Christmas and Karma: Creating Memorable Moments One Mishap at a Time

I suppose when I think of my most memorable Christmas vacation, at the top of the list should be the year we took a Caribbean cruise filled with daiquiris and dancing.

Surprisingly, it’s not.

My most memorable Christmas vacation involves a six-state slog from Michigan to Florida, a run-in involving questionable caregiver tactics, and a mustard mishap. Glamorous, I know.

We hadn’t been at my aunt and uncle’s Tampa home a full day before my brother and I, then 5 and 8, found ourselves in my grandfather and uncle’s care on a sailboat in the middle of the Gulf.

As any good caregiver would, they required us to wear our life jackets for fear we may fall overboard and drown. A tense half-hour of checking and rechecking our well-being ensued before they’d had enough – it was seriously interfering with their drinking and singing.

Drawing from their noteworthy experiences as engineers, they crafted a plan: they would tie the two of us to the mast, thereby thwarting both a slippage overboard and the need to look in on us regularly. Despite our protests that were the boat to capsize, we’d surely drown, trapped beneath the overturned vessel, they proceeded, giving way to an afternoon of collective misery which passed slowly to the off-key crooning of our loathed patriarchs.

Back on the safety of land, we relayed the injustice to our parents, but our complaints fell on deaf ears. We whispered something about reaping what you sow before sulking back to our bedrooms.

Inescapably, the dreaded day of return arrived, this time thrusting us into my mother’s care on the airplane. Intending to offer my brother some tactile stimulation as a distraction from the long flight, I handed him a few ketchup and mustard packets, instructing him to squeeze and release them in his hands. I even joined him in the game, squeezing and releasing between excited giggles.

Until.

My brother appeared to have squeezed but not released, his mustard packet expelling globs of yellow goo forward three rows, landing on my uncle’s brand new Christmas sweater. Though I was at first aghast, ready to defend my mother’s supervisory skills against the family’s onslaught of accusations, my second emotion was one of delight.

Surely this was the work of Karma; finally, she had come to collect.

This Christmas vacation, a seemingly chaos-filled disaster, is, nevertheless, my most memorable. Through our mutual animosity toward the adults, my brother and I grew closer, and together as a family, we created invaluable memories that will forever decorate the halls of our minds.

And when you think about it, is there really any better way to spend the holidays?


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