Everything we’d planned to do for Christmas was delayed by a day. My sister and her family had vacationed out of the country and were supposed to fly back into Reagan International Airport around midnight; so I purposely flew in late to rendezvous with them at the airport. As soon as I landed, not only were no red-wine-serving restaurants open, but my family was stranded and I had to get a room at hotel for the night.
En route to the hotel suggested by my sister, the cab driver double checked the address with me, which I thought was strange, but when I looked it up on my phone, the words
PERMANENTLY CLOSED
appeared on the screen. To cross check, I input the street address and discovered the name of the hotel had changed because a new chain bought them out. Yet, once we arrived in the dark parking lot with construction material in the driveway, I requested the cab driver to take me to the next nearest hotel. Although he offered to drive me to 3-4 other hotels, I’m sure with the meter running, I said I’d check the availability at the next hotel and stay there.
Not only did the next hotel have a room, but I had 30 minutes to order room service. I was so tired and hungry, I kept apologizing to the front desk guy in between food- and sleep-deprived giggles. I ordered a lump crab cake burger with sweet potato fries and a glass of Malbec as part of my check in.
When the food arrived, I propped it on the bed and devoured it before I knew what was what. On my first flight, I’d only had a cup of apple juice and on my second flight a cup of water with a sad bag of pretzels.
I slept like a baby, worked out in the morning like a rockstar and then had a fabulous breakfast. Later on, I reunited with my family, who had a similar starvation story to mine the night before.
When we got to their house, there was a flurry of activity needed to be done, first of which was clearing junk from some areas of the house to other areas. It was quite a feat of physics. Afterwards, all the guest beds had to be made since my parents, my other sister and her son would be arriving later on in the day. Plus my nephew and brother-in-law had to go out and get a tree. This had been the latest they’d ever bought a tree–two days before Christmas.
Magically, among all the cleaning and rearranging, my nephew still found a creative moment to put together this ensemble as if he were a weary traveler when in fact, he was merely taking all of the items he was wearing and the bottle of rum to another location of the house. Since he’s never met a camera he didn’t like, he willingly posed for this picture.
By Christmas Eve, the tree was finally decorated and all the gifts were around it. My sister, who hadn’t slept a wink from Christmas Eve until mid Christmas Day last year, managed to catch a few hours of sleep before breakfast was served.
A few years ago, my nieces and nephews were too old to excitedly wake up on Christmas morning and open their gifts. Thus, starting the wonderful tradition of eating breakfast before our gift exchange. As usual, we adults ate first and slowly the kids woke up and ate.
At that time, my sister was on her Christmas morning nap and I did some editing work.
By late Christmas morning, the “kids” were in position for the gift exchange.
They just had to wait patiently for the rest of us.
I think the best gift was spending lots of laughs with family.
I can’t say what prompted this pose other than general Christmas Day silliness, but I know that family time has become more precious now that both of my nieces are in college.
Of course once my brother-in-law saw the incomplete family portrait, he joined in.
The second best gift was the digestive medicinals I gave Mom. She is the Queen of Home Remedies, so I knew she’d get a kick out of the digestive bitters. After trying a few drops of all three, she claimed that she felt tipsy. I just laughed at her, read the ingredients and discovered they all contained vodka. One of my nieces and I had multiple drops to no effect.
We all tore into an edible arrangement basket–our midday snack. None of us felt we could partake of it until my sister stopped frisking around to enjoy it as well.
How blessed we were to have OG Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus celebrating with us.
Funniest thing about this picture was that Mom and probably just finished nagging my niece about something, but paused to make this pose look warm and fuzzy.
On Boxing Day, my niece was supposed to get her applications together for graduate school, but was preoccupied with selfies and texting to concentrate. (As if I’m the one to talk. I like writing with the TV on!) She airdropped this picture “just to see if it would work,” while I edited. Despite what she said, I think she just wanted to see how tech savvy I was.
I confirmed that I received it, but encouraged her to complete her application since I wanted her to get into either Houston or Denver, and then I offered to help her drive cross country if either of those things happened.
On our final night together, we ate at a restaurant that was inspired by Langston Hughes. At one point, I saw a Black woman walk toward our table, stop in her tracks, double over looking at me, then put her hands on her cheeks as she advanced toward me saying my name. At that point, I went from bracing myself for a confrontation to leaping from my seat to embrace a friend I hadn’t seen since we’d both moved away from Honduras nine years ago.
As we embraced one another, one of my sisters took a picture of us. My long-lost friend then introduced me to her brother, cousin, fiancé and a friend. Then she excitedly told them that I was going to the wedding. I just smiled because in actuality my attendance at her wedding depends on whether or not I have to help my niece drive cross country.
Nonetheless, she was my Christmas miracle.