The days after Christmas were always difficult for me as a child. Not because Christmas was over but because my mother was depressed that Christmas was over. I was actually a little relieved because anticipation can be exhausting.
My mom, however, loved the anticipation and the preparations that went with it—decorating the house, baking cookies, shopping for gifts, wrapping gifts. All this activity seemed to give her a sense of purpose that was suddenly missing on December 26.
She worried that things hadn’t been perfect—that the food wasn’t fabulous, that the gifts weren’t dazzling. “Did you get enough?” she would ask—and we could never persuade her that everything had been wonderful. “There’s a let-down, don’t you think?” she’d say.
Looking back, I think I understand my mother’s sadness a little differently. It wasn’t about throwing away stale cookies and taking ornaments off the tree. It wasn’t even about Christmas.
It was about how her life had turned out. So much anticipation and preparation, but no happily ever after. No perfect marriage, no perfect children. And no way to admit—even to herself—how disappointed she felt, how empty and confused.
“Did you get enough?” she asked.