Marry, Marry, MARRY Christmas! Marry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! Of course, Hanukkah is over. It’s often over by this time, like around Christmas or so, when the good stuff happens—when spy people in convincing camo and 1960s radar gear give the children of America their secret glimpse of Santa’s progress around the world. Just go to www.dot.where.thefuckisSantarightnow?.org, or something like that. At this time, the whole nation is infected with Christmas frenzy. And Hanukkah? Oh, Hanukkah. I’m-so-glad-I-married-a-Jew-and-met-you, Hanukkah. Hanukkah, in our household, sometimes ends with a whimper, but not a bang. That’s alright. I’ve always enjoyed keeping it real.

So here I am. My mom has been dead for exactly two months to this day. Two months of my forty-six years on this earth I have lived now without my mother. I cry when I wander down the aisles at Trader Joe’s and see the candy that she liked so much and can’t buy it now because… who would eat it? I cry whenever I meet another soul sister who also lost her mother this year or the last, or even decades ago. This wound don’t heal. This wound is like a cut on the foot of a guy with Stage 2 Diabetes. This wound is gonna be around for a long, long time. This wound may plague me til my death. I made my hypothetical diabetes victim above a man because I actually knew a man who cut his foot at the pool and had to wear a boot for time immemorial.   I wonder where that guy is today…

Anyway, I’d like to twitter in and ask one of these Santa-stalking fuckers sometime what countries he recently visited. Not the broad strokes—I want details. Did he make it past the Taliban? What about the huts with no chimneys? Doesn’t that red suit get just so fucking restraining around the Equator? And how—this is the question I’ve been asking myself since I was like seven—how does he fit so much shit into one sleigh? Between Hanukkah and Christmas, I think my stepkids alone get enough stuff to fit in a velvet sack in the back of some eighteenth century, pre-global warming, Nordic transportation device. So many questions.

And I always thought my dad was with me in my skepticism. My dad is and always has been “the man.” He’s the oldest brother, the most responsible, the most sensible, the keenest and the fiercest. One look from my dad made me shrink as a kid. My mother always envied that power. My mother also went to church, and my dad didn’t… until two months ago. You know what happened then—the young pastor paid a visit to our house while my mom was dying and gave her some peace. Dad’s agnosticism forfeited to community values. This young pastor has won him. Today, my f-ing father brought me to church! He said it was like therapy. I saw a guy connecting with people across pews. I sat stunned as he wandered up the candles at the altar and lit one for mom. I had NO IDEA what this man was doing because I have no idea what life is like in church. My dad loved my mom. He loved her so much that he has been regularly attending church services since she passed. My dad is coping with grief. I am proud!

I cope differently. Today’s church services were nauseatingly simple. I’ll support Dad, but I won’t drink the Kool Aid.