Christmas List

This year, for the first time, I'll be spending Christmas away from my parents. Instead of hopping a plane to Virginia, we'll be zooming down to Florida for the week to spend the holiday with Michael's mother and her family. It will be the first time she's had all three children together for a holiday in a long, long time, and the first time that I've been down there in a couple of years. It will be my first foray into someone else's traditions -- presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, turkey instead of ham, an apple in the stocking toe instead of an orange. That sort of thing.

For the past several years, my mom and I have been the ones to stay up late and stuff the stockings, and pile the gifts under the tree just so. Then we stay up later than that, talking about what's wrapped up, and what we didn't have a chance to get, and what time to get up in the morning. One year, she stayed up until 2 a.m. with me, helping to finish Michael's Christmas stocking (I couldn't, and can not, turn a heel.) Then we bound it off, filled it, and laid it on the couch with the four others. Due to my lack of measurement skills, his is the largest of the family's, and every year I threaten to take some stitches out so Santa doesn't have to be quite so good to him. I never do.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that of all the growing pains I've felt this year, this is the stretchiest. This is not to say that I'm not looking forward to Christmas with Michael's family, no way, no how. This is merely to recognize the immutable pain and strength of growing up, however that happens, and to acknowledge the necessary divide that creating my own little family will make.

So to that end, I'm going to regress and make a Christmas list. Nothing says 14 years old and still living at home more than pinning a list to the fridge, unless you dog-ear the pages of the J. Crew catalog and leave it conspicuously on the coffee table, ahem, so: I'm pinning a list to this wall. And this year, I am not asking for world peace.

*a decision on what sort of curtains to put up in the living room
*a way to not look like a tomato in the gym
*a living room rug that does not shed all over the place
*notions for my new sewing machine
*a haircut
*the beige and black Chanel Mary Jane flats that I got outbid on on eBay, size 38.5
*ideas for new recipes
*two weeks off at Christmas instead of four days
*an idea for a book, and motivation
*a new desk for Michael so we can organize the office/guest room
*a dog named Cain, or maybe Gerald(ine?)
*certain pundits to just go home for the holidays and leave us alone
*$20 a day to give to someone who needs it
*a night off for NMH Christmas Vespers at St. James's Church
*new headphones

And OK, fine -- health insurance for all and the troops to come home. But the people of whom I'd ask that don't seem to be listening much these days.