Heartbreak Hotel 2 - Christmas

So lets go back a bit to Christmas. The best Christmas I have ever had since the days when my Nan and Ted were alive and the whole family and some of the regular “orphans” would join us and we would pack into Nan’s little house, or outside, weather permitting of course and little Nan would be in the kitchen cooking up an absolute storm. The meal was always followed by Ted putting on the Santa hat and we would all sit around while he would take the presents out from under the tree and hand them, often throwing them in jest at the person for whom they were addressed.
These were happy days, booze filled days and nights would follow with dancing and singing and the odd argument but my Nan had a way of being the glue that made that damaged family stick together for many years and when her dementia set in we tried to continue the tradition until the bitter end.
I had taken over most of the responsibility by this stage for organising and getting everyone together and doing the cooking and buying all the gifts. I was determined to make the last few Christmas’ she was alive memorable, even if she didn’t remember five minutes ago.
This was the first Christmas without either of them and I was emotional and upset in the lead up to the event.
The boyfriend decided that we would hold it at “our house” although I had not officially moved in and still had my own house I was there 6 nights out of 7 if not more anyway and we both became quite excited at the prospect of having the family over.
I must at this point specify that “the family” consisted of my uncle and my Dad, and of course my two dogs and my Dad’s dog Billy. The boyfriend doesn’t have any family in Melbourne. His daughter lives in QLD, father and stepmother and stepbrother who he has limited contact with are in Tassie and his mother and the rest of his family in England.
So it would be fair to say that there was not really going to be a huge swag of people over, just the four of us and three dogs. But I cooked up a storm anyway. I made everything just the way my Nan would have done it, it all tasted the same.
The day turned out better than either of us could have ever expected. After initial fears that it would rain, the weather was perfect, hot but perfect. The boyfriend acted as DJ, a job he takes a great deal of pride in and had been downloading all the crazy old Christmas tunes in the days before the event.
The food was consumed, gifts exchanged, although this is never an extravagant part of the day, but to my shock and surprise my sister left her mothers house not long after we had eaten and joined us for the party, my Dad and I were thrilled, we never get to see her on Christmas so the smile could not be wiped off his face, or mine.
Then my uncles son and daughter, my cousins and two of their friends joined and it felt like Christmas with family as it was before.
Later on we were joined by the poofs from next door, our great friends who often spend time with my family and the night was off and rocking! We danced and boozed and smoked joints and had more fun that what I ever thought would have been possible.
For that one night it no longer mattered to me that my family is dysfunctional and not “normal” in the traditional sense of the word “family”.
I don’t have a family home since my grandparents died. I don’t have somewhere to go where I feel safe and where the family gathers anymore, but the boyfriend declared that we hold Christmas at our house every year and that made me feel like we were building on something.
All these people around us that may or may not be related, but who all care for each other are the building blocks of a family, the thing I have always longed for and I finally felt like I had it, and I felt like he felt the same way.