“It’s like a whole grocery store,” adds Jack, impressed.
Marv comes in last. “We have everything needed to make gingerbread structures. Hollis”—he tosses me a bag of powdered sugar—“make icing. Tiny humans”—he looks at the kids—“sort the supplies. Jay.” Jay lifts his chin. “We need music and beer.”
Then, like it was the plan all along, we make gingerbreadstructuresfrom supplies Marv keeps in the back of his truck for God knows why. For the first time this year, loud Christmas music blares through the house, and Jay doles out three beers.
Jay is great with the kids. He makes a house—it’s awful—and asks them questions. Favorite colors, favorite movies, favorite dinosaurs.
“What about Christmas tradition?” he asks as he lines the roof of his dilapidated shack with gumdrops. “What’s your favorite one?”
“Mom wakes us up at 12:01 a.m. to see if Santa came and open presents,” Owen says, tongue pinched between his teeth as he focuses on placing M&Ms in a straight line. “And she makes midnight hot chocolate.”
The rest of them chime in with an echoed, “Same.”
I smile at their smiles, but I wouldn’t call it a tradition because it started accidentally. Five years ago, Jack was a baby and cried all night on his first Christmas Eve, finally waking the whole house up at midnight. There was no getting everyone back to sleep when they saw the presents, so they gathered around the tree while I made hot chocolate.
Even though Jack didn’t cry any more Christmas Eves, somehow we kept doing it. Kept waking up at midnight to open presents and drink hot chocolates.
“I like after the movie in the park, we get pie for dinner,” Millie pipes in. “With whipped cream.”
“We do not do that every year,” I argue through an incredulous laugh, recalling the few times we’ve done that as I scrape icing into a new bag.
Millie nods her head. “We do”—her siblings murmur in agreement—“because the movie always runs late, and the pie stand is the only one left.”
“We’ve done it the last three years,” Owen reports.
I step to the table, stilling a fresh bag of icing mid-pass to Marv. My eyes narrow. “That’s not a tradition, that’s a food shortage.”
They laugh.
“I like when we say Thanksgiving rhymes.” Ava gives her two cents with anothernottradition that we’ve only done once. “When we wash the dishes?” She looks at me with a smile. I nod with a grin; we did that last year. “And say funny things about the food.”
“Turkey Durkey does a hurkey,” I recite, earning a chuckle.
Jay hooks his gaze with mine but says to them, “Sounds like a good mom.”
And there—despite years of hauling four little asses all over town to sit through shows, contests, and parks, it’s accidental pie dinners, midnight hot chocolates, and half-delirium fueledpoems that they remember. Emotion clogs my throat as I watch them all work with little hands around the table. The remaining icicles of the season that have clung to me melting away. This, right here, despite my best efforts to run from it and hide from it and prove some kind of point of what the holidays are and aren’t, feels like Christmas.
“Hollis,” Marv demands. “Icing.”
I hand him the full bag I forgot I was holding, eyeing his creation. A rectangular building in the middle is surrounded by a perimeter of gingerbread walls. And what appears to be a satellite dish made out of pretzels. And a candy-covered spaceship.
“Did you make a prison?” I ask with a laugh.
“Christmas compound,” he responds without looking away from it. “The walls keep the government out and can detect flying objects from as far away as the moon. Trust me, it’s possible.”
This makes the kids squeal with delight and unleash an assault of questions on him: “Is it real?”I’m not at liberty to say.“Can Santa get in?”Depends on his intentions.“Where do they get food?”From an underground greenhouse with solar sun lights.“Do they have TV?”TV makes you stupid.“Why is your shirt tucked in your sweatpants?”Speed.“Why do you have all that food in the back of your truck?”Only the ignorant trust the government with their food supply.“What kind of name is Marv?”A fake one.
It’s pure gold.
I work on my own house across from Jay, and his foot finds mine under the table. I smile at my gingerbread house like it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“I like your hat,” Ava tells Jay in her seven-year-old voice from next to him. “You look like you work at the North Pole.”
Jay smiles, taking it off his head to set it on hers and flicking a jingle bell. “Looks better on you.”
She beams; my chest tightens. Because as sweet as it is, he can’t make these kids love him right out of the gate—I don’t even know what we are. If we’re seeing each other after the holidays. If this is all too much for him.
“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.
