When my husband proposed to me, my Mom said to him, “That’s fine, as long as you agree to spend every Christmas at my house for the rest of your life.” He laughed and agreed. He had no idea what he was getting into. Half of my large family moved to Jupiter, Florida, about 7 years ago. Since then, we all spend Christmas in Florida. All 15 of us…in one house…with 2 bathrooms.
For those of you who have never met my Mom, you should know that Christmas is her favorite time of year. I think she was Mrs. Claus in a past life. She decorates the entire house from top to bottom. She has over 50 Nutcrackers on display, and she walks around humming Christmas carols all day.
She has a checklist of family traditions that we must perform:
1. Bake cookies (3 different kinds, all from scratch)
2. Each Grandchild builds a Gingerbread House (there are 5 grandchildren)
3. See the Christmas decorations around town
4. Have a family sing-a-long/jam session
5. Build a Christmas village with her grandchildren
6. The adults stay up on Christmas Eve wrapping gifts, until 1 am.
7. EVERYONE must sleep over Christmas Eve .
8. Eat baked stuffed shrimp, roast beast, chicken parmesan, shrimp cocktail, and my Step-Dad’s famous pesto (my personal favorite).
This is just Christmas Eve day.
In November of 2009, my husband accepted a new job and was unable to take time off to fly to Florida for Christmas. So, I flew directly to Florida with the kids on Wednesday, December 23rd. Everything went very smoothly, and we laughed the whole way there. We left 30 degrees in Buffalo, and arrived to 70 degrees (at 10:30pm)! The next day, Christmas Eve Day, two of my sister’s came over with their families. We spent the day dutifully going through Mom’s family traditions checklist. I finally snuggled into bed at 1 am.
Christmas Morning, 3:15am: my daughter wakes me up, “Mom, I just threw-up all over my bed!” She sleeps in the loft in the guest room, accessed only by a very tall ladder. “I think I’m going to throw-up again!” I responded, “Then why are you leaning over me??? Go into the bathroom!” She made it to the bathroom just in time. I went to make sure she was OK, and then I checked the damage in the loft. Now, the last thing she had eaten was 4 brownies. It did not look like vomit. She had thrown-up all over the pale yellow comforter, and it soaked through to the blow-up mattress. While I wrestled with her sheets, my son sat up and threw-up all over his bed. I sent him into the bathroom with his sister, and the two of them took turns praying to the porcelain god and laying on the cool bathroom floor – a picture perfect holiday family moment. I had to wake up my Mom because I’m not sure if her washing machine could handle the comforters, or if she even wants to keep the comforters at all. Then the toilet starts leaking water from behind, a lot of water. We had to wake up my Step-Dad. He rushed into the bathroom wearing only his boxers. I said, “You might want to throw some pants on. At the rate we’re going, the Christmas tree is going to catch on fire”.
It was a Christmas miracle that the rest of the family slept through the whole thing. We figured it was food poisoning, maybe the brownies – so at 7am, when it was time to open the gifts and stockings left by Santa, I brought my kids out to the living room, propped them up in a corner with blankets, pillows, and bowls to barf in. My sisters were glaring at me, but no one had the heart to make my kids miss Christmas morning. They were to weak to open any gifts, and they fell in and out of consciousness, but damn it – this is family bonding at it’s peak! And so, my sister’s children opened their stockings to melodic dry-heaves in the background.
By Tara Bazilian-Chang, Community Manager of Raising Boys World
