Glad Tidings

It was that time of year. Each day was dim as night, bending the parameters of how much heaviness a single hour or minute could stand to carry. Time was unyieldingly slow and therefore cruel. The question flickered in my mind like a flame on a thin candlewick, every possible answer dripping down to the amygdala like melted wax. Did my parents and grandparents feel this immovable weight when they were sixteen, too?

The glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my ceiling were devoid of artificial starlight when the evening hit. The polished wooden E from my name display on the wall was now dead on the floor, fractured into four pieces. After trying to console me, my sister was rightfully indignant. She slammed my door, sending the vowel plummeting against the hardwood surface.

Although I cried a sea, my contact lenses remained in place, my vision crystalline from under my covers. The resiliency of my contacts made me laugh through my incessant stream of snot and tears. Something bigger than my consciousness, something primordial within me knew that if I could still laugh, then I had to find a way to keep trying. Hope miraculously poked through the thick covering of defeatism, in the way that grass sprouts in sidewalk cracks.

The song from the car drifted back to me. Before we started arguing, my dad was helping me practice for my road test at the vacant fairgrounds. I was rehearsing parallel parking while my dad watched from outside. On the classic rock station, this incongruous song played. As dusk settled, I smiled at the poetic lyrics. A warm feeling lingered, rare at the time, as it dawned on me that we made it through the road lesson so far without fighting. That didn’t last. We argued in the empty parking lot. My exasperation overstretched as we decorated our Christmas tree later in the evening.

No one in my family ever really fought. We live in a pleasantly boring town where neighbors look out for each other. I’ll go walking in our neighborhood, staring at each tree in awe, loving them as they are, and detecting the sense of care that undergirds everything. I can feel it in the warmth radiating off of the pavement. I’ve never had to worry about necessities. In the summer, sunbeams shine on the green grass in my backyard and bounce off the pool, the sights amalgamating into one tangible reminder of how fortunate I am. Nothing’s perfect, but there is no need to argue when we have so much to be thankful for.

And so, against expectation, against reason and peace, my dad and I argued a lot when I was learning to drive. I have always been close with my dad, sharing Sunday morning hikes, a deep

appreciation for music, and a ceaseless curiosity about the world. In retrospect, I was absolutely to blame. Arrogance is tethered to youth. 

Beyond the psychological and societal explanations regarding why teenagers fight with their parents, something was really wrong with me. My best friend attempted to take her life, and that wrecked me. It went so deep that it probably hindered my brain development, a mess of disrupted hormones and neurochemicals, synapses firing or misfiring, circuits disconnected. We had an argument before everything happened. She blamed me. I assumed her family and friends faulted me too; I couldn’t confirm this. I saw it in their eyes when we encountered each other at cross-country meets, at the YMCA, or at the grocery store. Of course, I blamed myself more than they ever could. 

And so every time my dad corrected a sloppy left turn or a seven-point turn, hypersensitivity surged. I saw judgment where there was guidance. I saw hostility where there was love.

The new Christmas tree shone in the living room, ornaments glistening, filling the house with the subtle smell of pine. My sister was gone, seething somewhere in her Nissan Altima, the car as old as her. 

My mom tried to distract herself with the TV, regretting telling me that I was ruining this family. I don’t fault her for that; I exhausted her patience. I wish I could say I needed to hear that, or that her words guided me to become healthier and happier overnight. 

I was alone in my room with my self-pity. I hurt my best friend. I hurt my dad every time we got into the Camry together, which hurt my mom and sister too. Inadvertently, I was hurting the people I loved most in life. I couldn’t recognize myself anymore.

Competition numbers from cross-country races past covered the surface of my door, organized in numerical order. I wondered if my dad noticed the contrast when he knocked. I displayed these accomplishments on my bedroom door, but in actuality, I had nothing to be proud of. Our uncharacteristic fight confirmed the two things I already believed to be true: I was stupid, and I was unworthy.

“Just checking on you. You should try to come out and watch The Office if you can.”

In his voice, in the tears welling in his eyes, there was unconditional love– the stable, endless ground that my entire life was built upon.

Believing I didn’t deserve that love, I sobbed harder.

****

For a fleeting moment, the morning belonged to another realm. A dull light slipped through the shades, reflecting onto the fuzzy ceiling. My waking mind clung to the sense of wonder stemming from the recognition that I had never seen that hue of gray before.

This work of fiction I read on the plane had a prayer mentioned in it, now stuck in my head as if it were a song. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than be comforted, to understand rather than to be understood, to love than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

I jolted awake, abandoning my dream on the pillow. About four years had passed since the worst time of my life, yet no time or distance could stop me from grinding my teeth in my sleep. The fire alarm spoke to us, her voice stuck on the hazy boundary between human and computer. The machine entered another bout of warning us, “Smoke detected by the windows.” Resentment was a brief clenching of my jaw—not because she startled us from jet-lagged slumber but because she imitated humanity with such precision. Music from the school dance in my dream throbbed through my skull as I still exited it, or maybe that was only my heartbeat, simultaneously anxious and gentle. 

My shoes were on without a thought, set in the instinct that I was a short five thousand miles away at school. The cocoon of this illusion vanished when my sister awoke, hand reaching out for me. Her question shot through the dark like a firework in the young night. Grass was swaying in the wind somewhere nearby. “Are you okay?”

From across the hall, a fist knocked against the characterless door. My sister let my dad in, and he swiftly dismantled the alarm’s whining. Shadows exchanged places in the vivid hallway that I couldn’t look at without recoiling.

The question returned, spoken with a primal type of care, such loving urgency. Speech starts as air flowing through the lungs, but this emanated from somewhere deep in the tissue of the heart. “Are you guys okay?”

“Yes.” “Good morning.” “Merry Christmas.” “Merry Christmas.”

The blurry failings of my vision, my absolutely unsurvivable and undependable eyesight, limited my perception of their faces. I relied on my hearing instead to make sense of the present as it unfurled. My mom announced that she was heading downstairs to check on my nana, her mother, the five of us under one roof at the Fern Grotto Inn.

Being here was a major deviation from the tradition of crossing my middle finger over my pointer finger in hopes of light snow kissing my driveway. It was five-thirty on Christmas morning on the mountainous, verdant island of Kauai, Hawaii. The excitement for each new day was plentiful, trying to soak up the unobstructed nature and abundant joy as it came. There was no need to sink back into quiescent sleep when we could catch a saturated sunrise on the beach down the road, even if the sand was littered with fallen branches and twisted twigs. 

My mind roamed to the generous tree right outside my window. I planned on scooping off a starfruit, its yellow exterior glowing in my palm. I’d cut a few up in our grand kitchen, pouring a pinch of salt onto each slice, sharing with my family.

Later, my nana, cousins, aunt, and uncle would climb into their car, and we’d follow them around the island for holiday sightseeing. The four of us would drive in our rental car, a mud-stained Jeep, listening to Van Morrison, absorbing the pure, protected beauty all around us.

The music and nature unfolding right in front of me, plus being there in the given moment with my family, would go right to my big, sensitive heart and reside there for what I could only hope would be forever.

We would drive along the coast and observe that Hawaiian winter seemed to be one of fervent waves, ideal for surfing but far too dangerous for swimming. The tides of my soul would pull low though, revealing what was underneath the surface: an understanding that pain took a lot to undo, but it didn’t have to be permanent. Like the tidal waves compelled by the force of the moon, life continues on.

As daylight filtered in, I began my day by wishing my friends at home a merry Christmas. Another knock at the door. I opened it, my appetite for anticipation full. Through persistent laughter, the truth escaped my dad as if it were all one word.

“Mom comes upstairs and says ‘Nana started the fire because she was trying to cook a bagel for breakfast and a lizard got into her room and now she can’t find it.’”

I laughed so hard that the room began to spin. My sister curled up on the bed beside me, clutching her sides from the exertion of vehement laughter. I laughed so hard I cried.