The Holiday My Family Left Me Off

We had it out two days before Christmas, all of us, at Mom’s kitchen table, the same table where I used to do my homework. Kermit tried the same trick he always uses, saying I was making a bigger deal of things than they were. But this time Katharyn did not let him finish. She looked at her own husband and said, in front of our mother, that she had heard enough of his comments over the years to know exactly what kind of tense he meant, and that it had never once been me.

Mom cried before Kermit did. She told me she was ashamed, that she had told herself a story about keeping the peace that let her avoid the harder truth, which is that she had chosen the child who made her life easier over the daughter who never once asked her for anything at all. Kermit apologized too, in his way, stiff and short, more embarrassed than sorry, and I have learned enough about him over thirty four years to know the difference.