This is the worst day of my cotton-picking life. And it’s always the most miserable day of the year. It’s as though God extinguished the sun, shot Old Yeller, and ran off with his secretary.
I woke up this morning face-first on the living room floor, wearing a santa hat. I kicked away empty egg nog cartons and stumbled into the kitchen. For breakfast: leftover potatoes, with piss-warm green bean casserole.
Christmas is over.
The tree in the corner is preparing for its own funeral, and we’ve decided to stop watering the poinsettias. How did this happen?
Twenty-four hours ago, I had a fork in one hand and a new iPhone in the other. I told jokes, I made toasts, I fed the dog so many turkey bones she puked in the laundry room.
And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, somebody pulled out a guitar. The kids danced, ring-around-the-rosy formation, while I twirled in the center. And when I screamed, “God bless us, everyone!” the family liked to have torn the place apart with their bare hands.
Now the world is one big cow patty.
There are no bell ringers, no Rudolph noses. Tinsel is on clearance. Churches quit lighting candles. Nat King Cole is dead, and Tony Bennet is looking a little less pink every day.
We’ve done this to ourselves. Yesterday, we were part of the best damn thing ever conceived by mankind, and it was beautiful. We sang songs about love, gave gifts to strangers. We watched kids giggle. We drove hundreds of miles just to wash dishes together. We took walks around the neighborhood. We smiled a lot. For Christ sake, I even hugged my mother-in-law; I squeezed her so hard I almost broke her titanium hip. But it’s all over today.
Now.
We act like different people again.