’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even…
Wait—there was a creature stirring. Mom. And this story begins with her literally at the stove, stirring pasta sauce on Christmas Eve. Elsewhere in this book, I tell the tale of another mom who absolutely lost it over the course of Thanksgiving Day. You may be saying to yourself, “Danny, you can’t possibly have multiple stories about a mom having a seasonal breakdown.” Oh, but I do. I could probably fill a whole book exclusively with stories about moms going nuts because moms do it all. They decorate, they cook, and they make it nice! For all that work, they deserve to go a little berserk. THEY’VE EARNED IT. Not all families are made up of one mom and one dad, but there’s usually one person in the family with hot mess holiday energy, so let’s not focus on the gender of it all.
Okay, so back to Linda Pellegrino. She’s going to kill me for telling this story, but of all the stories, this is the most important Linda story that Linda ever Linda’d! Like the poster for JLo’s 2002 thriller Enough says, “Everyone has a limit,” and hers happened to be on Christmas Eve… Every. Single. Year. That’s right, she loses it almost down to the exact minute (approximately 5:10 p.m. EST), right before the stockings are hung by the chimney with care and Santa squeezes his ass down to fill ’em. The meltdown begins at 5:10 p.m. EST because that’s shortly after we hit the one-hour mark until her guests are due to arrive. Every year, she invites her side of the family over for cocktails, food, and music—which is usually of the “Jingle Bells” variety, but one year she accidentally put a 50 Cent CD in the disc player and didn’t know how to change it. I was the only one who knew how to work the machine, and I was getting far too much enjoyment out of “In Da Club” playing while Mom plated her cookies, so the party listened to it in its entirety before I switched it to Michael Bublé.
When guests start arriving at the house around 6:00 p.m. EST, my mom already has her wine poured and is acting as though everything is picture perfect. She’s full of energy and jolliness like one of the smiling hosts on the Food Network, serving Ina Garten moon and Giada De Laurentiis rising in her Christmas Eve astrological chart. The moments before that 5:10 to 5:59 p.m. EST window are when only a select few get to see the demon that lives inside her. It comes out exactly one time per year, and it’s for approximately forty-nine minutes. It’s kind of like Gremlins, only instead of becoming a monster from eating after midnight, Mom turns into a savage while she finishes making her world-famous potato salad and a bread-bowl spinach dip that is to die for (among many other things).
I still don’t understand why she keeps throwing this party every year, because it seems like a nightmare for her. The stress of having her family over sends her up a wall, and she tries so hard for it to be perfect, even though the group would be happy with some pizza alongside free booze and a place to smoke. All she needs to do is set up a highball station so Grandma and company can get boozed up and reminisce.
“Be a good little boy and go make Grandma her highball,” Grandma Sophie would say to me every year, not caring if I was six or sixteen, so long as she didn’t have to bartend herself.
The company doesn’t even need a garnish or anything fancy, just plastic cups with a gallon of ginger ale and cheap whiskey. That’s it. But Mom insists on having a giant spread, making everything by hand, and driving me, my brothers, and Dad crazy before the guests arrive.
Doesn’t matter how prepared we are for the Christmas Eve shindig, that morning is when the chaos starts and tensions rise, albeit to manageable levels.
Here’s a rough timeline of the day:
6:11 a.m.: “Is everyone gonna sleep all day?! I need help! Yous all get to relax while I take care of the entire holiday! WAKE UP AND HELP ME,” Mom says before the sun rises.
11:15 a.m.: My dad, brothers, and I are sent to the store for a variety of items—booze, napkins, some obscure potato chip Mom insists Cousin What’s-His-Name needs to have with the dip. Then we head to the funeral home for seating. (Everyone else rents chairs from the local funeral home, right?) I always assumed this was normal, but as I got older, I realized the morbidity of it all and questioned why my parents didn’t invest in their own cheap chairs instead of getting the uncomfortable wooden fold-ups that people sit on while they’re paying their respects to a loved one’s rotting corpse. Those funeral chairs are loaded with sad memories and tears and dried gum, but we’re always calling up Father Hendelkin to see if we can borrow them for a large family event. Dad drives us boys up to the funeral home and parks the car while we tiptoe past a service and ask where the chairs are. I guess they’re free, but still, is it worth it? They aren’t even padded. And we always have to return them the next day, so Dad is forced to drive us, hungover, on Christmas day to ensure the holiday crowd at the mortuary has ample seating for their send-offs.
1:45 p.m.: Once the free death chairs are picked up, we head back home, where Mom is manning multiple burners plus the oven and a separate roaster that plugs into a wall outlet. Her forehead glistens not because her inner aura is shining outward but because she’s sweating like a whore in church. Even though it’s snowing outside, a cold Ohio winter, the kitchen feels like the pits of hell because she’s cooking so many things on various sources of heat. Ham, lasagna, cookies, pigs in a blanket, multiple dips that need to be heated. There are countless dips, but somehow none of the ones she serves are cold. On Easter, she makes a no-bake French onion dip that doesn’t need any heat, but on Christmas Eve, she insists on exclusively hot dips. She cooks enough of these dips to feed a three-hundred-person wedding, but there are only about fifteen people outside my immediate family who show up. Mom has no sous-chef or assistance with the food because no one can cook to her standards; plus, she likes everyone knowing she makes it all herself. Occasionally, I’m asked to cut a block of Swiss cheese for a charcuterie tray, but she’s never thrilled with the performance.
2:15 p.m.: “Why are you cutting it like that, Dan? Good thing I bought extra because I’m gonna have to redo it myself!” she says about the cubes of Swiss I cut as she wipes sweat off her brow.
The one food she does outsource is a sheet pizza, which stays in the laundry room. Was anyone else out there raised with a laundry room that doubles as a buffet table and a bar? Mind you, the laundry room isn’t near the kitchen, so guests of the Pellegrinos have to haul ass across the main floor to get a piece of pizza and their Seven and Seven off the dryer.
Those guests not only make use of the laundry room, but they also get to spend time in the cold-ass garage, which turns into a smoking lounge because Mom’s side of the family is full of Marlboro lovers, and she doesn’t let them smoke in the house. She places one space heater, two ashtrays, and approximately three funeral chairs in the closed garage for the family to smoke.
A lot of the rooms are repurposed for parties. Looking for a coat closet? Never heard of it. At our house, guests’ outerwear goes into a child’s bedroom, on top of the bed, piled vertically. It’s a tradition that at least two people take the wrong jacket upon leaving. Cousin Irene once wore long johns under her pants, which she insisted she take off and leave on the twin bed with her jacket. At the end of the night, Aunt Helen accidentally took the wrong coat, but it was okay because she hadn’t hung a stocking, and now she had Cousin Irene’s long underwear to greet St. Nick.
4:00 p.m.: Before guests arrive, at least one of the Pellegrino boys sneaks into the laundry room, grabs one small square of the sheet pizza, scurries off into the cold garage, and eats it, thinking no one will catch on. Mom goes into the laundry room to fill the ice bucket, opens the pizza box, and notices the small square missing. It wouldn’t matter if the sheet pizza were the size of a football field—she does NOT like it when we do that. This usually happens around 4:00, and it’s like we all get a sneak preview of the devil that will appear later. If Ma’s demon movie starts at 5:10, the 4:00 pizza debacle is the trailer.
While every single year is a nightmare, one particular Christmas Eve was a low point for Queen Linda, and to be honest, it’s not entirely her fault. Dad added to the stress by disappearing midmorning, telling us all he had a surprise in store, while I took the other family car to run the yearly errands.
“I don’t need a surprise, Gar! I need you to help me set up for the party!” Mom scolded.
“Trust me, you’ll love it!” he replied.
Mom did not, in fact, love the surprise. Our dog had passed earlier that year, and my dad thought it would be a good idea to get a puppy, only Mom had no clue. Part of me thinks Dad just wanted to get out of picking up the chairs at the funeral home, so when he left for an “errand” and returned with an eight-week-old puppy, Mom was PISSED (and I was tired from having to carry extra seating from the undertaker’s establishment).
I love dogs, but puppies are a lot of work, and this one added yappy chaos to a chaotic household. (And maybe don’t get an eight-week-old puppy on the one day a year Mom has her routine nervous breakdown?) Before Mom could even scold her husband, the pup pooped and crawled under the Christmas tree. Dad went to grab him, and the whole tree toppled over.
“Timber!” Dad playfully yelled.
You know when parents get so mad that they’re almost calm? Like, they’re past the point of mad and have a chilling stillness to them? Mom had that. She let out the quietest “Gary, return the dog.” Every syllable was pronounced, but you could barely hear her over the sounds of the barks and stove work happening inside the kitchen. It was like Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada; she’s scarier because she’s quiet. Dad and the dog got out of there immediately, which left Mom with even more items on her to-do list while Dad was driving hours across the state to where he got the adorable pooch.*
Dad recruited my brother Bryan to go with him, Junior drove off to pick up his girlfriend, and I retreated into the basement for some quiet time before the cousins arrived.
Just as my eyes began to close for a nice midday slumber amid my seventy-fifth viewing of Home Alone (that year), I heard something upstairs. There arose such a clatter, and my senses alerted to see what was the matter. I looked at the clock and noticed it was 4:55 p.m., so I assumed I had at least fifteen more minutes to power nap before the demon arrived.
“AHHhhh!” I heard Mom scream. I worried perhaps she was hurt or maybe dropped something. I ran upstairs.
“Ma? Ma, where are you?” I asked.
No one was there. The stove was on, but she wasn’t in the kitchen. The Carpenters Christmas album was playing in the living room, but there was no sign of the matriarch of the family. I knocked on her bedroom door, but there wasn’t a creature stirring in there either. Finally, I heard something coming from the garage—a car starting. I knew it was too soon for Dad to be back. I thought maybe Mom was moving her vehicle so she could set up the smoking section, but she was just sitting in the driver’s seat. I put on the nearest pair of shoes, my dad’s two-sizes-too-small snow boots, and hobbled over to the car window.
“Ma, what are you doing?”
“I’m goin’ to the corner, Dan!” she said through tears.
“Open the car! Let me in!”
“No, I’m goin’ to the corner!”
“Did you forget something at the store? Do you want me to run out?” I asked.
“No, I’m not goin’ to the corner store. I’m goin’ to the corner. Just goin’.”
“What do you mean, Ma?”
“I’m goin’, Dan! I’m leaving the house!” she shouted through the window.
“What about the food? You left the oven on—”
“Yous can do all the food, and yous can do the whole Christmas without me because I’m goin’ to the corner. I’ve had it, Dan!”
This was when I finally realized she wasn’t running an errand—she was having the breakdown early and worse than the other years. The corner was the manifestation of that breakdown. I’m not sure she had an exact corner in mind or that she ever planned to leave the driveway; Mom just wanted people to notice how much stress she was under. We had all gone through the motions for so many years, sneaking the pizza she so badly wanted to present as whole, running off to get dogs she didn’t want, and retreating to the basement for naps when she was at her busiest. She didn’t want to ask us to help; she just wanted us to do it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come upstairs. What do you need me to do?” I asked.
“You don’t have to do anything. Christmas is canceled. I’ll be at the corner, Dan!” she replied.
Mom needed to be seen, to be acknowledged, and to be appreciated, like all mothers do. Rather than ask specifics about what corner she was referring to or what she would do once she was there, I shut my mouth and got her to unlock the car. I sat in the passenger seat next to her, and the car remained in neutral as Mom caught her breath and the Rudolph-red coloring drained from her face. We sat in silence for about two minutes, and then she took one deep breath and went back inside. While she reapplied her makeup, I took over food-stirring duties, mixing the sauce and basting the ham. Dad finally arrived back home, and I filled him in. Mom eventually returned to the kitchen looking more stunning than ever and didn’t say hi to her husband or explain the outburst. She simply turned up the Christmas music to drown out the devil that was exiting her body, right on schedule. As her final tear dried, the doorbell rang.
“Hon, do you mind getting the door? Must be my sister Joanne,” she said calmly to Dad as if nothing had happened.
Dad and I looked at each other, wondering if the demon was completely exorcised for the season or simply waiting to strike again. Dad opened the front door and welcomed his sister-in-law.
“Merry Christmas!” Aunt Joanne said.
“Joannie, Merry Christmas!” Mom called to her oldest sibling.
As Aunt Joanne made her way to the kitchen and saw the extensive spread of food and Christmas decor, she hugged my mom. “Everything looks great! You did too much, Lin.”
“It was nothing. You know I love the holidays,” Mom said with a smile.
More guests streamed in and complimented the party Linda Pellegrino had put together, commenting on how beautiful everything looked, how flawless all the homemade goodies tasted, and how one human had made a gathering so festive. They had all grown up with her, so they knew she was the one who threw it all together, and although we picked up a bottle of booze here and there and rented some dead people’s seating, it was Mom’s party. Every time someone let out an “mmmm” after a bite of food or an “oooohhh” after seeing a dancing Santa or twinkle light in the living room, Mom would respond with a simple, “It was nothing,” alongside that beautiful smile.
It was something. Now that I’m older and have thrown my own holiday functions, I get it. We are all Linda this time of year. So to all the moms and mom-adjacent people, those who are throwing parties they don’t really want to have, making sure everyone is well fed and has a place to smoke their cigs, take a moment to pop your emotional cork like Linda does around 5:10 p.m. EST, but just for a moment. Some years, you might need to cleanse that spirit a few minutes earlier, and that’s okay. Otherwise, it simmers inside you like the pot of sauce on your burner, threatening to boil over and make a mess that you don’t have time to clean up. Scream inside the parked car in your garage or even into a nearby pillow. Drive away to the corner, yell at your kids, call your husband an asshole, and then get back to party planning so that when your guests arrive, they can see how festive you made it. And when they say, “I don’t know how you do it all,” you can respond with, “It was nothing,” even though everyone knows you’re lying.
* I know it’s not right to adopt a dog and then unadopt it. I’m certainly not proud of the Pellegrino family for doing so, but THIS IS (unfortunately) OUR TRUTH. Dad isn’t on social media, but you can direct your anger to him via carrier pigeon or telegram if you feel so inclined.