Why Christmas Always Makes Me Cry

Or: My Obsession with The Present

This may come as a big surprise, but I have never been particularly chill about “change” or “the passing of time.” As a toddler, I posted signs on my front door protesting the arrival of my baby brother. As a child, I wept when my mom rearranged the living room furniture. As an adolescent, I brought not one, not two, but three of my best friends with me as we picked out wallpaper for the new, teenage version of my room, feeling I could faint into their arms at any moment for the grown-up-ness of it all. Astrologically speaking, I have zero air signs in my chart- I am majority earth. I am grounded, I am steady, I like to consider spontaneity from every angle before agreeing to adventure. I am often uncomfortable with the lightning-speed of time.

Though I’ve never experienced time lightly (do you understand what it means to turn eight years old?!?!), in the past few years I’ve caught myself becoming particularly undone by family gatherings, especially events like Christmas that mark the passage of another year. Living far from my family- first in Chicago and now further in LA- means that I can often anticipate on one hand how many times I will see them in a year, which heightens the stakes of experience. So much of my family lives close to each other on the East Coast, spilling into each others houses for coffee and favors. This comes with its own set of feelings, I’m sure, but it also means that when we are all piled into the kitchen for a Family Event, everyone else seems pretty acclimated to What It Means to Be Alive, while I’m wide-eyed and slack-jawed, struck by Time Lightning and awareness that THIS IS IT!! THIS IS ONE OF OUR VISITS!!

I’d give myself an A+ for identification of the moment but a see me after class for sinking in and enjoying it.

My cousins having babies was the first warning sign that we might not all live forever- we were the babies, which means that we are now the adults, which means that our parents are the grandparents, which means our grandparents are the stories we tell and the furniture we sit in and the rings on our fingers. How can I describe to you, babies, how much they were here? How we grown-ups, drivers of cars and makers of plans, once fit in their laps and their arms and heard stories of their parents, their grandparents. Stories we now tell you, folding in the tales of Them, who sound as ancient to you as anyone, but we’re next, then you, and soon we’re all just stories and furniture and rings on fingers.

I’m sure there is a word in other languages for this experience, a crippling nostalgia for a moment you’re currently living in, but no one has told me which ones so I’m lonely in the feeling. I feel greedy for embodiment, I want to binge the present moment, grab fistfuls of its chocolate frosting and smear it down my face. Is it possible to live this moment harder? I ask myself, a too-on-the-nose Before shot of someone who would benefit from meditation. Sitting in the corner, thinking about Life while it all plays out in front of me.

So yea, it was nice to go home for Easter. My aunt invited a lot of people I didn’t know, so I wasn’t preoccupied with the beauty of their lives, didn’t well up imagining how much I would miss them someday, tears blurring my vision of their shimmer in the present. My cousin’s baby kept reaching down and taking her diaper off when it was full and I thought man, wouldn’t grandma have loved to see this. My grandma, her great-grandma, a person I loved, a story we tell.

Love ya,

xx Olivia