Monkey Monkey Underpants Christmas

I made a Christmas pact with myself this year: no Gilmore Girls until after I return to work before New Year’s. I was discussing it with my friend J. on the phone just the other day, how I had ordered a whole bunch of movies I missed last year or the year before that on a bulk sale online, just to keep me happy and fat during the holidays. I swore I wouldn’t touch Netflix with a stick, since it belongs to the day-to-day routine of mine, and if I did touch it, it would involve going into the one room I did not Christmas clean, just for this exact purpose, to keep me out of it; the one room in my house that isn’t decorated for the holiday at hand, and yes, it would involve caving in the face of an overwhelming enticement: Gilmore Girls.

You know I don’t need to watch it. I have seen it. A lot. So this year, since I am experimenting spending Christmas all by my lonesome, I will not surrender to my normal after-work routine, not even when there is no one there to tell on me if I did. J. responded that she would never be able to make such a promise, she was deep into The Crown, and besides, she was still in episode three of Stranger Things 2. What’s that about? I asked, laughing. But she has a kid. That’s what it’s about.

Earlier this week, I took some books to the used books store, where I have an existing account because I take pretty much all of my poor babies there when I need to tidy up my piling bookshelves. I had little time, since my parents were in town, and father was expecting me in the car outside, so I could not get into exploration mode, which is fine I guess, since the point of taking books out of the house at least should be freeing some space and not just exchanging books for other books immediately. But I did browse the DVD section while the proprietor went through my stack. I could not believe my eyes, when I found Die Hard, just sitting there. The one Christmas movie of my childhood I still did not own, and was therefore at the mercy of streaming services and TV as to when I could watch it. Fun as it has been, I rescued the copy immediately, and told the man behind the counter my Christmas was officially saved, I was so watching it this Christmas.

Returning home from our triumphant DVD scavenger hunt, mother was there, waiting patiently so we could get started on the prune soup, the one thing, I had told my parents, I would sorely miss from our family Christmas meal. Too easy for words, mother once more showed me exactly how to make it as she went along, bringing me vivid flashbacks from high school’s home ec class, with the potato flour mix and the pouring and the whisking. She made an enormous batch of the dessert, a two-liter kettle, which, I can tell you, I proceeded to devour in the next few days with the gusto of Jack Nicholson. I whipped a half-liter cream to go with it, and at the moment I am just waiting for my arteries to clog any second.

So far, the no Gilmore Girls deal has held. Of course, it isn’t exactly Christmas yet. And while I tried explaining to my parents one more time, that I was going to be fine, I had thought this out as well as possible, and that I just needed a little time to recover from losing my beloved home for forty years, that I simply needed to reacquaint myself with my existing surroundings, having lived off a suitcase for practically the whole autumn, that I wasn’t planning on killing myself on Christmas Eve by eating my two poinsettias, that I promised them I was fine, and that we would call all the time, the moment of goodbyes, when both my parents started choking up all of a sudden, wishing me a merry Christmas with tears in their eyes, as if we were never to meet again, well, that was probably one of the most horrible moments of my entire life.

I needed to muster all my strength for the hour after they had driven off so as not to call them in the car and tell them no, of course I was coming home for Christmas. I could not bear to see them cry, knowing I was to blame for that. But I had decided. I have my own Christmas Juniper, my boxes of chocolate, my Christmas dinner all planned out, my trip to the graveyard to see Grandfather, because for once, when there is someone in town for Christmas, how about it, also all planned out, and, in the end, just thinking about my childhood home still makes me cry. So I started vacuuming the house, and I vacuumed and vacuumed, tears in my eyes, until the urgency of the sorrow passed, and I was fine again.

But boy, am I in dire need of my Gilmore Girls fix right now. Balls. The resolutions one makes for the holidays.


I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas, whatever you are doing. And mother and father and sister, I promise to call early and often. I love you so much. Rakastan teitä kovasti.


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