asked, "So you think my forays into sadness are....interesting?"

He must, since we're still together, and when I'm in a mood I can still embrace sadness way too firmly, once for several life-consuming months in 2015. I think it's in my Celtic DNA.

[ER]

December 18, 1994 was a day I still smile to remember, because after church Dana took me downtown to see the city all decorated like a giant Christmas-themed amusement park. We gave carolers and beggars and street musicians money, and rode in a carriage pulled by a mare named Honey and a gelding called Lewis Clark, but when I wouldn't pet their noses like Dana did, she said I should grow some balls, and I said, "Don't talk about balls in front of poor Lewis Clark."

We went into a big complex called Atrium One and had hot drinks and split a bag of roasted cashews at a table by a fountain while some Kenny G look-alike played smooth jazz, and Dana was being especially nice to me in the aftermath of my bad incident on October 24th, which showed she did love me despite the way she sometimes hazed me without mercy. She even bought me three books while we were downtown and told me: "Since I don't know what you'd like to read, just pick them out and I'll pay and wrap them up." One was for my birthday and two for Christmas. (My cousin Dana has never slighted me for having a Christmas Eve birthday.)

We also got a box of peppermint brittle for $7.99 a pound, some candles and some dust that turned fireplace flames green, the last for our Aunt Christie, older sister to her mom and my dad, then walking down Fourth Street, which was like a mini version of Chicago's Michigan Avenue, all Art Deco skyscrapers, we talked about guys, and even though she was twenty, that made me feel very flatteringly like her peer.

When we headed home she acted like every red light was her sworn enemy, but also told me she would teach me how to drive in a few weeks: not reassuring. She played her music loud enough to rattle the window glass, but because we were also talking, only did so during "killer songs." She played Under the Pink by Tori Amos a lot of the way, and I was convinced there was some perverted hidden meaning in that title. (Still not sure there wasn't.) I told her it was going to be my project to explore new music in 1995, so she said she'd make me a list of good bands.

We skipped the expressway and came home through the uptown, passing this neighborhood called Northside, home of The Crazy Lady Bookstore---gasp, owned by an actual lesbian!!!----plus artsy bars and clubs and lofts in converted 1800s houses, a district where she'd taken us two years before to get our palms read, and I told her: "You wasted your money that day, Dee. That lady must have been a fake or she'd have foreseen a humungous catastrophe coming into my life."

She was like, "You're only just now thinking she was a fraud? It was a game, you know that."

But for a game Dana sure seemed to take it seriously that day in '92, pressing hard questions about some boy she was into and arguing with the palm-reader when she didn't like what she was told.

That night I laid across my bed and called Brian at college and told him about my day like I always did, telling him everything I'd done downtown with Dana, and he said his day was a lot less fun, his stepmother, Jan, whom he (I think unfairly) dubbed "the gold digger" invited him to go over to the house for dinner with her and his dad and his sister Clare, so he went and from what he told me about the night, I thought Jan was trying to be nice to him, but he said I was missing her game, that she'd decided to divorce his dad and was running out the clock being super nice to them all so she could look better in court.

Possible, I guess, but I just listened and felt glad things like divorces weren't a part of my own family's life, or likely to ever be. Sadly I only had to wait a few months to grow wiser, and I think my parents actually beat his dad and stepmom to it.

[ER]

December 19, 2017 Went to the Zoo for the Christmas decorations known as the Festival of Lights, consistently voted best "holiday" display in the US, but my husband was annoyed the foreman who worked for him, Ron, had given him a bottle of amoretto for Christmas when Ron gave the other guys on the crew bourbon, so all through the trip Landon kept asking me if Ron was making some joke at his expense.

I said, "Maybe he got you something pricier, since you're his boss."

"No, I think he was implying I couldn't handle bourbon."

"Just re-gift it and forget it," I told him.

Later I couldn't sleep, and my friend Rob, who was basically nocturnal, sent me a link to a video on ogreish.com which purported to show the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, screaming on his death-bed after seeing Hell.

When I told Rob it probably wasn't real but I still didn't want to watch it, he called me a snowflake, and the taunt bugged me, because I'd seen too much violence, not too little, like him, so after years of keeping a part of my life locked away, I shared pictures of a sort I endured when they got sent around on my job on a military base like gruesome trophies, the most graphic being a close-up of the half-headless remains of Amar Majid Farhan, who handled cash pay-outs on bounties placed on US service members in Baghdad, and who'd lasted sixteen hours between being identified by intel and having his warrant stamped by a specialized team that stalked targets on the ground back before drone strikes were as common. The thing was, someone in the team had taken Mr. Farhan's blood and brain matter and scrawled a taunt on the pavement in Arabic asking: "Next?"

Afterwards I felt dirty for showing him that, like I'd opened a door that could never again be shut, so my home life was tainted. When I told what I'd done to a psychologist my employers had me see, she said I was going to open up to someone eventually, everyone did, but why my nerd friend and why during Christmastime I'm not sure. I had someone much better to talk to about things and think it was my arrogance bursting out that night to show Rob I'd seen worse than the morbid videos he titillated himself with. Once upon a time I'd wanted to be a college professor, but the road of my life veered. I'd turn another direction if I had to do it over again.

[Alex]

December 19th 2021.

I had settled into my hotel room. Since I'd already done all the online courses I needed to do, I had 3 days to myself. I spent them wandering around the old part of town, including my favourite cemetery (because of its history. It is one I'd love to show ER and Indy around should they ever visit Scotland). I overheard the receptionist at the front desk complaining about all the military people staying at her hotel and how much of an imposition it was (never mind that we were its only paying customers and keeping her in a job). This was the first time I'd get angry with this hotel chain (the Mercure), but not the last. To this day, when I pass by one of their buildings I spit on the foyer.

I took a walk into a local games store which was just around the corner from the hotel. The guy behind the counter was telling me about how hard this week in work had been for him. I told him about the past couple of days for me. He looked shocked when I'd finished and told me that suddenly his week didn't seem quite so bad after all.

That night we all ordered steaks for dinner. The chef complained, told us that it wasn't economical for her to cook so many steaks for us and that while they'd cook them up for us on this occasion, we couldn't have them again. The menu would shrink a lot until we only had a choice of 3 or 4 dishes by the time we went home and wanted to charge us between £80 to £100 ($100 to $125) to clean a single bag of laundry and since we had no other options we'd have to pay (well, ok the tax payer paid, but it still p**sed me off).