Christmas

My mother drifted in and out of my life starting when I was very young. My dad raised Sherri, Kate and me pretty much on his own from the time I was five, Kate six, and Sherri twelve. Mom would pop back in every now and again, lugging a suitcase through the house and making promises that she was home for good this time. It never lasted. She'd stay for a week or so, and everything would be fine at first; she'd cook us all dinner, she and Dad would be laughing and kissing. After a few days of that her edges would become more sharp, and she would begin to snap at everyone, disappear for hours at a time, and at night she and Dad would fight after he had tucked us in. Kate and I would sit facing each-other on the edges of our twin beds, flinching a little at each outburst and knowing that she would be gone again soon. Inevitably, she'd leave during the night and we'd wake to find Dad laying on the couch, heartbroken all over again by her departure. We'd all be heartbroken for a while after she left each time. This process happened two, sometimes three times a year until I was eight.
One year on Christmas eve, she showed up unannounced for one of her visits. It had been almost a year since any of us had seen her, and my father wasn't very keen on having her disturb the normalcy that he had been trying to impart since she last left. She appeared at the door in the living room, tapping her fingernails on the glass and yelling "Ho Ho Ho!", laughing as Kate and I jumped up and down and screamed out in surprise and sheer joy at her return. Dad told us to stay inside, and he went out and talked to her for what felt like an eternity. I could hear his voice raising, her voice reassuring, back and forth they went until his voice started to soften, and her laugh started to seep in, and before long, they were walking through the door, a smile on both of their faces.
She said she had a surprise for us, that Santa had accidentally brought all of our gifts to her house (wherever that was) a few days early, and that we should take a look outside because she had brought the presents with her. All of us ran outside, our bare feet slicing through a thick coating of snow, and found the truck she had come home in. The bed was literally brimming over with wrapped gifts and bags. I stood staring at the huge mound, shocked by the massive display before me. I didn't know if any of it was real or not. I looked to Dad, and he was shaking his head, looking at the ground with his hands in his pants pockets.
I hardly slept a wink that night, excitedly twisting around inside the scratchy flannel nightgown that Mom had gotten each of us so that we would match for pictures the next morning. Mom woke us before the sunrise, shaking jingle bells and banging pots and pans together. Kate, Sherri and I ran down the steps and gasped, all at once, at what we saw. It looked like something out of a Christmas movie. Rocking horses, bikes, stuffed animals, presents spilling from the tree for ten feet, wreaths hung on the windows, holly on the door, freshly baked cinnamon rolls steaming on the coffee table, all of this for us. Dad was sitting in a chair, smiling vacantly, his hands wrapped around the mug of coffee Mom had just handed him.
It took hours to open the presents. Each tiny toy had been wrapped, each trinket in our stocking, everything. It was a frenzy of flying wrapping paper and shrieks as we found the treasure inside. After digging through piles of gifts, I found and opened a present from Dad, the book Robin Hood, and tossed it aside quickly to get back to the toys that still needed to be unwrapped. He urged me to look again, to look at the illustrations, to read the inscription he had written for me. I could hear the strained urgency in his voice. I picked up the book and opened it, a little ashamed at having cast it aside so quickly. It read:

"Dear Meghan,
Enjoy the beautiful illustrations. Christmas may be hard this year, but at least we have each-other.
Merry Christmas. I love you,
Dad

Mom was gone within a week of showing up. After that, she didn't reappear for over a year. Again, Dad was left to pick up the pieces for himself and for us. All the toys that Mom brought eventually were broken or lost. We'd find pieces of them under the bed and in the washing machine. They'd get swept into the dustpan and thrown into the trash. That book though, it still sits on a shelf in my house. It reminds me of what my father was to me. A real parent, an honest parent.

My Dad's unfortunate girlfriend

After my parents divorced, my father was seen as a very eligible bachelor among the ranks of single women in Chestertown. He began dating frequently, and as a seven-year-old, I loathed every woman who passed through the threshold of our old farmhouse. Many made attempts to create a bond with my sister Kate and me, and every single one failed miserably. There is one woman, Cindy, who went above and beyond the usual trinket-giving and cheek pinching in her efforts to secure a place in our hearts and our father's bed. She begged and pleaded, and eventually succeeded in getting permission to take Kate and me on a day trip to St. Michaels, Maryland, for sight-seeing and ice cream. Dad sat us down in private and told us that we would be spending the day with Cindy, demanding that we act with the utmost respect and politeness. Kate and I agreed, but the knowing glances we shared told another story.
Cindy pulled up in her mini-van on a Saturday, spent a few minutes fawning over Dad and laughing hysterically at even his most mundane jokes, and then it was time to get going. The ride to St. Michaels was long and quiet, with Kate and I observing Cindy as she steered with her knee while teasing her large helmet of brown hair, and lacquering her lips with bright red color every few minutes. Kate reached over and pinched my arm, making a gagging face at me that made me snort to hold back my snickers. Cindy ignored our display if she noticed at all over the strains of Huey Lewis bellowing from her speakers. We pulled into St. Michaels and waited outside the van as Cindy once again added volume to the already mountainous pile of hair atop her head. Kate and I scoffed, whispering "Bozo" to each-other and holding our hair out with our small fists.
We walked along the touristy streets, acting completely disinterested by all of the historic houses and buildings Cindy had us visit. At each quaint little shop filled with souvenirs of refrigerator magnets and snow-globes, Cindy would ask if we wanted her to buy us something, and we consistently refused, politely but distantly smiling and shaking our heads. Finally, it was time to go to the ice cream shop, which Kate and I had already agreed was the only place worth visiting in this stuffy "old-people town". We each got a cone, Kate's and mine with chocolate ice cream, and Cindy's with rocky road. Cindy decided we should walk to the town dock just a few blocks away and eat our ice cream as we watched the boats go by. Once we got to the water, we sat with our feet dangling from a pier, Cindy's hair blowing like a tall mound of cotton candy in the gentle breeze. A shrimping boat passed close-by, drawing behind it a flock of hungry seagulls that swooped low over our heads. Kate and I kept our eyes on the birds as they dipped lower and closer, dozens of them beating their wings just above us. Then it happened. A seagull hovered over Cindy, and, as if reading our minds, shat into her hair. Cindy made a high pitched squealing noise, wiping furiously at her head with a napkin, screaming, "Is it out, is it out?!"
Kate and I stared in horrified awe as she completely missed the wad dripping further and further down the side of her head, making a slimy trail of grey and white and yellow that pooled in a upturned lock near her ear.
"You got it", Kate said nonchalantly.
"Yep, all gone", I agreed, as the gloppy poop dangled menacingly close to her face.
As if on cue, the glob lazily suspended from her hair, and hung by a thinning string before making it's final descent through the air and landing silently on her rocky road ice cream cone. Kate and I locked eyes in a mixture of glee and revulsion and I knew that my delight at the bird relieving itself in her hair was about to be surpassed forever. In what seemed like slow motion, Cindy lifted the cone to her lips, her tongue gleaming in the summer sun as she pulled a bird poop-laden bite inside her mouth. She swallowed it down without so much as a shudder. We watched with a sense of unintentional accomplishment as she finished the rest of her ice cream, every minute or so blotting a few inches to the left of the streak of drying shit in her tumbleweed hair.
Despite her best efforts, Cindy did not win the coveted title of Mrs. Scott Livie. Although many Pattys, Nancys and Sarahs shuffled through a heavy rotation in my father's love life, Cindy would be the only to maintain the dubious distinction of the literal, not figurative, "Shit-head".