Christmas in Livermore [25 Dec 2009|02:32pm] hopeless_addict [ mood | cheerful ] Chilly outside, but the sun is shining. The drive up was a challange on one hour of sleep after a morning shift at Fins. I sang Everclear loudly to stay awake as I sped over the 17. The air tasted like frost and I wound my way through mountain passes, exchanging my platonic Santa Cruz family for my Livermore nuclear family. Last night we watched White Christmas, ate coq au vin, and played Catchphrase. My sister and I watched television until I fell asleep on the couch. All typical Christmas Eve. Following tradition fittingly, today is a classic Christmas for my family. First stockings, filled with a mixture of candy and hygeine products. This year, however, I got booze in my stocking as well. Everyone did, as I was the youngest and the last to reach legal drinking age. Also some sort of martini mix. Mine is green and likely to be green apple. We then gathered to open presents, passing them around and tearing off the wrapping and oohing and aahing. I got a cool purple hat, varied pens, pretty tights, a neat Japanese cookbook instructing how to cook things one reads about in manga, and a tape adaptor so I can listen to my iPhone in my car (and give back my parents' adaptor). We cleaned up, ate breakfast, and then I looked at the cookbook while my brother played Magic with my dad. Then my sister, my father, and I played Carcassonne, my sister and I loudly swearing at everything and my dad laughing at my sister and I. I think about todays events and come to the conclusion that "I come by it honestly." My sister agrees, "We're so much alike, it's scary." I went and visited my grandmother who I haven't seen in a year. Every time I see Nan she is a little less present. I remember when she used to pick me up from soccer practice when I was 7, when she lived in her own house with my grandfather. I know my Nan as opinionated, independant, and fiercely loving. As my father and I talked today she faded slowly into sleep, faded like her wedding photographs, like her memory, like her health. She still loves me, and I can see the spark of her in her eyes, hear it in her laugh, but there is less and less of her each time I see her. I'm drinking black coffee to wake up before we go see a movie, another Christmas tradition. We're going to see Sherlock Holmes this year. It looks to be amusing at least. Then dinner, a mutli course French-American affair. Tradition. Ritual. It's comforting. I guess this is growing up went to war

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