indonesian scrooge

what do you do when you realize for the second time in 4 months you need to break with convention and escape your responsibilities? the past few months have been difficult. i have been hanging in more or less one week at at time. but weeks ago i knew i needed to escape. i looked at flights to asia/oceania locations with the hope of mexican food and good beer. it took me three days to decide on my second choice, a process of whittling hope and fear down to action.

as an american in asia, i am constantly asked if i am going home for christmas. it's a strange question because i am not really sure where home is anymore. if home is where the heart is, my heart is spread over the world. i do not have a singular location to go where all the people i love will be sitting together as a unit of holiday joy. there are my american and european families, both of which i feel joining would be intrusion.

i have two groups who i love in KL. one is a mixed bag of non-christmas people; atheists, communists, muslims, sort-of-muslims, hindus and buddhists. there are a few christians mixed into this group, but walls limit the sharing of holidays. there is also a fully formed family group who will be celebrating praise and worship without me. this is an interesting ensemble that i enjoy being a member of; but i did what i have always done during holidays, pushed myself away from the table.

my parents allowed this to become a tradition of mine. i am not really sure why i am this way, but i am. when the holidays loom, i feel the need to back away. i love the christmas spirit, the trappings of the holiday, the food and buying presents for kids, but i feel very uncomfortable in the family setting. thinking about it, it's not being together that bothers me but the thought that i might not get to be with the family at the next holiday. echoes of divorce bounce in my head as i am visited by the ghost of holidays past. i love the memories, i cherish them, but i will never be invited to join in again.

if the ghosts of christmas past are haunting me, the ghost of christmas present has been a warm and loving soul. she and i discussed my separation, and agreed that i needed to get away. there is mass missed, dinner and singing to follow. there will be no tree to wake up to, there will be no stockings to stuff. my ghost of christmas present is allowing me to get away, to sit in a cafe serving bad coffee and pseudo-parisian pastries, to listen to spa-christmas fusion muzak and to write alone. having gained enlightenment about being holiday-solo, i am not upset by christmas present. but then ebenezer wasn't either until he realized family missed him; or was it their pity.

this leaves me with the ghost of christmas future. with birth parents gone, siblings 25 years separated and acquired family lost in agreement, i can not honestly imagine a future christmas like any of the past. i can imagine a time-share christmas, the exact thing that i have been avoiding for 4 years. having a tiny tree at home sounds good, but being away on the beach has become a bit of a tradition now also.

i realize that i am dangerously close to bringing my ghosts with me on my impaired holiday. in some ways, this year is a dry run, a phased approach of escape followed by reconnection. i honestly wish i were able to enjoy the holidays without the angst, but as i said i know this is who i am, and i appreciate that my parents, living and dead, my ghosts and my children understand that being here is not a way to say that i don't want to be there. i want to be there more than anything in the world.

the scared kid who cried the christmas eve he found out santa was a evil hoax, the young man who closed the door thinking of a camera, the husband horribly allergic to christmas cheer and the sun burned pirate are all looking forward to many happy holidays to come.

haunted duck will be served, god bless us all, every one.