John and I spent the morning of Christmas Eve moving our things into our finished master suite. Every time I passed through the new door at the top of the big old house’s center staircase, I locked and unlocked it a few times, just because I could.
Polly and Johnny helped us carry the king-size mattress up from the cat room. We flopped it onto the bedframe and nudged it around until the mattress and frame were lined up evenly.
Polly tucked her hair behind her ears. “I’d be happy to move down to the cat room. It’ll give you guys more privacy up here.”
“No way,” I said. “That room is perfect for you and the baby. And there’s plenty of separation up here.”
“Too late anyway,” Johnny said. “The cat room is mine. Unless you care to join me?”
Johnny grinned. Polly blushed. Who knew what would happen down the road? A part of me was dying to find out if Polly would end up with Johnny or Ethan or, ugh, even my dad. Another part of me was just hoping we could get through the holidays without anybody else punching anybody out.
We split up the garden shears and kitchen scissors, and the four of us walked around the yard cutting branches from blue spruce and white pine and holly and winterberry. We pulled out the dead plants and filled the pots by the entrances. I poked Pink the flamingo into the middle of the pot outside my dad’s man cave to make sure everybody knew where we were celebrating Christmas Eve this year.
My father pulled into the driveway, the pink ice cream truck playing a tinny version of “Let it Snow,” the back doors open and the trunk end of a massive Christmas tree sticking out.
“Better late than never,” I said.
“Seventy-percent off,” my dad said as he jumped out of the truck. “Who says it doesn’t pay to wait until Christmas Eve to go tree shopping?”
John and Johnny helped him carry the tree into the man cave, while Polly and I found the ancient boxes of lights and ornaments in the basement.
We rolled up our sleeves and got to work decorating the tree. My mother had given each of the kids a special ornament marked with a dated name tag each year, making every Christmas a stroll down memory lane as we unwrapped the tissue paper that kept them safe. Most of my siblings had taken their ornaments to their adult homes. They’d also started the same tradition with their own kids. But my ornaments were still here, a testament to my late blooming.
I held up a round ornament, hollow and fragile, with a picture of Raggedy Ann skiing on it. A little gold tag said Sarah, 1973 in my mother’s handwriting.
John came over to stand beside me, and I showed it to him. “Next year,” I said. “We’ll have our own tree. And I’m not even going to think about how we’re going to keep the cats from climbing it yet.”
My family started arriving in waves. Chinese food had been our Christmas Eve tradition for a while now, so everybody dropped takeout food containers on my father’s kitchen counter on the way in. Our dad cranked up his record player and Nat King Cole started singing “The Happiest Christmas Tree.” He clapped his hands and the LED lights on his red round vinyl platform bed in the middle of the room flashed from red to orange to blue to purple. The lights on the Christmas tree in the corner glowed a more demure white.
We chowed down on Chinese takeout served on disposable plates with plastic forks. The adults ate standing up. The kids who didn’t manage to grab one of the few chairs sat around the edge of the bed.
“Yum,” John said as he speared a bite of beef and broccoli. “It’s not casserole.”
I noticed Polly chatting away with Carol and Christine. Already I could tell they were warming up to her, as if she were some new hybrid of family and friend, a member of the framily.
John disappeared after we finished eating and came back with the dogs.
“Hey, everybody,” I said. “Meet Scruffy Dog. Isn’t she the sweetest thing?”
“You can’t call her Scruffy Dog,” Carol said. “That’s a ridiculous name for a dog.”
“I like it,” Christine said. “It’s like the dog version of Phoebe’s Smelly Cat on Friends.
“Anderson Pooper?” Billy Junior said.
“William Shakespaw?” our father said. “On second thought, make that O’Shakespaw.”
“She’s a girl dog,” I said.
“What about Sandra Flea?” Michael said.
Our latest addition was rolling around on the floor with Horatio, happy as a clam and completely oblivious to the name controversy. John and I had bathed her and brushed her and put a bright red collar with a bow on her to match the one Horatio was wearing. But even though her fur was three shades lighter when she was clean, it was still a flyaway dishwater blond, and she still looked scruffy.
“Scruffy Dog it is,” I said. “It’s the perfect name for her.”
“Agreed,” John said.
We sealed the deal with a Michael Jackson fist bump.
Tomorrow our dad would dress up like Santa and make the rounds to his grandkids’ homes to deliver presents. But tonight, we lugged in my father’s Christmas presents from the various vehicles that had transported them over here: a massive TV, a new vinyl recliner with dual cup holders and a heated back massager, a 150-can beverage center mini-fridge. We helped him arrange them in his new man cave.
“You kiddos did all right,” he said. “I guess I’ll keep you around for another year.”
John and I looked at each other. I was pretty sure we were both hoping we’d keep each other around for a lifetime.
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