Broken Holiday

I have never eaten fruit cake.  I have been called one on numerous occasions and I certainly have seen or read about many an infamous fruit cake but I have never actually tasted one.  As my holiday season commences this week I have been thinking a lot about that terrible looking, more than likely terrible tasting, concoction that seems to only bear its ugly self during these times of joy, kind of like egg nog which no really likes but its an appropriate way to start drinking rum long before the noon societal standard.  I have read that the fruit cake is a traditional holiday dessert that really no one likes.  Some interesting facts are that you can mail order them and if the fruit and nuts are soaked in alcohol the cake can last for years.  Sweet...jesus.  It certainly plays a role in the holidays but no one really knows what that role is and how necessary its existence is.  It sits in the on the edge of the festivities, creating an atmosphere of comfort but not really taking part in the party.  This year, I am a fruit cake.  Here I am, one year removed from tragedy and divorce, feeling compelled to fake a happy holiday face for my kids but really wanting to burry myself in a whole until the first sunrise on 2014. I have considered soaking myself in alcohol so that I can "last" another year or so in that form but really I have to figure out how to re-imagine these holidays.  Like fruit cake I am compelled to sit on the periphery of the festivities and apply myself to complete and utter nothing.  On Thursday, I am going to my ex-wife's house, who cheated on me and then left me, to have dinner with her and her dad, who cheated on his wife and left her, married a woman 20 years his junior, who was tragically gunned down one year ago at Sandy Hook.  Also there will be my ex-wife's mother, who was cheated on and left but is now remarried to a man 10 years her senior who is on his third wife and a methodist man of the cloth...He has a pent chance for long winded stories and the inability to recognize that no one is listening. Also there will be my parents, who as of a week ago were not around for Thanksgiving and thus I committed to the treachery I am about to embark on.  Now, they will join the cocktail of familial anarchy.  My mother, I love her, has the inability to see what is around her and creates a "story of her life" that doesn't actually match up to what is real and my broken stepfather who dedicated his life to a dream that didn't pan out and is slowly deconstructing that dream with each passing day.  And me, the once driven, put together, "I will do it different" vanguard of the future...now broken as well.  There was a time when the biggest issue of the season was deciding which parents house we were going to for which holiday.  My ex-wife and I would begin those conversations as early as September.  Then, as the holidays rolled in they were filled with excitement and cheer.  There was the Thanksgiving at her dad and step moms house where we found out our lovely daughter Isabel was on the way.  There was the Christmas' in Pennsylvania with her mother with a house filled with kids and constant smell of warm cookies and other culinary delights.  Thanksgivings at my parents with crowds of people, football on the big screen, and our kids in their best clothes.  There was the anticipation of games and laughter with brothers in law and nieces and nephews.  Coffee after dinner and Carlo and Rossi at 11am.  Candy cane walks in the snow and slumber parties in the basement.  Rosy cheeks, the smell of pine, and piles of wet clothing in the entryway.  I know there was the bad stuff; the inevitable stress with family coming together filled with expectation but at least it was family.  And then it all ended.  A year ago we all came together in a destroyed house that smelled like cat piss.  We gathered to bury one of our own between Thanksgiving and Christmas...and they were not mine anymore.  My marriage was over.  The past the past...just memories that we erase the darkness from.  Just a piece of the two young ones I helped create remains.  And that is all that is left.  I know someday there will be new stories and new family adventures...but today I think it's ok to be stuck, even just for a moment, here. Where is the eggnog?