Christmas Eve and Christmas Day of 1990 were pretty much a blur. This was the first Christmas Loyd and I spent with our parents since they got separated. Dad was living with his girlfriend Gred. I had just met her for the first time a couple of months earlier. He brought her to Denver. When he told me I was going to meet his new girlfriend, I worried that he had done the stereotypical newly single man thing and she would be someone closer to my age than to his. To my surprise, Gred was actually a year older than him and she reminded me of his mother and sisters.
I didn't realize it, but I had been to Gred's house before. 18 months earlier, Bez and I went to Artesia. Mom and Dad had gone to this party and we were taking care of my cousin Chand. Mom called the house and told us there were kids Chand's age at the party and asked us to bring her over. I remember this house had a huge backyard. This happened to be the same house that Dad had moved into.
All day Christmas, Loyd and I went back and forth between seeing Mom and Dad. Grandma Bend was spending the holiday with Mom. Loyd and I were taking everything in stride, but Mom was virtually on the verge of tears every time we left to go to Dad's house. In addition, she always had something nasty to say about Gred. I didn't know what to do, so I just kept my mouth shut anytime she did that.
One odd thing was that both Mom and Dad gave us watches for Christmas. Mom got us very nice watches, but the ones from Dad were really cheap. I made a joke about both parents giving us the same thing for Christmas and Mom started crying. I was so busy with everything that I hadn't even noticed how hard this Christmas was on her. I felt really bad. Here I was, acting like this was all normal and it wasn't. In the last couple of years, I put a lot less importance on celebrating Christmas. But she was coming to the realization that Christmas wasn't going to be the same ever again without my father around.
This meant that the days of us opening presents together on Christmas Eve, waking up Christmas Day to see what surprises Santa brought, eating the Christmas breakfast of biscuits and gravy, etc. was all gone and it wasn't coming back.
And I guess I had been misled by Thanksgiving. Mom and Loyd came up to Denver and we spent the day with my uncle Ord's family. Because there were so many people there, we really didn't notice that Dad wasn't around. This was way different. If Grandma Bend hadn't been there, Mom would have been all alone for most of the day. Things were fine at Dad's. He and Gred had plenty of friends over so he didn't really need to worry about how bad his holidays were without Mom. I actually wonder if he also had some feeling for the era that had passed. Dad was known for not sharing his feelings unless he was angry.
Christmas of 1991 wasn't so bad because Mom and Loyd came out to San Diego to spend it with me. Thanksgiving of 1992 was a bit of a challenge because Dad felt like we weren't spending enough time with him. He called us at Mom's house and asked when we were coming over. I told him we would come by later because we were doing something with Mom. He didn't say anything, but I could tell he slammed down the phone. I told Loyd we needed to get his Christmas presents (which we'd already bought) and go over there right away. We arrived and he was upset. He gave us a lecture about not letting Mom manipulate us into spending more time with her. We both felt as bad as we had two years earlier.
Since then, I have spent fewer holidays with my parents. Sometimes, it feels like it's better that way because I know I can't go back to the way things used to be.
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