Christmas Day in Chaos

Blizzard warnings were all over the United States (except for one place where they had Lizzard warnings posted). Christmas eve and morning blowing winds and snow had already caused crashes and car pileups on the icy roads in the area. I was hoping my nephew would call and cancel their Christmas get-together. But he didn’t and after he picked me and my brother up to go to his son’s house it took us an hour and a half to travel what would normally take twenty minutes and the extra time was not because of the weather. My nephew is into four wheeling and he took us on a joy ride on two-track dirt roads that were buried somewhere under the snow and ran through beautiful, quiet woods full of ups and downs and around curves. No houses in sight, no where to walk for help and no one would come if you did call so I resisted whipping out my cell phone to see if we even had cell service.

My nephew was having the time of his life. Apparently he’d been on these same roads---if you could even call them that---the day before. His wife was in the back seat reminding him every so often that their grandkids were waiting for their presents. My brother, his dad, was also in the backseat sputtering that he never should have built him a dune buggy when he was eleven-twelve years old because he hasn’t slowed down since. “Are you scared?” I asked him. “Darn right I am!” my brother answered. By then I had relaxed and was reliving going through that same, snowing woods back when my husband  and I thought snowmobiling was more fun than anything on earth. My nephew said it was only fitting that he take me four wheeling because it was my husband who introduced him to the sport.

I remember that summer Saturday well. My husband had taken a gaggle of pre-teens to a mud run including my nephew. To this day I believe that people who purposely go on roads where the mud is deep enough to suck a truck down in past its hubcaps are crazy. They came back from the mud run with not only the Chevy covered in mud, so was Don and the boys, and they were smiling ear to ear and ready for pizza.

As bad as the weather was on Christmas weekend, I felt safer there with my nephew on those two-tracks than I did out on the roads with other cars traveling to and from their holiday parties. And I was doing my "I'm impressed" aunt impression. At one point I complimented my nephew's driving skills and the cool sound his jeep was making. Little did I know I was going to get a ten minute explanation on how he’d just changed some pipes on his muffler to get that growling sound.

Finally we got to where we were going which was a mad house of four kids all under the age of six or seven, two large dogs, four pet rats and a cat that was so fat I thought it was ready to deliver a litter of kittens until I was told that was an impossibility. “Do I want to hold my rat?” I was asked before even getting my coat off. “No, thank you.” The floor, by the way, was littered with so many Christmas gifts and their discarded wrapping paper and boxes you could barely see the carpet and no one seemed to notice my brother was picking up his walker trying to wade through the mess instead of using it to support his unsteady walking. I held my breath until he reached a place to sit. And did I mention in the chaos going on there were three drones flying around the great room?

One little boy seemed to take a liking to me and he appointed me to hold his brand new watch off and on all afternoon while he’d go off to fly his drone around his father who was cooking at a huge island on the other side of the great-room and every time the adults turn their back the cat would be on the island proudly showing us how he got so fat in the first place until he finally got banished to the bedroom.

“What grade are you in?” I asked the boy. “I don’t know, I’m home schooled. I don’t even know what real school is.” When I told him I had a dog with the same name as him he asked me how I picked that name. “It’s the same name as a great-grandfather of mine and yours.” Just then his dad called out to me, “Can I fix you a plate of shrimp and dip?”

“No thanks, I’m allergic.”

“How allergic?”

“If I eat it I will die allergic.”

“Where do I stand in the will, aunt Jean?” he teased. 

There were only two places in the living room to sit because the left-overs of Christmas were piled high everywhere which by default seemed to be reserved for my brother and me unless I'd get up temporarily to forage for snacks for my brother and me. Then my spot would quickly get filled in by a large dog whose been part of the household since before the kids came long. Nothing seemed to bother him. Not Silly Putty molded to his head, not flying fairies shot from a windup toy. At one point my brother and I was sitting there like we were watching a movie---all the other adults busy at the island, the kids running every which way burning off the sugar high they were on---and my brother said, “I’ve been here before and it’s always like this.” 

I’m proud to say I survived the chaos of Christmas 2022 and I came home with a half a block of the best smoked Philadelphia cream cheese in the world. My great-nephew does all the cooking in the family and smoking stuff is his specialty. And both I and the cat can attest to the fact that his Christmas ham was to die for. ©