Who thought it was a good idea to sequester children in a small house, set their constitutions alight with sweets, then have them rip into piles of presents like hyenas going after a water buffalo? Christmas is madness, a ready-made maelstrom of tight spaces and ever-expanding energy. Have you ever seen a firecracker go off out in a field? Meh. Now stuff it into something small like a mailbox. Ka-BOOM! It was inevitable the children would cause some kind of holiday mayhem but until this year I no idea how much I wanted not a man-cave but a safe room, a concrete bunker filled with food rations and blades and whetstones and almanacs and thermal blankets. I could emerge, blinking like a mole, on January 2nd after the children had exhausted themselves and the house was a smoldering crater.
Now then, I sound like I was an angel over the holidays. “Only the penitent man shall pass…” but not me, I’m writhing down there with the sinners and tax evaders and Bit Torrent pirates. I did my fair share of yelling and grabbing children like sacks of flour and depositing them in their rooms for time out. I believe I told my daughter to shut her mouth multiple times but, in my defense, she’s got to have the last word. God forbid this girl ever goes to court because she’ll keep getting her sentence ratcheted up as she is led out of the courtroom firing off ripostes.
And lo, there was fighting. Child Harbat now plays the role of older sibling with such dedicated cruelty and superiority I believe she could handle herself in a pit of snakes. She manages to inflict constant verbal abuse while repeating claims of being kicked in the face, punched in the face, having a truck thrown in her face. For her, facial injury is the nes plus ultra of punishable offenses that she can blame on her little brother. Sometimes they are true, many times she is screaming in pain like a soccer player and clutching her head because Number Two threw a balloon at her from across the room. At one low point I suggested to the kids that they just fight to the death and get it over with so we could all eat dinner with a little PEACE AND QUIET FER CRISSAKES! My sympathy is in the negative now. Unless there’s blood or a protruding bone I call shenanigans every time.
This is not new territory for me. I believe my brother and I got in a fight on Christmas Eve at our grandparents’ house, a pair of pacificist Quakers, for William Penn’s sake! Someone ended up with a bloody nose and at some point I stuck my finger in the bare socket of a live lamp and got jolted off the bed by the shock. It’s astonishing we got any presents that year.
Happily for you all I’ve captured the rare Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation of Number Two as I dilly-dally before starting out our wagon ride. Pull, you miserable beast! Pull me to the park!!
Writer, architect, father, husband.
One Two Three Magic. Or grab the Buddha Raises Children book and read it quietly in the bathroom with the door locked! Or maybe just bite into the pages instead