I never worry about you,” my dad likes to say — but the truth is, I want him to.
At the end of this strange year, our year of pandemic, I find myself sheltering with my best friend Margie and her new husband Brian, celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas in our own makeshift fashion, in a tree-lined, middle-class neighborhood of South Minneapolis. “Sheltering” is often how I describe it, a word that captures both the unlikely coziness of it all and the truly dire necessity that brought me here from New York, fleeing my own personal housing crisis that flung me thousands of dollars into debt.
In the days leading up to Christmas, cards and packages arrive from our friends and family — anonymous gifts from the group-chat Secret Santa, various items off the wedding registry from aunts and uncles and cousins who would have attended under non-pandemic circumstances — but mostly, from Margie’s parents. Her mother, in particular, sends us so many packages it’s hard to keep up, and not just for Margie but for Brian and me too.
We decide that we’ll all unbox and wrap each other’s gifts before placing them under the tree, in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of a “real” holiday, one less reliant on Zoom and Amazon Prime. I love giving and watching other people get presents nearly as much as I enjoy receiving things for myself, so it doesn’t matter that most of the gifts aren’t for me. And yet, as I open box after box from Margie’s mother — everything from cutting boards to vintage repro dresses to a pair of Ruth Bader Ginsberg earrings — I find myself hit with an unexpected sort of longing.
You see, in addition to marking ten months since the pandemic hit home for most Americans, December 2020 is the tenth anniversary of my mother’s death from cancer, the horrible dramatic season finale of my mostly pretty okay childhood. I always think of her around the holidays, and I figured when we finally made it to ten years, I would somehow have something useful or profound to write about the whole thing. But all I can think is: Man, if she were still around, I bet she would have sent me so much shit. Much like me, my mom loved giving presents. It’s one of the things she was really, really good at.
As for my dad — that’s just never been his love language, I guess. We’re both hurting for money these days, and were even before the pandemic. Every year, we awkwardly ask the other if there’s anything in particular they would like, and neither of us can ever think of anything, and it makes me sad in a way I still can’t figure out how to explain.
I’m well aware that with even an ounce of perspective, “I’m 28 and my parents didn’t buy me Christmas presents” makes for a pretty crappy, uncompelling sob story. Even putting aside the unique awfulness of this year — which has left so many more people struggling to pay for housing and basic necessities — the expectation that parents will look after their grown children in this particular way, by buying them extensive amounts of gifts, may well be a distinctly American, middle-class, white cultural construct. And yes, I suppose to some extent I’m still grieving the class expectations I picked up in childhood, when our family’s circumstances were materially different. But it’s not just that.
For a time, after my mom died, my dad and I were very, very close, particularly in my final year of college when I unexpectedly became the full-time caregiver to my mom’s sister, who also had terminal cancer. We bonded over the responsibility and exhaustion of end-of-life care, everything from changing sheets and logging medications to helping to lift and balance and support the weight of another person’s body. When every decision felt like an agonizing moral dilemma, he was the person I called for advice.
But somewhere in the intervening years, we forgot how to talk to each other. I got older; he got older. Politics was part of it, as was money. In New York, I built myself an illusion of economic and professional stability out of $15 sandwiches and $10 pencil skirts from Goodwill. I watched from afar as my father blew through his retirement savings trying to support my brother, whose struggles with mental illness have propelled him in and out of crisis ever since I was a teenager. Even back then, some part of me realized it was easiest just to be the one who didn’t need anything. “I never worry about you,” my dad likes to say to me these days — but the truth is, I want him to. More than anything, I ache to be parented.
And so, of course, it’s not about the presents at all. As I open the boxes from Margie’s mother, each one complete with a gift receipt and a little note, I think about how much thought she must have put into choosing each item for this new phase of her daughter’s life. And I wish, just once, that someone would do that for me again.
We skype her parents on Christmas morning, and it’s just as wholesome and awkward and Boomerish as you would imagine. At about the sixty minute mark, Margie’s dad looks ready to be done, bless his heart, but Margie’s mom is insistent on seeing her open some particular present. “Just one more, it should be in a square box.”
“Mom, they’re all square.”
“Oh, well it should have arrived sometime last week then.”
“Mom.”
I’m sure if they were my own parents, they would drive me crazy too, in their way. And yet, as we extricate ourselves from the call, promising to let them know as soon as we open whatever it is, I can’t help but think to myself, How neat.
Later, I call my dad and tell him I love him, that I can’t wait to see him when it’s safe again, and I do mean it. I hope it’s soon. We haven’t talked much lately, so it’s the first time he’s gotten the chance to ask me if there’s anything I want him to send me for Christmas. “I wish I could think of something,” I say, after a long pause. “But there isn’t really anything. I just miss you.”
“I miss you too,” he says, and I know he means it too. Not for the first time, I wish that was enough.
