Missing my dad at Christmas (which he hated)

Why do I think so much of my late father, our family Grinch, at this season? Because I always suspected his way of loving the holiday, as a Jew who celebrated it to please his family, was to grumble his way into the whole joyously chaotic event. This poems, from my first book, Earth Lessons, celebrates the frictions that ultimately became a gift.


CHRISTMAS WEEK IN SAN FELIPE
Up my nose, between my teeth, tiny bulletsof sand flew thick and fast. I lay down lost in wild howling on a dirt road in Baja California. A dim dream, my parents shouting as I was tucked under the sky’s fierce blanket.
As quickly as it arose, the storm died.I ran back to our car, oasis in blinding dunes. Our voices swooped over the expanse like gulls.Unrelenting sand glittered like a snowfield.Christmas week in San Felipe.Why did you wander away? -- they said.I shot back -- Why did you bring us to a vacation on the moon?
In the front seat, my parents' disapproving silence.My younger brother and I  stared out windows rolled up against poverty and dust. Windowless houses, children without clothes. A desolate Mexican town and beyond, the beach --aquamarine water ringed by rock spires.Burning sun and sand from horizon to horizon.
We tumbled out and filled the voidwith a fight. My father’s voice boomed, a train freighted with spit consonantsthat hurtled at my mother as she sat blowing up air mattresses. My brother scampered away. Behind a dune, /Dad's rasping breath and rhythmic cursing as he pounded tent pegs. His tent, his family: enemies.
My brother rolled in, a small wave bearing shells, only to be brushed aside, flotsam. My father saw me and explodedinto blue-word jazz. Control those kids --he ordered my mother, his hammer.Obedient, she fell -- Fill this pail.The ritual smacked so hard I saw my family’s outline -- them.I stood at the surf, tears minglingwith the wind’s gritty lace.
A week of sand stuck to sweaty skin, crunched between teeth, rubbing me red. A torture I learned to shape into wet mounds, sand forts, sand doll houses. A week amid the dunes learning to imitate sand --  answering threat by being limp and malleableor wild and grating.
Fishing rod propped in a spike, my father drank tequila and sang Louis Armstrong songs on New Year's Eve, capering in the surf. Alarms in mesquealed shrill as the fishing line that raced unnoticed through his reel.Giggling, he fell asleep on the sand.In the morning we walked down the beach,peering into tidepools. He reached down and scooped up a dark blob, /handed me a tiny, squirming octopus. The water baby slithered in my hand -- velvet-wetexchange of softness in this hard expanse.A gift fished out of murky depths, and released to floatin the years of silence between us.