I remember being about 3 or 4, wearing footie pajamas and standing on the precipice to the living room from the hallway, with my hands clasped together in utter delight, marveling at all the stuff that Santa had brought. I don’t recall much of it now — I think there was a drum that I promptly stuck my drumsticks through and I remember there being a cowgirl hat and boots and one of those little horses on wheels.  But what I distinctly remember is seeing the plate of cookies we’d set out the night before, missing 3 or 4 bites, the milk half empty and the carrot nibbled just enough.

We’ll just gloss over the fact that one of my earliest Christmas memories revolves around food.

On Christmas Eve, my mom and I made cookies together, cutting them out with cookie cutters, cooling them on racks and eventually frosting and decorating them just so.  I remember mom helping me pour Santa’s milk in a smoke-colored highball glass and setting everything out on our rattan coffee table.  I remember so clearly my mom leaning in and the way she smelled like sugar cookies and Jergen’s lotion, reminding me that these cookies were for Santa, as a thank you for my Christmas gifts, as a snack on his long journey. And while I really wanted that green-frosted Christmas tree with the little silver balls that later in life cracked one of my molars, I remember looking wide-eyed at her as I tucked my hand away, nodding in agreement.  We wouldn’t want Santa or Rudolph to go hungry.

In hindsight, it seems all the other reindeer were left to fend for themselves.

Dad would read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, as Rockwell-esque as that seems. It didn’t last forever, perhaps on the first handful of Christmases and a few scattered over the years after that, but I fondly recall him wearing a very red v-neck sweater with a wide-collared shirt underneath, sitting with his leg crossed in a big 70′s velour chair, reading from a thin hard-cover picturebook with little tears in the sleeve.  And when it was over, he’d scoop up my little PJ’d self and tuck me in, allowing sugarplums to dance accordingly, while mom was in the kitchen, pouring the grown-ups some Benedictine in snifters.

Of course, eventually I realized that Dad also enjoyed green-frosted Christmas tree cookies with little silver balls on them and that Rudolph was really my mom, but there’s something distinctly tactile and emotional about that memory of seeing the cookies on Christmas morning, half eaten, milk glass half empty.  I truly believed that Santa had been there, that he’d brought all these wonderful goodies for me, because I was such a good girl.  It was a time that I never questioned anything about myself or my self-worth, about faith or politics or reality.  It encompasses all the wonder I think Christmas should be for little children… pure and wonderous and magical. It makes me happy for Reilly and Carter, that they’ll get a chance to experience that.

It would nice if the holidays could still be like that for everyone.

There’s more to this story, but none of which I feel is the business of the Internet.  Maybe a book someday (man, it would make a good semi-fictionalized memoir), but not the Internet… not yet, perhaps not ever.

To say that I have little experience with traditional “family” is an understatement and it shows in how I’ve dealt with the recent online reunion between myself and my two half-brothers, D. and M.  I’ve spent the last 19 years of my life winging it on my own and accountable to no one but myself for my choices or my actions — even the overall idiocy of my early 20′s.   Suddenly, this insta-family had me up in arms, feeling the need to not embarrass them, to somewhat censor myself, worrying about what they’ll think of me.   I realize we’re just three people who share DNA and we’re not technically “family”, but having spent so much time without one, I rather like the idea.  It gives me heartburn, but it intrigues me.

Both brothers seem like very kind, funny, intelligent, upstanding men. They have lovely families and what appear to be successful and happy lives. They’re both handsome and have traits that remind me of my…er… our dad.  It’s kind of nice to know I’m not the only one left with a bit of Dad in them. It’s been sort of fun to note similarities between the three of us and differences, as well.  I’m happy to be getting to know them as people — not necessarily as siblings — even though it’s been interesting at times.

I ‘reunited’ with one brother, M., through this very blog a few years ago and panicked accordingly.  Just because he found me didn’t mean I wanted to be found, blah blah blah. What gives you the right to barge into my life, blah blah blah.  This is not the Waltons, yadda yadda yadda.  I eventually got over that — ok, I’m working on it — but it’s still a little weird for me sometimes.  We have similarities — probably more than we realize.  He’s genuine, honest and pretty patient, but much like me in temper.  We bicker like siblings… which I find oddly comforting.

The other I thought I would never, ever meet.  I really truly thought he would just be some mystery — like a unicorn — but thanks to the Internet, he recently found a post I made a decade ago on a genealogy website and now… well, now I follow him on Twitter.  Ah, technology!  Bringing people together one tweet at a time.  He’s great, though, and I like his sense of humor… it’s sort of familiar in a way.

What hadn’t occurred to me until this morning is I’m no longer an only child. In fact, I’m not the only, nor am I the oldest.  I’m the youngest of four children. (There’s an eldest half-sister, V., whom I’ve met a couple times, but who didn’t seem interested in staying connected… which is fine, whatever — I kind of get it.)

Being single with no husband or children of my own and without any immediate or extended family really in my life for the last couple decades, it’s been a lot of information to take in.  A lot.  While it might take some time (if ever) before we’re fighting over a drumstick at Thanksgiving,  I’m glad we’ve sought each other out.  I’ve never been a little sister before.