Beating the fuck out of the 'Christ' in 'Christmas'

Back from the sucking white vacuum of the North, where mom got the entire series of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on DVD and a bunch of Sylvia Brown books and I saw eight great gray owls along the highway. I can't stop thinking about those owls. What do they mean? The daughter of our neighbor, driving late at night on Christmas Eve on Highway 61, hit a great gray owl head on; it swept toward her car, all yellow eyes. The impact shattered her windshield.

I always feel like half a person when I head back home. A third of a person. Things that are important to me have no import up there. Dad shouts his non sequitors from the chair; mom scrunches up her frustrations into little balls of butterscotch ting-a-lings. It's sooooo Northern Gothic, I've decided.

On Christmas Eve, I had a bit of last minute shopping to do during the day, comme d'habitude, Josh Groban for mom. The outside air temperature was -15 F. An enormous wall of cloud rose from Lake Superior, obscuring the lake but stopping at the shore, the result of frigid air meeting warmer lake water. I detoured along the shore--it could have been mistaken for a hot springs. It was beautiful, but I didn't last very long outside the minivan when I jumped out to take a photo.

That's all. Some people have great families--and though I may try to keep a perspective on things, I can't help but feel a bit jealous of their holiday stories--board games, fraternity, alcohol. The holidays always force me to confront my own origins. I guess I haven't learned quite what to do with them. I did demand that we take the Christ out of Christmas this year, and so it was very secular and materialistic.