When I was little, we lived in New Hampshire, in a tiny town (population: 1000) about 30 minutes north of Hanover, New Hampshire, home to Dartmouth College.

We lived in a huge house, the former vicarage of a church, which was conveniently placed to our right. Huge–I had two rooms, one of which had a jungle gym in it. Our bay windows looked out over the big circular drive leading into the church.

So one year, my parents had some sort of stubborn detente (my mom is the Most Stubborn Woman in the World, btw, my dad was commuting weekly to Boston, working 14-hour days and then collapsing on the weekends), and NO-ONE took the Christmas tree down. It sat, forlorn and dropping needles, as January fed into February into March and finally into April. If I had been older, like not eight, I would have done it, if just to show myself as the Best McLaughlin.

The only reason one of my parents caved–I think it was my mom, because she was more sensitive to these things–and took the tree down was because the following week was Easter, and it woulda been tacky to keep up the birthday things for the guy when he was dead. Never mind that neither of my parents were religious. The neighbors would be able to see the dying throes of the tree, and know the worst about my family.

I think of moments like that and realize no, I did not have a normal upbringing. I don’t always like to share stuff like that, because it seems self-aggrandizing, as in ‘look how weird I am!,’ but it’s my reality. Which is probably why I am itching to take the tree down on January 2.

And I think about it every year as Easter approaches.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Family, Meaningless Megan Minutiae. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.