Later in the morning Vivian woke us up to eat a delicious egg strata she'd made. With slippers on feet, hot drinks in hand, and warm food in belly we - we being Max, Kiah, Vivian and me - exchanged sweet little gifts. Alex played some choice Christmas music for us and the floor and blankets were soon littered with wrapping paper (and later cat piss) and everything felt a little more like the Christmas I know. I think that's what did it. I think it would have been a tearless Christmas if I spent the whole day trying to learn the dance to the Korean pop song "Sorry Sorry" (I embarassed myself at the dance party) or running errands or wiping bum-bums, anything, but as soon my Taiwanese Christmas felt a little familiar the thought of my faraway family put a lump in my throat.
Kiah and I had to go to school to teach that afternoon. We let time slip through our fingers and left late for work. Saying goodbye to Max the tears started gathering up behind my eyes and I felt it was only a matter of time before I'd cry. The wind hitting my face on the thirty minute scooter ride to work helped to hold them in but sometime after arriving at school my co-teacher, Teacher Maggie, said something silly about Christmas, something sappy and wishful, that turned the faucet. I spent fifteen minutes or so sitting crying on the toilet watching Auntie's mop twirl around the floor of the bathroom trying to get it together, knowing Auntie was so patiently waiting to clean the tile under my feet. It wasn't snow or food or music or smells or home (perhaps the best Christmas was the year we wandered for hours around Rome in light jackets looking for an open restaurant, making fun of the way my dad laughs the hardest at his own jokes). It was the thought of the five of us together and the puzzle we make. It's never as good when one of us can't come out to dinner with the rest, if one of us won't make the two hour trip to the freaking Walden Galleria Mall then there's no way in hell I'm going because I didn't even want to go there in the first place. But if M and D are up front and the back seat is squishy, filled with three, I'll go anywhere. There are very particular ways we all connect, strings I can't even speak to, and when everyone's there we're locked in for whatever ride it will be and we will piss ourselves laughing.
Christmas 2007
Christmas night I wore a sun dress with a light sweater on top and stood outside HJs for twenty minutes or so talking to both brothers, both parents, practically smelling Christmas breakfast and snow. I told them I missed them and about how I cried at work and about how I thought life is the greatest when the five of us are fitting together in the same space. It made me feel happy and safe to say that out loud and to hear Dusty say, "exactly Soph." I went back inside the restaurant to behold the shining eyes of the family I was a part of just then - a beautiful family of Kiah, Vivian, Max, TC, Sil, Willie, and TC's friend whose name I cannot remember - to drink TC's stinging liquor (Merry Christmas! Cheers! we said in English, Chinese, Spanish, even Italian) and eat his famous chicken salad and beef noodles and talk about our plans for our Taiwan Christmas Night - a sloppy and sweet night of KTV. Before Christmas I had no idea that TC sang such sweet jazz or that Willie was a bad ass rapper, "Don't want to be your circus monkey," Willie shouted and we all hollered and laughed, sang back-up.
Christmas 2009
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