![]() ![]() The past two years made me think about roles and identities, things like daughter, sister, caregiver, Library Technician, employee, friend, defensive, emotional, persecuted, overthinker, middle-aged, fat, and a myriad of terms. 2005 had to happen to enable me to go to return to school in 2007. On the other hand, the resolve to start again helps me not sink into despair. Every December, I go back to that song and its sadness and yearning intensified over the past couple of years. Get me through December, so I can start again. I promise I remember MacMaster draws the strings slowly across, reminding me of tears gently falling. Get me through December, Alison Krauss sings as Natalie McMaster plays her fiddle. ![]() Whatever I held back began to crash down around me, again, feeling much worse than in 2005. Most of all, the sadness redoubled its load. My place remains a chaotic mess after spending weekends at dad’s and unable to declutter and donate to thrift shops during the lockdown. This year my brother ‘voluntold’ me to host Christmas. I slept over at her place, and we hung out and had Christmas Eve dinner before heading to my brother’s for Christmas day with his family. I watched a Christmas mass from a cathedral in Washington, DC, with its bright colours and soaring hymns, crying all the way through while dad was also watching it in his bedroom. Honestly, I kept myself numb the entire time until Christmas Eve. The homecare worker did not show up, and I had to search YouTube on how to change the catheter bag from the small daytime one to the larger nighttime one. I remembered the night we did it in 2019. After mom died, we decorated the apartment to give dad some normalcy. Was I in a bad mood? Am I sad? Whatever it is, check it and not take it out on the clerk like had happened so many times to me.Ĭurrently, December looks like another month, one I have to endure. I did check myself before going into a store. The scars still remain, and things changed for me. I knew it was time to move on, and two years later, I went back to school. I cried so hard, I had to open my door to nearly vomit. I drove to an empty parking lot and wept. My car needed gas, so I went to gas it up, and I don’t know what set me off, but I was short with the clerk, feeling something held back, trying to break through. Yes, it’s called experience, and I was older than many staff members.Īfter serving the last customer on the 24th, I went home and changed my clothes for Midnight Mass. One time, I tried to put our situation in context, and she snapped, “Oh, you know more, do you?”, Not to this person as she bitched and bitched and bitched. What constituted chaos at this Christian bookstore, a good size but still small, made me shrug and get on with it. Me? I shrugged because the last bookstore I worked at, McNally Robinson, has this curated chaos, especially during author events. She quit and had the twentysomething gall to write a letter to our boss about the situation. One person complained about our staffing situation and kept complaining. In other words, while the store retained its Protestant roots, it went more mainline and included Catholics. I worked for a trans-denominational Christian bookstore. ![]() It started with a book retail season like no other the closure of one store caused ours to get busier. Even while working, first at a restaurant job, then in book retail, with a stop subbing in classrooms in between, I still liked December, and the first time I heard this song, I was struck by the longing, in Portuguese we call it Saudade.Īround 2005, December changed for me. I like almost being done school, knowing Christmas was around the corner, and another year winding down before stepping into a new one. The track appears on McMaster’s album In My Hands, released in 1999 ![]()
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