In between my channelings and writing our family has been honoring the holy days. We've been baking cookies, singing carols and playing Christmas tunes on our new 'electric piano', and frying latkes. I organized the bathrooms, bookshelf in my son's room, and set up the fish tank. Bought my son a Chanukah fish, which pleased him so much, he is over the moon for his armored Plecostomus. Managed to make a bunch of jewelry (some manly works among them) and I fixed a bunch of my old jewelry. I have weird necklace karma, because I always manage to break necklaces immediately regardless of what materials I use, twine, string, metal, hemp, and a plethora of latches. This always leads me to the conclusion that I must have been beheaded in a past life, because what else could it be? Couldn't possibly be my lack of grace or finesse. It's the obvious conclusion, right?
I like to bake and stuff chicken at Christmas time, because it reminds me of my Polish grandmother. She didn't bake chicken herself, but she always felt like one. She was more of a Campbell soup casserole and Jello mold queen. She liked when I slept over, because I would sleep next to her under her electric blanket and give her a back rub. First, she would take off her wig, and what remained was a tiny bird's nest of sweaty brown hair. She would wash off her painted on eyebrows and take off her weighty beige bra, revealing hanging mounds underneath her translucent blue nightgown. She'd lift up her nighty, exposing her ice cold gooseflesh which I'd rub down down liberally with Tiger Balm. Don't rub too hard or the skin might detach! Every time I got the feeling you get seeing a drag performer for the first time, shock and awe. Maybe even fear, of this stranger, like a troll who has unmasked her disguise.
In the morning we'd eat devilishly grown cataloupe and cottage cheese tasting of pesticides. I didn't like egg beaters. Before dawn she'd be watching the news and I'd be trying to figure out how to distract her or myself. At some point tennis would be on endlessly while she tried to teach me to knit, impatient and badmouthing the 'fairies' of pro tennis, or the Winter Olympics. When I showed no aptitude for knitting, she'd drill me about having a boyfriend. It seemed like some sort of punishment for not meeting her expectations. She was worried about me having so many boy friends, when I should be stealing kisses on the playground.
At some point the pinochle deck featuring burlesque dancers would come out. She'd shuffle, waxing nostalgic about her Bowling Championship days, and she'd show me old photos of my grandpa's Egyptian girlfriend from WWII. "The love of his life." My family was no stranger to guilt. She'd ask me to do my Elvis impersonation and I'd sing Blue Suede Shoes with gusto or a rousing rendition of Hound Dog with pelvic gyrations, winding up my shaky right leg with as much machismo as I could put on for an eight or ten year-old-year girl. Afterwards my inner tomboy-ishness felt validated, and she didn't seem to care that I didn't want to act like a lady: fold clothes, knit, sew, and make beds with a pedantic perfectionism. I'd play catch with my grandad before minding the rotisserie chicken out in his succulent garden surrounded by statues of St. Francis. It was my favorite part of any Blue Christmas, because it genuinely made her happy. It even thrilled her.
Hero didn't take me up on rubbing the chicken down for some reason. Not even when I called it greatgrandma and danced with it, singing to it in a rockabilly hiccup. I always save the last dance for grandma.
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