We're doing the Modern American Family thing.
And I think we do it well. Christmas eve, erev Hanukkah the fire flames behind my back. Cousins play cards. Music plays in greatest entropic order from the ipod shuffle. Across the room, the tree my brother cut down from a grove on the hill side has been civilized. Strung with lights, we hung ornaments from the shrill branches and filled out the tree with bright glass balls and handmade ornaments. From the stove, the smell of homemade eggnog pervades the room. Parents drop pretense of Santa and place presents under the tree in plain sight while we are awake. We skip the annual pillow fight. As it usually ends in tears, silly putty in hair, and me under a bed avoiding action, this is not a tragedy.
Christmas morning my first present is I am allowed to sleep till 11 am. No younger sibling jumping on the bed. Or before, no six, seven, eight year old excitement of my own to wake me wide at 5 am when I'd bide time till an almost reasonable hour to creep upstairs to gaze with fearful tingling at tree. Instead the morning unfolds at a leisurely pace its luxurious folds of time and presents. Santa's gone digital and the treasure hunt leads us to check email but not to check the woodpile in the snow or to run up and down stairs. It's almost noon before we pillage stockings. Then presents erupt from under the tree into piles of wrapping, Japanese newspaper and ribbons.
First night of Hanukkah, we light the menorah and sing, dance around it. Hands stretch to keep the circle complete as different aged feet move at alternate speeds. The lit tree in the corner laughs at us. I smile back.
And before. What about all that happened this month between brains and holidays. You don't want to hear about the four finals and twenty page term paper that occurred despite my best efforts. The hours in the library sitting before, below, on top of a desk on the sixth floor. My many trips to empty library of books on Byron, Delacroix and Orientalism and transport them to St. A's, then home to NYC where I holed up in my room after they kicked us out of the dorms on the 18th. But breaks from work were worth a line or two. Night sledding. Hauled dining hall stolen trays up past science hill to the divinity school. A thin layer of ice coated the incline. Nothing to do but drop tray, jump on and scream beneath moonlight. Simple steep speed made the moment a rebellion from reading week's slow slogging through studies. The Div school hill turned into a social scene as more groups appeared besides ours. More figures fell off, wiped out, dared drunk jumps, and climbed up the side to do it again in trivialized Sisyphus style. Then skipping teen tv drama, other evening of childish glee was after I'd finished last final, biochem. Head full of figures of metabolism, hormone signaling, and amino acids, I reeled down and crashed into bed after sleepless week. On cue, cell phone rings. It's Ivan. You have to come out to the courtyard. I go to the window and in the cold, in the snow, Jimmy stands in short sleeves over a huge pot hovering over a burner attached to a propane tank. See, Ivan says. The epic proportions of this event are not universally clear. Jimmy has been claiming he would do this since freshman year when he discovered that none of us Northerners had ever heard of deep fried turkey and were skeptical about its success. The Texan was determined we would be converted if we tasted it. He asked the Dean, the Master. No one said no. No one said yes either. This didn't matter, but since it's Jimmy it took him awhile to prove point. Two years to be exact. And so suddenly there he was in the courtyard, the apparition above the cauldron. A twenty-pound turkey was set down in the snow. With a syringe, Jimmy squeezed marinade he'd made the night before into the bird. Then on a metal spit, in the vein of medieval torture, he lowered the thing into the hot but not boiling oil (because oil doesn't boil as the engineer informed us). We hung around the turkey waiting. People stopped by amused, confused by the event. My Southern cultural education. An hour later, the bird emerged. Down to the dining hall left open during finals week. At the long table we set up our end of term banquet. We borrowed silverware and attacked pieces of meat bigger than my face. And it was juicy. Dripping legs were brandished like clubs. I won my wishbone wish. Then tryptophan, whose structure I threatened to draw on a napkin, made us sleepy. Until someone discovered a way to sneak into the kitchen. Crawling in and around, racing through forbidden kitchen with the excitement of devious children we stole soda, sprinkles and fruit. We climbed over counters and crept down corridors. After two weeks work and anxiety, the little thrill of minor mischief filled with glee. Good to be home but won't be so bad to go back to where the gargoyles giggle and the tree by Stiles gleams sharp against the sky, outlines refined by hours of study so the bare branches look like Purkinje cells from the cerebellum.
Christmas morning my first present is I am allowed to sleep till 11 am. No younger sibling jumping on the bed. Or before, no six, seven, eight year old excitement of my own to wake me wide at 5 am when I'd bide time till an almost reasonable hour to creep upstairs to gaze with fearful tingling at tree. Instead the morning unfolds at a leisurely pace its luxurious folds of time and presents. Santa's gone digital and the treasure hunt leads us to check email but not to check the woodpile in the snow or to run up and down stairs. It's almost noon before we pillage stockings. Then presents erupt from under the tree into piles of wrapping, Japanese newspaper and ribbons.
First night of Hanukkah, we light the menorah and sing, dance around it. Hands stretch to keep the circle complete as different aged feet move at alternate speeds. The lit tree in the corner laughs at us. I smile back.
And before. What about all that happened this month between brains and holidays. You don't want to hear about the four finals and twenty page term paper that occurred despite my best efforts. The hours in the library sitting before, below, on top of a desk on the sixth floor. My many trips to empty library of books on Byron, Delacroix and Orientalism and transport them to St. A's, then home to NYC where I holed up in my room after they kicked us out of the dorms on the 18th. But breaks from work were worth a line or two. Night sledding. Hauled dining hall stolen trays up past science hill to the divinity school. A thin layer of ice coated the incline. Nothing to do but drop tray, jump on and scream beneath moonlight. Simple steep speed made the moment a rebellion from reading week's slow slogging through studies. The Div school hill turned into a social scene as more groups appeared besides ours. More figures fell off, wiped out, dared drunk jumps, and climbed up the side to do it again in trivialized Sisyphus style. Then skipping teen tv drama, other evening of childish glee was after I'd finished last final, biochem. Head full of figures of metabolism, hormone signaling, and amino acids, I reeled down and crashed into bed after sleepless week. On cue, cell phone rings. It's Ivan. You have to come out to the courtyard. I go to the window and in the cold, in the snow, Jimmy stands in short sleeves over a huge pot hovering over a burner attached to a propane tank. See, Ivan says. The epic proportions of this event are not universally clear. Jimmy has been claiming he would do this since freshman year when he discovered that none of us Northerners had ever heard of deep fried turkey and were skeptical about its success. The Texan was determined we would be converted if we tasted it. He asked the Dean, the Master. No one said no. No one said yes either. This didn't matter, but since it's Jimmy it took him awhile to prove point. Two years to be exact. And so suddenly there he was in the courtyard, the apparition above the cauldron. A twenty-pound turkey was set down in the snow. With a syringe, Jimmy squeezed marinade he'd made the night before into the bird. Then on a metal spit, in the vein of medieval torture, he lowered the thing into the hot but not boiling oil (because oil doesn't boil as the engineer informed us). We hung around the turkey waiting. People stopped by amused, confused by the event. My Southern cultural education. An hour later, the bird emerged. Down to the dining hall left open during finals week. At the long table we set up our end of term banquet. We borrowed silverware and attacked pieces of meat bigger than my face. And it was juicy. Dripping legs were brandished like clubs. I won my wishbone wish. Then tryptophan, whose structure I threatened to draw on a napkin, made us sleepy. Until someone discovered a way to sneak into the kitchen. Crawling in and around, racing through forbidden kitchen with the excitement of devious children we stole soda, sprinkles and fruit. We climbed over counters and crept down corridors. After two weeks work and anxiety, the little thrill of minor mischief filled with glee. Good to be home but won't be so bad to go back to where the gargoyles giggle and the tree by Stiles gleams sharp against the sky, outlines refined by hours of study so the bare branches look like Purkinje cells from the cerebellum.
