So this is Christmas

25 december 2009

You know those mornings where your eyes open and the brightness of the risen sun sends a sharp pain through the nerves and axons of your brain? You can't even imagine the throbbing that may ensue if you so much as think about lifting your head from the pillow. Not to mention that sitting up would be like flipping a switch on a blender of your tummy - a tummy that is not for any reason happy with the decisions you made the night before. So, eyes closed and with as little movement and energy as possible, your fingers fumble around the bed sheets in search of your phone. Thank goodness for call history records because you're not sure how many international, extra-long distance phone calls you may have made, nor to whom they may have been.

Relief sets in to see the only new outgoing call is to your all-too-forgiving sister.

You make a decision then and there that you will never, for any reason, drink again.

But you will.

Drunk dialing America is a very expensive, bad habit.

Thankfully it only happens on rare occasions.. such as holidays where you can't justify your actions in any other way than just trying to cope with being away from your life, your family, your friends, your traditions, your language, your bed, your culture, your routine, your carpet-covered stairs, your hot, running-water shower, your Christmas - your home.

So then you deal with those consequences - the physical demands attention first - because it's your heart that is normally supposed to beat - not your head. You take some ibuprofen but discover that standing is the catalyst of nausea. You send yourself immediately back to bed and rely on the generosity of the giving season to invoke pity in your roommates enough for them to bring you water - and vitamin C powder drink mix. You close your eyes and doze in and out of consciousness, hoping that as the sun rises in the sky, you will eventually be able to enjoy the Christmas brunch that your friends have spent the morning making over charcoal fires and electric hot plates. You awake to the rich voice of good ol'Frank and other comforting, American deep-old-man voices singing warm Christmas wishes.

"I'll be home for Christmas,

if only in my dreams"

You find that if you lay perfectly still, your head and stomach give it a rest and then it's time for your heart to kick it up a notch. You are laying on your Rwanda foam mattress, half made with your Peace Corps-issued Mickey Mouse sheets. You stare up at your mosquito net and see that it has fallen once again and is now actually kissing your eyelashes rather than guarding them from a distance. You decide maybe you ought to apologize for the tearful phone call you must have made the night before so you ring up your other half and clarify some details..

"so I called you, right? What did I say? ... I'm sorry" and then it happens.

Even if for the past couple weeks you have tried to refuse permission to your mind - not allowing it to wander across the vast ocean to the snowy covered ground (or rain as is the case when Mother Nature confuses her seasons), to the tree that now takes up half of your living room, to the warm, freshly baked cookies that just came out of the oven after hours of preparation and laughs with loved ones, to the fact that this is the first Christmas you've ever spent without your family - the tales of a brother and sister staying up past two working on last minute present perfection for the parentals - the "We better go to bed or Santa won't come" - and it breaks. You can actually feel the cracking of your heart as it manifests itself in the form of tears streaming from your eyes. Your voice cracks too. "I miss you. I love you."

And you hang up.

And you kind of allow, for the first time in days, your heart to marinate in sadness. It saturates itself with so much pain that you have no escape other than into the realm of dreams - but even they deny you any remorse.

And so this persists well into the afternoon,

you try to leave your bed for the first time in hours to attend the Christmas brunch, but immediately find yourself bent over a bucket, spilling over the water you'd drank seeking refuge from the hangover that keeps on giving.

Fortunately that small purge of your stomach surprisingly does a little trick. Suddenly you are able to stand without feeling like your sea legs might give out and you manage to keep down a bit of cold leftovers. The grease of the hash-browns seems to help absorb some of the sickness, but you're still not quite convinced that your tummy is ready for a truce, so you make your way back to bed where your head once again cuddles the pillow - a pillow that feels betrayed for your 10 minute absence.

And you do this all day.

You lay in bed all day.

People file in and out of your house, thunder threatens a storm but fails to produce, you watch episode after episode of Sex and the City, wondering - where has this fabulous show been all your life - so many of your unasked questions answered - probably could have saved you be a bit of heartbreak had you had HBO growing up. Darkness sets in as you are once again on the phone with your family, this time in a sober state of mind, and you and your mother share a bit of surprise to hear that it doesn't quite feel like Christmas on all different corners of the World.

You hang up after broken voices do their best to hide their pain over the wire, "I love yous" and "Merry Christmases" manage to sneak through - and you do, you do love them so, so much. With every square inch of your being, you love them so much and you miss them more than you ever have before. You close your eyes but the tears still find passage, and the whole marinating process begins again.

Then, you have an idea. Those twinkly lights you bought in Kigali, wouldn't those be a nice touch? Maybe brighten your spirits a bit? So you gather them up and drape them from the top bunk of your bed. You go to plug in the power-cord and cross the room to the light-switch, which you flip to find yourself startled when a loud pop brings to your attention the fact that you have just blown a fuse (one you don't know how to remedy) and destroyed the lights that brought the comfort of home to your otherwise hurting heart.

So there you are,

resting your head (that has only started to feel better) on your overly-priced pillows

feet up, stretching the back of your legs, on the edge of the top bunk

computer in lap, the only source of light to be seen in the room

eyes reading the written form of words (that have just failed you the moment that you acknowledge their existence in your mind - or maybe more accurately your heart - prior to their life in readable print on the screen) that sometimes run but sometimes more accurately drag their heels, kicking and screaming, out of your fingertips

listening to sad music that gives way to the noise of the rain on the roof as the weather somehow knows exactly how to match the gray skies that occupy your soul these days

And you remember,

that even on what may seem like one of the loneliest days of your life,

your friends, your fellow volunteers - who are hurting just as much as you

still did the best that they could despite their own emotional state,

to make this a special Christmas.

They snook beautiful cards and notes under your mosquito net while you slept - so naively unaware of the pain to encompass your body the entire day - and they used friendship bracelet string to tie up a small parcel - a pair of earrings you'd pointed out last week in Kigali, and then they arrive, in a group of 4 holding in their extended hands a carmel-colored chicken, not quite a chick, not quite an egg-laying adult either, a chicken which you decide to call Santa - a chicken they had spent the night before chasing around in the field and road outside your house - a chicken that would later be set free - because after all, he was just a loose chicken, probably someone's delicious Christmas dinner that just up and walked away.

And you think to yourself,

you have toilet paper, you have clean-drinkable water, you have a roof as well as a handmade dream catcher over your head, you have seasons 1-6 of Sex and the City, you have friends and family at home - and around the world - who love and support you, you have dark chocolate kisses that arrived from grandmawh yesterday as well as a singing Christmas card from your other wonderful grandparents - and other than this horrible hangover, you have your health.

What more do you need?

And you wish everyone who cares enough to read your heart poured out over the web, and who takes the time to write you a proper letter or email, and who created a skype account just to keep in touch - you wish them all a very Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and many blessings in the days and years to come.

And then you think that maybe it's about time to get lost in another episode of Sex and the City again and that you're incredibly grateful for the box of Cheeze-Its that arrived last week and will have to do as your Christmas dinner tonight.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays.