I hate Christmas music. Maybe I don’t hate it, but I am not a super fan of it. I know that sounds borderline heinous but that’s just me. As a kid, I loved it. It built anticipation for the holiday coming up and meant toys upon toys upon toys on deck. My mom used to play the Jackson 5’s Christmas album and Take 6’s ‘He is Christmas’ for a good four weeks (Kinda funny how both groups have a numerical name). Those are the two albums that have songs on it that I can stand (and ‘You Ain’t Getting Shit for Christmas’). I think it’s just my rebellious nature. As I’m writing this, I was just put on hold and a country rendition of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” came on and i cringed a little bit. A few years ago my cousin and I made one of the most anti-Christmas albums ever-Santa got beat up for kissing my wife underneath the mistletoe and all.
I’m slowly trying to get out of this. I have to do it for the kids. I have to do my part in letting her love the music the way her mother did. Timile lived for Christmas music. From the day after Thanksgiving until December 26th, that was all she listened to. To make matters worse, she loved to listen to the Lite FM station so it was all country music and during the Delilah show it was all sappy love Christmas songs. It was soft rock which I already didn’t like and Christmas music together which is double-evil to me. I hated it but bared through it because it gave her so much joy as she’d sing along to these songs. When she was pregnant we listened to it 24/7. We were having a rough time in New York between her starting not to feel well and some other family-related issues that were making the holidays very unpleasant; so the Christmas music was all that she had. Noto mention I’d be an asshole for telling the pregnant mother of my child “Ummm, I don’t feel like listening to this right now.” That would have been a death sentence from someone who once hit me in the face repeatedly while I was driving on Queens Boulevard of all places (Note: Queens Boulevard is eight lanes and is called the most dangerous street in the country).
The holidays are already a melancholy time of year for me. On Tuesday it will be two years since Timile passed away so of course she’s on my mind a lot right about now. I think I don’t like to listen to holiday music at all anymore because of how much they sucked in 2010 and 2011. Maybe it reminds me of all of the struggle and how there was more hurt than happiness during that season. 2010 sucked, but we still had each other and we were still expecting what we found out would be our little girl right before Christmas. We got lucky and Cydney was facing the camera, so we sent everyone Christmas cards of her face en utero.
We spent a good portion of December in Virginia. Timile’s best friend was getting married, it snowed there, and it was more or less our baby-moon. It was the only time I’d ever been to Hampton, Virginia that wasn’t about some bullshit and was drama free. Now that I think about that trip, all I can hear in my head is Christmas music as the backdrop to the mental pictures in my head.
2011 was hard because of losing Timile. At a time I would have needed to grieve, I was beginning a battle of custody with my daughter and I didn’t have her with me to give me that smile I’d miss from her mother and such. Nonetheless, it’s 2013 and Cydney is all kinds of looking forward to the holiday. Maybe we’ll jam to some today.
Single Dadventures 