This Christmas season is much like the last. I wrote a post last year about "White Wine in the Sun" and missing my mom. This year, there is a beautiful new studio version of "White Wine in the Sun". The proceeds from December go to the National Autistic Society of the UK. It can be purchased from iTunes or Amazon US or Amazon UK. It sounds similar to this version, starting out with Tim and guitar and adding more vocals, piano, and even brass. It is amazingly moving.
Also new on the YouTube recently is Tim performing "Woody Allen Jesus" live at the Coronet. This was filmed professionally for an upcoming documentary. (Yay!)
Last December I wrote about hoping that the year ahead might bring acceptance from my mom. "White Wine in the Sun" talks about knowing at twenty-one or thirty-one that your family will be there for you, and I hoped that by forty-one I might get that privilege. I will turn forty-one in a few weeks. I have had an A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. year, perhaps the best year of my life filled with joy and adventures, laughter, music, new friends and old friends. Yet I awoke this Christmas eve in tears, missing my mom. That pretty much sums up my whole family conflict. I can deal with the step dad's rejection and hostility and disappointment over my atheism, but it impacts my relationship with my mom. I miss my mom.
This year may start a new version of that dynamic though. My mom is coming over for Christmas for a short while without the step dad. That is what happened on Thanksgiving, and it worked out quite nicely from my perspective. Tomorrow, on Christmas, the step dad won't be feeling well and he won't be able to come over and my mom will come without him. I can predict the future like that because the rest of the family already knows he's not coming and knows the real reason (he won't celebrate a Christian holiday in an atheist house). They have discussed with my mom what time she will be here so they can get a five-generation photo with the newest addition of our family. (It will be a lovely photo, but I wonder why we celebrate short generations and a pattern of teenage births.) My mom will tell me the step dad isn't well, and she can't stay long because she needs to get home and tend to him. But at least she will come and see her mom, and her new great grandson, and even me, and we will smile and I will drink a lot of wine and hope for a better next year. Her coming without him is a step in the right direction.
In other news about beautiful music, Ethan played "O Holy Night" at church yesterday. Taped from a bad angle, but it was pretty good.
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