Because my shadow side wrote this
Over the decades I’ve spent thousands of hours, not to mention dollars, writing, addressing, and stuffing envelopes with cheery, well-meant holiday missives.
But I didn’t get around to Christmas cards this year. Last year either. I told myself I was saving the planet and our mail carrier’s back, but that’s BS; I simply didn’t feel like it.
I’m too old to do things I don’t feel like if I don’t have to. Especially if those things require some level of socially attuned dishonesty. Given the year 2024 has been, I’d worn out my reserves of that by June.
Also, it’s an exercise with diminishing returns. The pile of holiday cards I receive has been diminishing drastically year by year even when I was still diligently sending mine. I felt like the kid who tries too hard, and I don’t like that feeling, so I stopped.
Which resulted in calmer holidays with more free time and less postage costs. Still, there are those of you out there who continue to send your photo cards and group letters, making me feel like I should reciprocate somehow.
I just can’t bring myself to do it. Not with my outside voice, anyway. But it turns out my shadow side produced the missive below, quite without my permission.
Here’s what you’re not getting from me:
Dear Recipient:
Well, that’s a cold greeting, you think.
You’d be happier with the customary “Dear Family and Friends” salutation, and a personal note scribbled somewhere on the photocopied sheet. Sal, it’s been ages! you’d like me to say. Hope you and Pat are well and happy and planning more trips! Let’s make this the year we meet up again!
All the polite fiction we maintain whenever we touch base, which by now has dwindled to once a year. So happy to read your holiday letter! you’ll scribble on the back of the pre-printed photo card from Costco that you’ll shove in the mail once you realize you’re still on my list. We think of you often, and this year just might bring us out your way!
That’s not going to happen, as we both know
But the gesture is expected, just like the contents of my annual letter. You’ll find it among your mail at the end of a winter day, sorting my envelope from the beg letters and direct mail ads. She’s still sending snail mail, you’ll remark to Pat over your first glass of albariño.
You’ll share the letter with him while he tends a pot of mushroom risotto. The two of you have become foodies since your kids left home; no more sloppy joes, no more fish sticks. You said so in one of your Facebook posts, above a photo of paella.
While Pat stirs and sips and nods, you convey my breezy summary of the previous year’s high points: the trips, the weddings, the adult children and their careers, and warm wishes for everyone’s holidays and new year.
You fold up the letter, stick it in my card, stick the card in the fruit bowl, which is where you put the few hard-copy Christmas cards you still get until you figure out what else to do with them. By the time the card settles among the bananas, you’ve moved on to other topics and another glass of wine.
But this is not that letter
This is the letter, were you to read it, that has no time for broad strokes or expectations. This is the letter that demolishes the comforting shelter of written small talk, of what-have-you-been-up-to’s. This is the letter that is unsatisfied with the social contract.
This is the letter that comes from deep within. From the regions that even I prefer to avoid most of the time. This is the letter that, if you were to read it, offers my unfiltered voice, the unedited version of what it’s like to be in my skin.
This is the letter that doesn’t recite travels and achievements and events. This is the letter that gets into the granularity of my soul. That’s why you don’t get to read it.
If you were to read it, it would say things like:
On January 26, I enjoyed feeling superior to the woman next to me in yoga class.
On March 8, I realized that sometimes I hate children.
On April 14, I realized that sometimes I hate adults. Especially the stupid ones, and there are a lot of those.
On May 22, I imagined wreaking small, nasty vengeance on an irritating colleague.
On June 5, as I walked the dog a red-tailed hawk soared above me and I understood, all at once, the connection of all things. This feeling lasted several seconds.
Later that same day, I repeated unkind gossip.
On October 14, I wanted something else for dinner, but I didn’t say so. Not because I was afraid, but because it was too much trouble. Still, I resented the meal I was given.
On December 10, I indulged in impure thoughts so lavish that I could cause you to writhe were I to share them with you. But I’m keeping those for myself.
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