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Questions of Politics Friday, December 20, 1985 Can’t remember ever being so depressed about Christmas. Fought with Stu this morning about whether we would go together to look for a new TV for his mother; best I can figure out about why I was so angry is a feeling that he has once again dumped all responsibility for this alien holiday on me. I’m sure this is made more annoying by his having left me holding the bag—as B so aptly summed it up—last year, when he spent the holidays sailing in the Caribbean with his brother, and I was left with his mother and children. But I was in a rage this morning, for reasons that I’m sure were not really apparent to Stu. Left the house with the kids and seven coffee cakes I made for teacher presents; spent an hour at work, including two screaming phone calls with Stu; then went to Hilldale Mall to try to find presents for Stu and his mother. I could barely keep from crying at a scene in the Misses’ dress department . “Do you think Mother will like this?” an older man asked his grown daughter, running his hand down the skirt of a red jersey knit. She nodded.“She’ll love it because you picked it out.” I wanted simply to not buy anything for Stu and Helen, just to avoid Christmas.To leave. Finally got Helen a cashmere sweater and a duffel bag for her many travels. Stu will also get her a fancy newTV. I know part of what makes me angry is the shabby treatment of my own family. For example , for Chanukah I sent my stepmother a $20 pin and my father a $25 gold coffee filter and a $1.95 joke book about apples.They would not ever expect me to spend hundreds of dollars on them—but they would like to see us more often (and I, them). I’m glad I never changed my 18 n maiden name. I hate having to live a Kingsley life when I will never be— would never want to be—a Kingsley. n Wednesday evening, December 25, 1985 Almost through this crap. Depressing dinner at Helen’s last Friday. Brick red chili in the green hand-painted Chinese bowls. Everything was very Christmas with a capital C. AYule log crackled in the fireplace.The living room was fragrant with wood smoke and piney evergreens. Helen had picked up David and Eli after school to trim her tree. She’d decorated the mantel with miniature revelers, town and country scenes, inch-high angels gathered around a tiny creche. And I got the old “You don’t mind this Judy, do you, because it’s really just a pagan festival, right?” After a lot of argument, Stu finally set out to do some Christmas shopping on Monday afternoon (Dec. 23). He made it as far as the corner , where someone skidded into the front of his car. I spent much of Monday and Tuesday in a frenzy: wrapping presents, grocery shopping, making a yeast coffee cake.The kids stayed overnight at Helen’s after Christmas Eve tenderloin. Stu and I went back with the coffee cake this morning for breakfast and presents, from ten until two or so. Stu gave me a turquoise-and-liquid-silver necklace from Katy’s American Indian Arts. It is not as nice as the one I told him I saw there a few weeks ago. He’d said,“Call them and tell them to put it away, and I’ll go get it.” But I didn’t.Why couldn’t he put a little effort into getting me a present, thinking of what I might like or at least making the phone call himself? On Monday, before Stu started out to go shopping, he wanted to know if I’d asked them to set the necklace aside, and got very annoyed when I said,“No.” “So I’m at ground zero with you,” he said. (“Yes,” as Shelly said when I told her about this on the phone.“And square one.”) If life here were not so pleasant. . . . Helen gave us big checks for Christmas, so now we talk of replastering the living-room ceiling, and I dream of an Eames chair, something very comfortable for reading. I have no guts, no initiative. Questions of Politics 19 [3.144.96.159] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 14:27...

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