A Christmas Story ... Arizona Style

I had grown up in a small town in Illinois with white Christmases. Bundling up like Randy in A Christmas Story to go sledding with the neighbor kids, making snow angels and snow men, and getting into snowball fights were the norm. Coming inside afterward to dry your wet clothes over the vents in the floor and being greeted with hot chocolate and fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies was what a Midwest Christmas was all about. It was right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
Fast forward to present day Christmas in Buckeye, Arizona, home to citizens with a median age of 65. I drove to my mom’s house in a short sleeved shirt and running pants. All of the pants I brought had elastic linings; I would have brought maternity pants if I had a pair. Even at 34 years old, my mom still makes me chocolate chip cookies and does my laundry when I come home to visit. The only difference is that I have now substituted a cup of milk for a bottle of Merlot.
There was a ton of traffic getting out of Los Angeles. What would usually take no more than an hour and a half to get to Palm Springs now took over three hours. I was going to visit my friend Katie in Scottsdale first, and it ended up taking me eight and a half hours to get there. The trip should have taken five and a half hours, six hours tops. At one point during the trip, I looked up at a billboard and saw an old man standing with a young boy. The caption read “Teach him to do something that you love.” I did a triple take because it looked like they were smoking peace pipes (we were in Indian territory and this would not be unheard of. In fact I was faintly surprised that they were not holding jugs of moonshine up to their lips); it turned out that they were playing saxophones. That’s what an eight and a half hour trip filled with nothing but desert, mountains, and cactus will do to you…you’ll begin to see mirages of things that you would rather be doing.
Wondering what will fly out of my mother’s mouth always makes for a good trip, and this was no exception. She begins each visit sweet as pie questioning if there is anything that she can do to help make my visit more comfortable. A few days into the visit the niceties wear off, and I get remarks like “you’ve got two hands. Wash your own dishes.”
My mother loves to sit around and talk about the two loves of her life, George W. Bush and shopping at Kohl’s. She started referring to Dubya as “my man” after watching Barbershop with my stepdad Jim. She told me that she and Jim (who has taken to wearing pageboy hats because he thinks they make him look like Brad Pitt) were surprised to see that they were the only white people in the theater.
Mom: Why would they keep shooting me looks like I should be watching The Bridges of Madison County in the theater next door?
She thinks that Ice Cube is a good actor and that Barbershop is a political satire movie. My mother is to gangster what Jim is to Brad Pitt with his pageboy hat. Neither translates.
So sitting among a sea of Beanie Baby snowmen, my mother sits in a corner chair, sewing a rip in some of my work pants, and muttering under her breath about different celebrities. My mother also likes to refer to herself as being in the know to all things Hollywood since she reads People magazine.
While talking about Kobe…
Mom: He’s a jerk.
Sapphire: Why?
Mom: He cheated on his wife with that girl in Colorado. I don’t like hypocrites.
About Kanye…
Mom: He’s a jerk too.
Sapphire: Why?
Mom: He talked about “my man” after Hurricane Katrina.
My mom starts to hyperventilate when she gets worked up about something. While talking about issues that really matter like health care reform and Angelina Jolie being a homewrecker, she starts hyperventilating, and has to excuse herself to go sit down in the kitchen until she can get her breath back.
We go to church on Christmas Eve, and are surrounded by unruly children (I still don’t understand why people have them. All they do is need stuff: clothes, medicine, food, unconditional love. Why not get a pet? They give unconditional love and are loyal. Or a plant? They only need sunlight and water…and that stuff is free) running up and down the bleachers of the school (yes, the service was held in a grade school gymnasium). After the service my mother continues her conversation right where she had left off before we walked inside to do leg drags…I mean, to sit and watch a sermon.
Mom: So, like I was saying (an hour ago), our Christmas party was fabulous. We had at least 25 couples there. One couple said that they had tickets to see an Arizona Cardinals game, but that they sold them so that they could come to our party. And we only invite the nicest people. We have a bunch of bottles of wine left over if you want to take any home with you, Sapphire. (My ears perk up).
As we pull into the driveway I can see that her neighbors a few doors down are having a holiday party of their own. My mom tries to act disinterested as she scours the couple walking inside to see if she recognizes them.
Sapphire: Wow, looks like your neighbors are having a party, Mom.
Mom: Well I doubt that they will have as many people as we had. There are only a few cars here. Did I mention that we had 25 couples? That’s 50 people, you know.
I’m not a math major but yes, I got that.
I could tell that my mom was almost foaming at the mouth. How dare anyone try to top her annual Christmas party? And how dare they not invite her and Jim? Even if she didn’t invite them to her party.
Mom: What jerks.