Dad and I are staunch buddies, that is absolutely true, but there are a lot of ways we are very different. Dad likes to go on runs in the cold, early morning before he goes to school, and to me that sounds like the absolute worst thing ever. I can barely make a lap around the gym in PE. Dad’s hands are always moving, sketching, fiddling, and in his classroom he has some absolutely amazing paintings that look like Monet could have done them. Me? Nothing I draw or paint turns out looking like I intended it to. I can manage to mess up stick figures.
There’s one special thing that Dad and I have in common, though. One show we look forward to watching together, just him and me.
Doctor Who.
It’s sort of a tradition for me and Dad that we watch every Christmas special in the series on Christmas Eve.
Mom and Nonny put up with it.
In one of my favorite episodes, the Doctor is talking about how life isn’t simply good or bad, but a pile of good things and a pile of bad things. And the good things maybe don’t solve the bad things, but the bad things don’t make the good things unimportant.
I think about that a lot.
Here are my Christmas Piles.
Good Pile: Mom and Dad holding hands on the couch, barely able to keep their eyes open because they’re so tired. Thomas tugging Nonny under the mistletoe every chance he gets. Homemade snickerdoodles. Rolos in my stocking. A book about Rosalind Franklin, the woman who helped discover what DNA looks like (my parents know me pretty well). Baby Cecilia somehow knowing it was Christmas, too, and dancing around so fierce in Nonny’s tummy we all got to put our hands on her belly and feel the baby kick. When I felt it for the first time I said, “Hello, Cecilia, welcome to the family!” Then Nonny’s smile when she opened the music box I ordered online. When you opened the lid a miniature solar system emerged and began orbiting. And it played a Celtic Woman song.
Here’s the Bad Pile: I bought Mom a candle and a pretty cookbook, and she said she loved it, and it’s not that I don’t believe her, but what in the world can a person get their mother for Christmas that lives up to what they deserve? Pretty much nothing, especially when you’re only twelve years old. Nonny got a little sick late in the afternoon and nearly threw up, but she drank some water and we relaxed on the couch and she said she felt better. I kept imagining all the things that could go wrong. There were so many ways Nonny or her baby could get sick. I tried not to worry too much, because it was Christmas, but that small worry cloud hovered there right outside my periphery nonetheless. (Nonetheless was a Hard Reading Word in English class last month.)
The worst thing was that Talia’s grandmother died on Christmas Eve. When Talia texted me about it, I sat on my bed staring at my phone for five minutes. It didn’t seem fair. I had to ask my mom about what to say back. I couldn’t use a Silent Question with this one because I needed to say something. With Mom’s help I wrote: I’m really, really sorry. That’s so sad. I’m thinking about you and I hope you and your family are okay and get to spend some good time together.
She texted back: thanks. She didn’t text me for a few days. I didn’t blame her.
There were so many big things happening: Nonny’s baby, Talia’s contest, Mr. Trent Hickman coming … every one of those things; plus, thinking about what Talia was going through seemed like its own Mount Everest. Putting those things together meant that on Christmas night when we were eating our billionth snickerdoodle and deciding which Christmas movie should be our grand finale and I settled onto the couch under my dad’s arm, I never wanted to crawl back out again.
“Dad?” I said. “Is Talia going to be okay? I mean, I know not really, but … do you think there’s still enough Good Pile stuff?”
Dad squeezed me tight. “That bad, hard thing is going to always be there,” he said. “But absolutely the good things are always there, too. Talia’s got at least one especially good thing that I’m aware of.”
Did you know when your dad kisses the top of your head, you can feel the warmth all the way down to your toes?