For Christmas That is Tomorrow 2022 (7)

Christmas has never been my favorite holiday; I favor Thanksgiving. There are no expectations for Thanksgiving Day. There’s no Eve that leads up to it to prepare you for this anticipated happiness and excitement that we’re supposed to feel. My birthday falls on Thanksgiving every seven years. I went through half of my 29th one without anyone knowing it until my godmother Lisa brought out my birthday presents after the wishbone had been broke. Thanksgiving is the first of the two holidays where we get dressed up to go walk around the house.

My father would send my back to Chicago to see my mother on summer and Christmas school breaks. Children were allowed to fly alone before 9/11 happened. My father would bring me to the gate of the plane and my mother would pick me up at the other end. Some of the planes had phones built into the headrest of each seat. I remember using a calling card to call my cousin Joy one time while in flight. My dad used to buy me a lot of long distance calling cards so that I could call Chicago and speak to my mother, siblings, and cousins.

I would stay with my mother or her sister, Auntie Shauna, when I would land in Chicago. My mother’s living situation was always hit or miss. I liked my aunt but I feared her because she used to give us belted whoopings for “misbehaving” like my grandmother. I’d spend way more tears crying before the whooping than after. I also spent a lot of tears and jumping around during the whooping too. My aunt had 4 kids whose names all started with “L”. My favorite cousin Lakecia is 10 months younger than me and we were very close up until my late 20s. Staying with my aunt taught me that rice was a breakfast staple and could be paired with eggs or chicken wings in the morning. I also learned that you were supposed to finish the cereal box that was open before you opened up the next one. Running out of milk wasn’t uncommon so even as an adult I still prefer cereal as a dry snack over eating it with almond milk.

My mother was still using drugs after I moved to Louisville. One morning I woke up to a lot of yelling and fighting. My mother had took the presents and clothes of my aunt and her kids in the middle of the night and used them to get drugs or money for drugs with them. I was hysterical as my aunt told my mother that she had to leave but she wasn’t going to let my mother take me out into the cold with her. Christmas was depressing that year. My father had bought me a Winnie the Pooh watch which the seconds hand was a bee and the minute hand was the honey pot. I had took the watch off of my wrist a couple of days before this incident to take a bath and it wasn’t where I left it when I got out. My mother reassured me that it must be lost and would turn up. My father would buy me the same gifts over and over if he had to whenever she would steal them. I had three different Furbys that she said that she needed to return to the store because they were defected. I had two different Baby Newborns that just disappeared somehow. She came up with all kind of stories. One time she said that she was selling the candy for my school fundraiser and someone robbed her at gunpoint to take all of the money. She had no idea who smashed my porcelain piggybank and took all of the money.

One year my mother went on the run with me. We slept on the bus stop bench the whole night “waiting on her friend to get off”. No one knew where she was for over a week and I ended up missing over a week of school. My father had sent me to Chicago under my aunt’s custody so she had been responsible for bringing me to the airplane gate before my mother had run off with me. She ruined my perfect attendance along with her ability to repeatedly ruin Christmas.

(One of my shorter entries that will be stretched later)

(Updated April 7, 2026)