Quote:
The holidays are close to ending and it’s time to start packing away your decorations. In a stroke of bad luck, you drop an ornament (or other small bauble) and it shatters. Inside was a strange, glistening dust that you accidentally inhale. You are immediately met with a strong hallucination of a previous holiday memory. It only lasts for a few moments, but it feels like you are back in the memory, reliving it. It seems so real but when it ends, you are back in the present with no trace of the dust left in sight. Which holiday memory did you relive, and how do you react to being torn from it?
Saleh was relieved that the holidays were coming to a close. It felt like all the pressure had finally come off, somehow. He had put up a few ornaments in his dorm room, some that he’d brought from home, others that he’d made at some winter festival event at DCU. The handmade ornaments were those glass orb ones that you put pipe cleaners in and other fun things, so while they were charming, they were fragile. While taking one down for closer inspection, he inadvertently dropped it, and it shattered between his bed and the window. Cursing, he looked down, only to get a faceful of some strange dust. He hacked, coughed, and sputtered, trying to remember if he had put any glitter in that ornament.
When he looked up, the scene was very different. He saw his mother opening a gift from him and his father (mostly from his father, but his father had made sure he knew that the gift was supposed to be from him too). There was something mercenary and shrewd in her look, the kind of look she got when she wanted something and expected to get it. “Oh, this is…” She was smiling. However, a moment later, Saleh realized what was going to happen. He remembered this Christmas. “No,” he said softly, raising his hand. “Mom, no!”
The little grin faded from her face. “Where’s the card?” She asked. She hadn’t heard him.
“Mom, there…” All the hurt and indignation from his mother’s treatment of him welled up suddenly. “There is no card! I didn’t think you needed one! I thought the gift was enough! So did Dad!”
The scene played out just as he remembered it. Her face wrinkled in some mixture of disgust, rage, and simulated hurt. “Why isn’t there a card?!” she cried, her voice pitching up in some indignant squeal.
Mercifully, the scene vanished at that moment, as quickly as it had appeared. At that moment, Saleh realized that he was breathing heavily, his heart pounding in his chest. Gritting his teeth, he fell back on his bed, trying to stuff down the feelings swirling inside of him. His mother was a shrewish, selfish woman, who demanded tribute like some kind of goddess. If even one item was missing from her requests, there was some sort of punishment on the other side, or at least a hefty dose of guilt.
Saleh had been young at the time. He had cried and cried and apologized profusely as his mother gave him the cold shoulder. His father had given him a hug later and said that they would get her a card and she would be happy again. It satisfied him at the time.
Now, however, Saleh was aware of the fog of terror and guilt that his mother kept his family in. His father had gotten wise a bit sooner, leading to the divorce and taking Saleh with him (a decision that Saleh had supported). Looking back on the experience gave him rare feelings of bitterness, hence his reactions to the memory. He did feel angry at his mother, but he also felt glad that he was out of her hands.
He didn’t want to think about it anymore. It was over. He wasn’t speaking to her, no matter how hard she tried to weasel back into his life. There would be no more holidays spent worrying about what the next big tantrum would be over.
He tried to tell himself that it was over, but his body wouldn’t stop reacting in anxiety. It would be a good hour until he cooled down enough to sweep up the broken ornament and go about his business.
