Silent Night
Christmas Eve with the Myers family: eighteen cousins, seven cousin’s children, two aunts, two uncles, a great aunt and a great uncle, a few scattered non-relatives, my grandma, my mom, my dad, and me. One night a year we put aside all the things that fight to pull apart our family: teen pregnancy, alcohol, drugs, heart attacks, MS, guns, the military. We put aside all the things that have pained us throughout the year. We celebrate family. We reminisce. We pray, though half of us have no god to pray to. We look at each other as beautiful human beings who are different in so many ways but are held together by the strongest bond.
Christmas Eve with the Myers family. We all possess an unconditional love for Grandma. It pains us all to watch her struggle with such a debilitating disease as MS. She receives many hugs this Christmas. We all fear it may be her last. She bridges the gap between her children’s worlds. Her five children are remarkably different from each other. My mom, the oldest, has only one child. Aunt Penny, a radically conservative Christian, is the mother of twelve. Larry is an alcoholic with four daughters, each on the same path he took. Aunt Julie, the most liberal of the girls, became a mother at age sixteen. Galen, the loner, has multiple sclerosis like his mother. Extremes are expected in my family. Myers children do nothing in moderation.
Christmas Eve with the Myers family. We ponder many things in the days before Christmas Eve. Will Larry stop by like he said he would? Will he take this opportunity to escape his hard life and get a warm meal for once? Will Galen visit? Twenty years of the Myers Family Christmas Eve Gathering and he never has. Will this be the one he attends? Have Larry’s daughters, the new generation of Myers girls, produced any more children this year? How many illegitimate children are in the family now? Will the girls bring the same boyfriends they did last Christmas Eve? The answers are predictable, but still we ask the questions.
Christmas Eve with the Myers family. There’s someone missing: Nicky. Twenty years of Christmas Eve and this is the first one without Nicholas. My cousin always picked on me, but I love him. He’ll spend his twenty-first birthday in Iraq. The family beams with pride at the portrait of their Nicholas in his army uniform. The family bonds over his excellent choice. I watch, silent.
Christmas Eve with the Myers family. This year we’re singing Christmas carols. Aunt Penny pulls out a box of hymnals. I sit in the corner of the newly-built living room and roll my eyes. All of the songs will be Christ-centered. Aunt Julie and the rest of the non-churchgoers won’t know any of them. I keep this thought to myself. This is not a day for me to speak. The children have all escaped to the freedom of the ice, snow, and trees outdoors. How I wish I could join them, be the child I never was. Only a handful of my older cousins are left with my mom, aunts, and grandma. The men are off talking about their days in the army or air force. Yet another time I have to keep my mouth closed. We sing five songs from the hymnals. My mom’s voice fills the room, sweet and wonderful. I sing along, my own voice a faint shadow of hers. Aunt Penny belts the lyrics with the confidence of someone unknowingly tone deaf. Aunt Julie teases us, laughing at how we sing without needing to look at the hymnal. The music is familiar to us. In truth, it’s lost some of its meaning.
Christmas Eve with the Myers family. The core group stays later than the rest. I’m left in the living room with Aunt Penny and Aunt Julie. The rest of my generation has run off to occupy themselves with something more interesting than gossip. How many months pregnant is Wendi now, seven months, eight? Do you think Lauren is pregnant again? Did she keep the last one or not? Have you heard anything from Galen? Is he taking the medicine for his MS? Is Mom improving? I stay silent. I have nothing to contribute to this conversation, or any other conversation my family has.
