It’s Christmas once again

In an attempt to organize my life, and mostly help my memory, I’ve started scheduling reminders.  For instance, on my work calendar, every morning and every evening I have a reminder to “do it” and a link for a yoga video.  I NEVER do.  NEVER.  I also have a reminder on Fridays to “write a blog.”  If you would take the time to look through when I post you would be able to tell that I also rarely do it, but today, today, I thought what the heck.  Today is Christmas, Serbian (Orthodox) Christmas that is, and I’m feeling nostalgic.  And when I’m feeling nostalgic, I write, and cry.  Or as Zachary says “when don’t you cry.” Dam kids.

My first (and only) husband celebrated Serbian Christmas.  Which to most is known as Orthodox Christmas but to us it was (and is) Serbian Christmas.  Everyone would head over to Bubbi’s house, who lived with Aunt Dodo and Uncle Roddy. Bubbi was a million years old (it seemed at the time) and there would be her grandkids and then with Zachary’s generation great grandkids.  The photos show us all in the basement with the washer and dryer and furnaces and tables set up everywhere.  That’s the way it was done back in the day. Not a finished basement just in the basement with everything else. There would be a big table and some sort of bread that had a dime in it and it would be a big deal for whoever got the dime.  There would be kids running everywhere. The whole families were together.  Everyone came.

After Bubbi died, people stopped going to Aunt Dodo’s for Christmas day (the 7^th) and we started having the “day” at Grandmas (or as I called her Mrs. Kumer).  I think we do a lot for the matriarch.  Stay together, get together, like/tolerate each other, as long as the “mom” is living.  Then after the matriarch passes, each daughter becomes their own matriarch so each of Bubbi’s daughters became their own matriarch and had their own 7^th.  In the beginning those family get togethers are so important and so wonderful and then at some point you feel like it’s too much and then pare it down and then they fall apart and then you’re sad and look at photo albums and wax emotional remembering those days. I’m grateful for those photos and memories.

We divorced after 7 years and it’s been over 30 years since we divorced but I still keep my tree up until the 7^th.  I have it lit up just like I would on Christmas morning and I’m playing beautiful music.  I’ve sent Zachary his Mir Boziji text (although I screwed the first one up and said Merry Christmas in Serbian by mistake) But it’s Mir Boziji (may God bring you peace) and the response “Hristos se rodi” (the Christ has been born). 

Bubbi has long been gone, Mrs. Kumer and Aunt Dodo deceased now but their sister Aunt Violet is still living.  Michelle – who was my sister-in-law in those days –  just died a couple of weeks ago.  She had a condition with the name of Stoneman or Munchmeyer disease.  She managed that disease for 59 years and died from Covid in one day. Today I’m going to assume they are all on the other side breaking bread and seeing who is getting the dime.

I’ve spent most of this morning working..but also remembering my few years with the Kumers, participating in the traditions and perfecting how to say Mir Boziji.  I’m wondering if there is an alternate universe where we are all still together and what it would have been like had I stayed a Kumer. But then what about Jimmy?  That’s why you can’t go there in your head.  Although I can go there in my head and Jimmy would still be there too. It’s easy to romanticize what could have been.  I have perfected the art in my head of “what could have beens”.

I woke up this morning to what looked like I was living in a snowglobe.  Beautiful thick snowflakes everywhere swirling through the air. Grandma Kumer used to always say “it always snows on Serbian Christmas.” She is never wrong.

Mir Boziji

xoxo