Why Your Holiday Card Makes Me Weep

Dear Highly Organized Married Friend,

There’s nothing that stabs me through the heart more deeply than the receipt of your holiday card. While I appreciate your generous, kind and thoughtful intentions, the hours and energy it must have taken for you to select the right photo from the array of professional shots of you and your handy-handsome-three-figure-earning-husband and your perfectly-coiffed ad-worthy children prancing along the French Riviera along with your perfectly groomed Kerfoodle — the truth is the best gift would actually have been a list of all of your epic failures.

Don’t get me wrong. I am amazed by all your news; of course I’m not suprised by the fact that:

Jake got into Yale!
You’ve just completed your tenth year of medical practice saving the Lepers of Siberia!
You built an orphanage in Zimbabwe!
Sophie (the brain surgeon) is getting married to Blake, the Olympic ski champion!
There you are leaping from an airplane in the Australian Outback on your twentieth anniversary!

My card, on the other hand, may be a little delayed as usual. I’ve got a semi-truck worth of great excuses. This is not for lack of love or thought. Trust me. I’ve been feeling plagued by it at least since I took my last bite of Thanksgiving yams, which was when it occurred to me that you would have already begun your seasonal preparations.

Here‘s the thing:

1. I cannot locate a photograph in which the boys are not giving me the finger, rolling their eyes or wrestling each other into a headlock.

2. My hairdresser is leading a meditation retreat in India and so she hasn’t had time to touch up my roots. My chin has fallen at least three floors further since last year. I’m one inch shorter and at least four inches wider. I would not look good on your mantlepiece.

3. I am still single (because I just have been too tired and busy to swipe anything other than the sweat dripping from my forehead). While I’ve been trying to embrace my singlehood, saying things to my twin tween boys like “I like being single!” “It’s a choice!” They recently had the sensitivity of a whipsaw and said at the tree lot as I fondled the mistletoe, “Why waste your money on mistletoe when you’ve got no one to kiss?”

As I hauled the Christmas tree down the stairs with one such man-boy and I succeeded in not getting flattened or stabbed by it, I could not help but think of those Norah Efron movie scenes with the guy, the girl, the snow, the holiday music, Baby it’s cold outside.

4. As much as I’d love to, I’m not sure exactly how to put a shiny spin on the mayhem of my life. I rather wish that you would just send me a list of your epic failures.

Maybe tell me about your in-laws and how hard it is to smile through the alcoholism, the Trump supporting cousins, and the cabbage stew. Tell me about your scare with Cancer and how it made you braver. Remind me how hard it is to be married to a man who farts, burps, and watches from the sofa as you repair the kitchen sink, cook a souffle, and complete your dissertation. Tell me about the time that Fluffy got attacked by a pit bull and survived!

This kind of honestly would give me leave to share a few of my own unvarnished truths:

Menopause hit really hard this year but the progesterone/estrogen combo is really a life saver; now I only pass out once a day! One of my son’s got naked at school this year, skim boarding through a puddle, but it was okay because it was his teacher’s idea! In response to this (and seventy-one other egregious incidents) I pulled my sons from this school — only to learn that home schooling is like pounding nails into your hand, for fun! The hens got eaten by a bobcat, because I left the gate open, but after a few tears the boys found the silver lining — no more picking up bird poop! My career you ask? My book ha, ha, ha, is still a work-in-progress, because this thing they call single-parenting is a full time distraction that makes it hard to even get my holiday cards out on time!

With Love,

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