looking out across the driveway at the rain

The Kenny Loggins Christmas CD is the weirdest and most depressing of all Christmas CDs.

“Jesus Christ,” my father says, looking at the car stereo as if it’s done something to offend him. “What is this? It sounds like he wrote it sitting alone in a dirty bathrobe with a shotgun in his hand.”

“And a plastic bottle of vodka,” I add. “Don’t forget the plastic bottle of vodka.”

“In a ratty armchair.”

“With four days’ worth of beard.”

Unsurprising: the Kenny Loggins Christmas CD is also our undisputed, gut-busting favorite.

*

I feel like I just told you everything you will ever need to know about my family.

*

Every year since things went weird with my parents Jackie and I make a schedule for Christmas. We’re very organized. We write everything down. Sometimes there is cake and usually there are movies and always there are a lot of quotes from The Office and a mix cd entitled Happy F*cking Holidays to be listened to at great volume while consuming copious quantities of iced coffee from the Dunkin’ Donuts next to the Indian restaurant on West Hartsdale Avenue. For awhile we were worried about starting new traditions but by now this is a tradition in itself, peculiar and piecemeal, sure, but one I look forward to as much as anything we ever did when I was a kid.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places.

I didn’t think it was possible.

I’m proud of us for making it work.

*

“We got the tree,” my mom says on the phone. She’s coughing; she’s got a cold.

“The two of you got it together?” I ask, listening with half an ear. I’m on my cell phone on the darkening street outside my office, heading for the train and trying not to slip on the ice.  “How was that?”

“Fine, actually,” she says, sounding pleasantly surprised. “It’s a beautiful tree.”