“The Replacement” by John Mark Tucker
This Christmas season, I’ve decided to do something a little different. I’ve invited 24 authors to share some of their favorite things about the holidays. I hope you enjoy the 24 days of Christmas countdown with “These are a few of my Favorite Things.” Enjoy! ~Casey Hays
*Be sure to look for a GIVEWAY at the end of each segment.*
“The Replacement”
A Christmas memory, eh? I’ve got one. Maybe not the most warm and fuzzy, but let’s do this.
The first six years of my life my grandmother on my father’s side of the family would visit several times a year. The drive was five hundred miles, so it was always a big deal when she showed up. I was her only grandchild and that translated into her lavishing me with gifts and attention on every trip. Our visits to Kmart were adventures in excess.
“Go find another toy!” she would urge, and I’d race away.
We would laugh our way down the various aisles, the two of us leaving with armfuls of new toys for me. I was a spoiled brat with her. I knew it and I loved every moment.
And then it happened. And by “it,” I mean that my father’s brother and his wife decided to create my cousin, Chris.
Chris ruined everything.
After his arrival, my grandmother rarely visited. My family would pack up and travel either to her home or my uncle’s home for the holidays. I no longer had my one-on-one hedonistic toy shopping trips with her. Chris was always there, first as an infant, and later, as he began to grow into a child. Worse than the lack of toys was the lack of attention. My grandmother was absolutely obsessed with Chris. I vividly remember standing in the Toys “R” Us checkout line with my father, grandmother, a two-year-old Chris, and his mother. My grandmother had loaded up an entire shopping cart full of toys for him and I was standing next to my dad holding a small bag of plastic dinosaurs she had handed to me. I looked up at him and he just shrugged and gave me a pat on the shoulder.
Right or wrong, you can imagine that as the years went on, I became a bit resentful toward my cousin. Very, very…resentful.
Fast forward to Chris’s fourth Christmas Eve. He and I were playing with his toy cars in his room. I was contemplating whether anyone would figure out if I was the one who had pushed his dresser onto him. Not that I would have ever done it…but the thought had crossed my mind. My parents, Chris’s parents, and our grandparents were out in the kitchen and living room talking and doing grownup things. The smell of the house was the definition of Christmas Eve with the dinner having been finished and a real tree set up, loaded to the gills with presents…mostly for Chris.
My aunt’s and grandmother’s voices sounded loudly.
“Chris! Chris! Santa is HERE! Come here, Chris! Hurry!”
I’ll never forget the look on Chris’s face when he heard this. He locked eyes with me, his mouth wide open in shock and excitement. I had long since been “informed” of Santa—my father looking at me when I was five and confirming what I had begun to suspect.
“Your mother and I get up in the middle of the night and put your presents under the tree for you. And we drink the milk.”
“I eat the cookie,” my mother thought to add.
“Oh…”
So I knew this was a ruse. And I was eager to see how it would turn out.
My dear cousin launched out of his bedroom like a rocket ship. I jogged behind him and caught up a few steps later.
“Ahhhh…Chris, you just missed him.”
“Sweetie, he went up the chimney only a second ago,”
“Darn it, he was standing right here!”
“If you had run a little faster you could have seen him!”
My aunt and grandmother’s exchange went back and forth. Then…
Cue the silent, dramatic pause as my cousin looked around at all the grownups in disbelief.
Wait for it…wait for it…
He melted down.
I mean, he went full on Chernobyl. Chris collapsed to the floor, screaming bloody murder and flailing about like a fish caught on a line. My grandmother and his parents were beside themselves as they tried to console and calm him. It was apology after apology after apology. He would have nothing of it, however, and the tantrum began to span into minutes.
I started to smile. I couldn’t help it.
All those terrible thoughts I had had about my cousin over the years, and here his own grandmother and parents did more damage than I ever could have imagined.
My smile grew until I began to laugh. It was a snicker at first, but I ended up standing in place and laughing louder and louder as I watched Chris writhe on the ground.
My mother turned and shook my shoulder a bit, trying to shush me, but I couldn’t stop.
“Don’t laugh at your cousin! That’s not nice, John Mark!” my grandmother and aunt scolded. In fact, everyone was scolding me. Aunt, uncle, grandmother, and grandfather in addition to own mother’s attempts to shut me up. But I didn’t stop laughing. I couldn’t. It was the funniest thing I had seen in my life. I looked at my father, fully expecting to feel his wrath next.
But he was just sitting there with his Christmas bourbon in hand, smirking at me.
It wouldn’t be too many years from this moment when I would lose my father in an accident. After his death, as I grew into adulthood, I learned a great deal about his own childhood and his relationship with his mother. He, being the oldest of his siblings, had also been the prized child in his early years. And, like me, he had experienced the loss of attention from his mother as his younger brother and then baby sister were born. I don’t know why, but my grandmother treated my father very unfairly and often with borderline cruelty as he grew up. Specifically, he was forced to watch his baby sister get lavished with attention and love while receiving little to none of it himself. To his last day on this Earth, my grandmother could barely manage anything but a criticism thrown in his direction. He never had the right job. He never made enough money.
My father and I had our own rocky relationship. We had far more “off’ days than “on” days. In the end, we were just very different creatures who really didn’t understand each other well at all.
But in this moment, he knew why I was laughing.
He understood.
And he began to laugh along with me.
I didn’t fully grasp it at the time, but he had witnessed my hurt and sadness from losing the attention and affection of my grandmother. The exact same hurt and sadness he had experienced for most of his own life.
So, that is my Christmas memory. My father and I laughing together at the expense of my flailing cousin. That magical moment of briefly having a connection with him, as the rest of the family scolded and shushed us over and over. A few seconds where we were on the same page. A few seconds where I knew that he loved me very, very much. It is one of my most cherished memories of him and I am thrilled and honored that Casey has given me a good excuse to write it down.
Merry Christmas, Dad. I love you. I miss you.
-John Mark Tucker
Click the image to take you to John Mark’s Giveaway!
John Mark Tucker was born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico. For those that meet and get to know him in the present day, the phrase, “That explains a lot,” is not uncommon to hear. Growing up in Roswell refined John Mark’s keen sense for high-winds and dirt. Fast forward and he now enjoys living in the stunningly beautiful Seattle area. While in the Northwest he’s been having a blast at building a twenty-seven-year career in IT, cooking every night for his wife, watching Seahawk games at his neighbors’ and re-living his childhood by watching Robotech on Netflix.
Tucker is the author of Sci-Fi/Romance novels Elite: One and Two as well as the short story modern day romance, Swans. He has three books being published before March of 2017. Elite: Three, Of God and Love and Time Over Time. He’s also currently working on several more awesome novels that should find their way out into the wild in 2017.
http://www.johnmarktucker.com
