(MY BETTER) HOME FOR THE HOLIDAY

What a difference three solid hours of sleep makes!

I am quite refreshed and in a good mood, so I just accepted Tracey's offer to join her family for Christmas dinner. My attendance was contingent upon how I felt after today's dialysis, and thanks to treatment occurring two hours early (my session started at 8am, so I was back here before noon), thus granting me early dismissal and some decent time to nap upon getting home, I was able to enjoy more hours of rest than I would have if I had gotten home at my usual 3-ish or later.

I was still feeling the malaise of my time observing my mother's decline for a week when I started my day, so I was gearing up for spending Christmas night alone, with a humble feast of bangers and mash with some of my favorite country sausages from the schmancy artisanal butcher shop in place of traditional British bangers — I enjoy proper bangers, but the country sausages are a whole other level — but that would only have served to allow my brain to ruminate on my mom's situation.

That is NOT what I need to be doing today.

Christmas Day is for spending time with friends and loved ones, and Tracey and I have been the tightest of family since we met 18 years ago, so much so that I had a major hand in helping raise her daughter, my niece Aurora, from age two or three, so I am quite entrenched. And Tracey struck relationship gold with Matt, her second husband, as he treats her like the living, breathing treasure that she is, plus he's amazing with the very-much-a-teenager Aurora. They are only a little over a mile away, and it gives me comfort to know that the door to this artsy nuclear family is always open to Uncle Bunche. And the icing on the cake is the presence of a huge, sloppy Great Dane who barks at me at first — he's doing his job, so good on him — but once that reminder of his guardian presence is made, he's all up on me, leaning into me for pets and scratches in his favorite spots.

In short, what could have been a miserable Yule will instead be one of welcoming and nurture. No judgement. No infantilization. No dysfunction. For the first time in quite a while, I feel happy.