Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. Try It.

On Christmas Eve, I left the house after lunch to go see a matinee, and then when I got there, I realized that the internets had not given me the correct showtime. And I wasn't the only one, because the people in line behind me had the same problem, and the cashier said it had been happening all morning.

I think this might have been the beginning of my unravelling.

After Marley was born, I started my own tradition of the solo Christmas Eve matinee as a way to ensure that all of my wrapping, baking, and cooking would be complete by the afternoon of the twenty-fourth and so that I would never have the meltdown I witnessed my mom having when I was younger and she had nothing ready to bring to relatives' houses for the holidays. I've seen Memoirs of a Geisha, We Are Marshall, Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Blind Side. This year, it was going to be The Fighter. Except I missed the first showing and my sisters and I had plans to visit our mom that afternoon, so I couldn't go at the later time either.

And, there's just something about visiting your mom with Alzheimer's on Christmas Eve that can get you down. Even if you feel detached, even if your feelings about the whole situation are jumbled. It's sad. And then, when we got back from Todd's family's home about an hour after the time we agreed to get home and put our kids to bed, he told me he left the camera behind. Hours before our children were going to wake up and be so precious and excited and ridiculous. And this was the moment that I realized that even though I had worked for weeks and more specifically, the past series of days and nights to get everything just so for the holidays, that I can still miss the movie, and it can still be sad and scary to see what my mom has turned into, and we still get home late, without a camera. And by the way, the side steps we had redone had finally been completed that afternoon, and Todd okayed a design that I actually hate. I love the patio pavers, I love the sides of the steps, and I love the brownstone on top. I just thought the top landing would be one solid piece, and not an inlaid design of a giant diamond. We paid a lot of money, we waited months, and every time I look at it, I get a surge of disappointment. The work is well-done, but it's just not my taste, and I never got a chance to have an opinion because I was at the movie theater realizing that I'd missed my movie when the diamond went down. So there's my Christmas Eve. And in the end, I had a meltdown. And then my meltdown intensified because I tried to avoid one and it still happened.

And then Todd went to his parents' to get the camera, and I brought up all the wrapped gifts from the basement, and Santa still came, and in the morning it was a Merry Christmas!

Except that Todd realized when he was chewing one of my fantastic salted caramels (recipe courtesy of the Good-Lord-is-she-pleased-with-herself Ina Garten), he tore out a filling in one of his molars, and the tooth cracked right down to the gumline. And a water pipe in our basement was leaking! Merry Christmas! But the broken tooth didn't hurt, and he's held it together and will see his dentist in a couple of days, and he got the pipe fixed, too.

And we went to Heather's for Christmas Day, and here's why that was great. I wore my Ray Allen shirt and fancied it up with Marley's glittery clip-on magnolia from Claire's, and poured myself a glass of Prosecco with pomegranate juice the size of my head. Merry Christmas!

But the Celtics lost, which was disappointing. And all of the adults at Heather's were exhausted by the children and the holidays. At least once, Jeff fell asleep in one of those kid-sized soft chairs, and Todd definitely fell asleep with a blanket on his head in the playroom while Marley and Owen watched Umizoomi and played with their new toys beside him.

It was, all things considered, a fantastic Christmas, and most of the things that brought me down the night before were problems that in retrospect, I'm pretty fortunate to be fretting over. I mean, at Heather's, I got to see Jackson, who is so cute and almost one, for crying out loud, and Owen is getting so excited to have a boy cousin that he can really, truly, almost play with. And Emma brought her singing Sleeping Beauty and I got to hear, "I Know You," over and over again, and I really love that song because it's so princess-y and I will eagerly trill along in my best falsetto. Riley and Marley spent the day scurrying around with their new dolls and Marley's new make-up, and at night, we all watched at least part of Elf instead of the Lakers game, and Buddy can make any time a good time.

And finally, the best day was the next day, when Bean and Toot slumped on the couch in the early morning to watch their regular dose of Pink Panther with chocolate milk, under Marley's beautiful new pink ballet blanket, and Todd and I plopped down next to them with our coffee. And so, Merry Christmas.