Auntie Mame

I have been more than a little bah-humbug this Christmas season. Beyond the big changes at home and at work (which has drained my introverted self or, at the least, deprived me of my recharge time), it is the first Christmas in 7 years without Yaya. I don't need to say much more on that, do I?

I am scrambling to play Santa, while the father of the youngest two girls is uncommunicative and actively unhelpful planning for Christmas gifts. I am not even sure when the girls will be home... if I knew for sure, then I could plan to hit up post Christmas sales to extend my dollars and get more gifts for them. Of course, Asshole Father delights in complicating things, so it's just as likely they will somehow wind up at my house unexpectedly on Christmas morning, hoping for a mountain of gifts from Santa that The Asshole told them would be there. He has a history of emotionally abusing them to cause April pain. And of course he missed his child support payment this month, so April is using her birthday money to get gifts for the girls... noble but not fair.  Looking forward to the day we can tell him to screw off forever. The lesson in this is that it is extremely hard to be a single mother, even with support from others.

So with all that in mind, when "We Need a Little Christmas" came on the radio, I instantly knew it would be my theme song for this year. It has sad lyrics but an upbeat tempo, recognizing the reality of less than ideal circumstances while reaching for the joy and healing Christmas can bring. Fitting, no? At the time, I did not know it was from the Auntie Mame musical, having never seen it, nor the movie, nor read the book. A little Wikipedia hunt later that day, and I have fallen for Auntie Mame's ideology. Because she seems to be the prototype of what I call a sparent (though the boy was orphaned), her vivacious embrace of life and true living speaks to me on a fundamental level. On my best days, I think I have behaved similarly: odd and weird, but electric and infectious, in tune with a larger reality than the small, self-limiting lives people often live. At least that is the romantic view of my poetic self. Either way, I am glad to have found a role model for my sparent self in literature. I feel a little less lonely, which is mostly what I needed to shake off the bah-humbugs.... Asshole Father notwithstanding.