Exploratory probes/what are you doing this holiday season?
By: Allison Gruber
Tags: Covid 19 Crisis, Cancer, Holidays, Trump Administration

I have a confession: I am grumpy today.

I took a personal day today. Not for a doctor’s visit or a scan or some ungodly procedure, but for my own damn self.

I haven’t even checked my work email.

That’s how seriously I’m taking my mental/physical rest these days.

Remember when people had to fucking call you if they wanted to know what was up with you?

You had to actually hear a human voice.

As I write this, a bunch of dumb, arrogant men who are under the mystifying spell of another, much more arrogant, dumber man failed in their weird attempts to undermine American democracy. One of the dumb men needs a pardon. The others have their reasons, I’m sure. I mean, I really don’t know how you could ever again sleep at night after attempting to overthrow

the country you vowed to protect (I kind of like the democracy/attempts at democracy), and screw over millions and millions of your fellow citizens who are literally freaking out and dying, but you do you.

I heard a number of political commentators call this bullshit nonsense prolonged by Trump/One Dumb Man “a stress test” for democracy.

Feels more like an exploratory anal probe without anesthesia, but okay . . .

(Also — NO, I have never had an “exploratory anal probe” or any anal probe of any kind unless colonoscopies count . . . and even that had anesthesia. So there are some medical procedures — like exploratory anal probing — that lie beyond my rich experience as a patient.)

(Also, I hope my blog isn’t like “Murder She Wrote”)

(Because I really don’t want to have any “exploratory probes”)

I did have to smirk when I saw a headline about how Melania “just wants to go home.”

Same, Melania.

Fuckin’ same, girl.

But guess what? You reap what you sow, Mel.

Also, fuck you.

And I do hate when the “woke left” point out Melania’s status

as an immigrant to make a point. Like I always cringe when people say “consider yourself lucky you don’t live in ____ country” — people usually say this when sexual minorities are losing their rights and being vocally upset about said loss. “Consider yourself lucky you don’t live in ______. They bludgeon homos with bricks. Perfectly legal.”

And I’m always like, “Uh, no. That’s not the way it works.

I don’t have to feel guilt for having human rights.” Anyway

this is all to say, Melania should be glad we don’t live in a country

where her head would end up on a fucking spike.

Go home, Melania. I really wish you and your husband would.

Also, I wonder how the “be glad you’re not in ____ country” crowd are feeling now.

We are ___ country.

We are the bad example now.

America.

Fuck yeah.

I hope this GIF is ironic. If it’s not, then I just have no more hope for this goddamn country.

Donald Trump ruined Christmas. Where’s my fucking Christmas song about that? The specter of cancer ruined last Christmas, and now this one is going to be ruined by some half-cooked morally bankrupt goon.

Fine. It’s not “ruined.” It’s just that we won’t be able to see anyone or celebrate in any of the ways that used to make Christmas (and every other fucking holiday) feel a little special.

I remember when Easter was a big deal in our family.

Became less and less of a big deal as family members died

until one Easter Sunday I found myself all alone in my apartment

eating pickles from the jar and watching reruns of “Taxi.”

Thanksgiving will likely, post-pandemic, get smaller and smaller

too. As will Christmas.

The holidays feel straight up broken this year.

Indeed, I go long stretches where I forget the holiday season is even upon us — and then my students bring up the holiday break or we receive a special package at home or there’s a commercial sandwiched between the death tolls that is trying to instruct us what to buy when we feel so goddamn hopeless and low.

People are the holidays.

People. Just like all the saccharine holiday movies tell you —

it’s about people. (There’s truth in cliches — that’s why they’re

fucking cliches. Things that DON’T make sense don’t get repeated

to the point they become “cliches” — I realize this definition

does not account for “cash me outside” or whatever,

but I never claimed to be

a motherfucking linguist.)

Christmas started feeling different for me

the first year without my grandfather. That was 1996 or 1997.

I’ve been sad about Christmas for over twenty years —

every year something new to be sad about.

I don’t feel sad about my grandfather anymore —

I miss him sometimes, but mostly just feel glad for the memories,

but I do miss Christmas which, once I turned twenty, was never

quite the same. But maybe that’s always the way it always works.

Holidays, after the age of twenty (unless you have kids) are sad reminders

of how things used to be

when you were younger

and healthier

and happier.

Over the years, Sarah and I built our own traditions.

Some years we go to Chicago, some we stay home, and some we’d drive to Tucson to be with her parents.

Mostly though, if I’m being honest, we stayed home at Christmas.

It was coziest at home. Pajamas, fatty food, and booze all day.

Right after Thanksgiving we’d go buy the most ridiculous looking tree we could pick off the lot (we had an affinity for “chonky” trees).

I’d swear and sweat trying to get the fucking tree in the tree stand, the dog would drink the water, sometimes a cat would knock glass ornaments off the branches.

The tree smelled nice. I enjoyed decorating it — as the years progressed, our ornaments held more memories.

Last Christmas, Sarah, the chonky tree, and I (also chonky way back in 2019) hung around the house, sipping alcoholic beverages, eating food, and I think maybe Virgil came over, and I got drunk and cried (because it was the very beginning of the Sisyphean Cancer Diagnosis).

This year? I might make a ham in the slow cooker. I might do nothing. We might get a tabletop tree and some string lights. We might not. I’m not much of a drinker these days, so spirits will probably

play a small role if any. We will still have unpacked boxes.

A play I wrote some years ago, produced in Milwaukee, opened on an apartment that was half packed — in that awful twilight where you cannot tell if the occupant is coming or going. I wanted it this way. Even in my thirties I knew that moving was gruesome and bleak. Even the moves you want, and especially the moves you make in the middle of a pandemic for better healthcare because you’re only 44 and you have fucking stage iv breast cancer just like ABSOLUTELY NO WOMAN IN YOUR FAMILY EVER and what the fuck even IS that shit?

Moving is hard. 2020 is hard. For everyone. We’re in this shit storm together.

I suppose, maybe, there’s comfort in that.

Christmas feels weirdly hard. Like I’m looking at the corpse of Christmas.

A grotesque, but not

a cool grotesque.

Despite being my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving

wasn’t so painful because we were busy packing and planning

a move to a new city — well, new to me (mostly).

I was going to get away from the inept healthcare system in my town.

I was distracted from Thanksgiving — and the Whole Foods organic, waterlogged stuffing

that my wife adorably procured

just didn’t “take me back” to my grandmother’s.

Took me back to the Whole Foods’ hot bar, which is no more,

just like Thanksgiving at my grandma’s

is no more. So I got to remember the Whole Foods hot bar

and almost feel something that roughly resembled the faintest twitch

of nostalgia.