HO HO HO

On a sweltering summer day in 1973, I was driving an overweight U-Haul without shocks through Chicago rush-hour traffic. Sharing the front seat of the truck was my relentlessly loquacious mother, two squirrelly preschoolers, a queasy cat, and several poisonous houseplants.  At every even-numbered mile marker between Ann Arbor and Iowa City my mother said, “No one in our family leaves Michigan. You’ll be back.”

It was not until I drove the truck onto the Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge that I realized Iowa was on the other side of the Mississippi. It was not until then that I realized there was another side of the Mississippi. My husband had failed to mention that we were moving out west. And no, no one actually does that middle part of the United States Jigsaw Puzzle. It’s a long, long trip across the three I-states that join Michigan and Iowa City.

When Michiganders look west, they see San Francisco, so only once in 38 years have we had the entire family visit for the holidays. It was right after we moved to the boonies. Even their car had a dubious expression as it crept down the driveway. They all stood on the porch, frightened, not inhaling because the wind was from the south. The folks from Kansas fared better because they could stop at the Eagleville, Missouri truck stop for pie.

The house is basically one big, open room. My husband and I volunteered to sleep in the basement and keep the dogs down there with us. We wanted everyone to get a good night’s sleep.

Here was the plan:

·      Kansas folks in our bed in the balcony. They felt lucky when this was announced because we have a snazzy Tempurpedic mattress.

·      Daughter in the little balcony over that balcony. She felt lucky to have her own space.

·      Sister and husband in the other balcony on borrowed foldaway beds. Not sure if they felt lucky.

·      Niece in the balcony over that balcony

·      Sons on the couch and floor in the living room

·      Nephew and his fiance in the tipi until their core temperatures dropped to 87, then in the basement.

·      Truly lucky other niece in the enclosed first-floor bedroom

We headed for the basement with the dogs, happy to sacrifice our comfy bed for the family.

In the morning, we emerged from the depths and asked how the night had gone. I don’t remember much after that. Imagine a large group advancing on you, shaking fists, all of them in the grips of a terrible sleep-deprived hangover. 22 puffy eyes squinting out from under 11 alarming cases of bed-head.

I hear it started with the snoring. Our son’s snoring can realign the planets, and our brother-in-law’s is a close second. Like a French horn ensemble, their snores bounced off the beams and the ceiling all night.

About 3 a.m., Mike the Cat launched himself from a beam over our bed and landed on my brother-in-law’s chest. He (the only one in the group allergic to cats) stood up in bed and screamed. My daughter in the balcony yelled, “What the hell is going on down there?” People in balcony #2 began laughing, and apparently things deteriorated from there.

By 4 a.m. folks got back to sleep, unaware the coyotes down by Old Man’s Creek were just rubbing the sleep from their beady little eyes. Their wailing will raise the dead or in this case, those who wish they were dead.

The second night, my son decided he was sleeping on the floor in the basement. He just had to get some sleep, so we traded places with him. Next morning he came up looking like John Wayne Gacy’s worst nightmare.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“There was something crashing around in the basement all night,” he said.

Yes, there was. It was a mouse that had caught just the tips of his toes in a mousetrap and proceeded to race around the basement slapping the wooden trap against the concrete floor. From what I could tell, the mouse was taking it way better than Christopher was.

I know some families implode during the holidays. Old issues burble up, ghosts of disagreements past fester, and someone draws a line: if she’s coming next year, we won’t be here. We never have that kind of nonsense; the most we have are the glares that ricochet around the euchre table when some poor soul makes hearts trump, and her partner’s got the perfect spade hand. But since the whole group was sleep deprived, we did make sure no one was packing heat when they sat down to take on the winners.