Doctor Carlo and Brandon - 9. Holidays, New Year's and Other Resolutions

Like Halloween, Brandon and I planned on hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the extended family. This group was quite a bit smaller. The DeMarcos had made other plans, and the kids didn't invite friends. Carson couldn't come down from Boston, either. My parents attended. With only fifteen people, we decided to do it at home after considering, then dismissing, the idea of renting a room and having it catered. Many more people would have caused us to flip that decision. Mason's wife, Murenda, offered to come up Wednesday to help with the preparations. She'd sent me a shopping list, and I made sure to purchase everything on it. I also made sure, I had no patients to see on Wednesday, so I was as ready as I would ever be. Not that I was against making meals in general, but making a feast was a bit daunting. Murenda's offer to help pleased me immensely. Thanksgiving dinners in the past for just the four of us were simple compared to a group of fifteen.

Billy and Carla had a half-day of school on Wednesday, so they offered to help with the preparations as well. I wasn't sure what they could help with, so I let Murenda delegate their tasks. Who am I kidding? I let her lead and delegate anything and everything. She was a genius in the kitchen. Everything ran so smoothly during the preparation phase; I wasn't surprised in the least when the dinner itself didn't go off without a hitch.

There was nothing tremendously awful, and as a matter of fact, looking back, the first was actually quite funny. Two of the last things to be brought to the table were the cranberry sauces, jellied and whole. The youngest boys wanted to help as well, so Calvin and Barry each brought one dish out of the kitchen. The problem arose when they both tried to get through the doorway into the dining room at the same time. They bumped into each other; Barry losing his balance and falling. Cal didn't stop in time and tripped over Barry. Had Barry been carrying the whole cranberry sauce instead of jellied, he wouldn't have gotten loose cranberries and cranberry juice all over him. But, alas, the whole cranberries fell second. Cal rolled off Barry, looked at him and started laughing. Barry took a handful of the jellied sauce off the floor and played wedding cake with it, mushing it into Cal's face. Then they were both laughing. The other kids started laughing next. There was probably a moment of disappointment in all the adults, but before long, we were all laughing too. At least until Barry and Calvin made a move to toss some toward the table. That action was shut down quickly before a full-on food fight occurred.

The second incident wasn't funny at the time, but no permanent damage was done. It was laughed about later, though. This time, Billy was karma's target. Partway through the meal, he started teasing Cal and Barry about his shirts they had changed into. Obviously, they were quite a bit large on the younger boys. Billy inhaled to laugh simultaneously while putting his eggnog up to his mouth. Inhaling at the same time you begin to drink something; not good at all. He choked a little and coughed a lot. But like I said; no permanent damage was done. He was able to laugh about it later, though. He claimed he was the first person ever to snort eggnog. I had my doubts he was the first, but I'd never heard of it before, so he may have been right.

After we had all sufficiently stuffed ourselves, we retired to the home theater to enjoy a seasonal classic, "Laurel and Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers." It amazed me that a movie over one hundred years old was still being shown regularly (1). But the classics could do that. Every new generation seemed to be smitten by movies like that one, "The Wizard of Oz," and "The Ten Commandments," among others. The seven kids remained there to watch more shows, while the eight adults headed toward the living room to chat some more.

Jason said that, even after a year had passed, he still missed Madison immensely. To help ease that pain, he acquired a couple hobbies. Since he moved into a house a few months after his initial move to Titusville, he was taking woodworking classes. He had a small shop set up in one half of his garage. He'd already made himself a couple cabinets; nothing too fancy, but he was proud of himself for even accomplishing that little bit. Lawyers aren't famous for working with their hands. Oddly enough, he also took up kite flying. He said, it was relaxing, standing on the beach, watching one of his dozen kites floating in the air. He showed us some pictures. These weren't your typical diamond shaped pieces of plastic-like paper attached to thin wooden poles and having a colorful tail. No, not at all; he had a snow owl, two dragons, an osprey, a ship, a swan, and half a dozen more. The owl had a nearly six-foot wingspan.

I inadvertently did the old 'open mouth, insert foot' routine, "Geez, it's so big, how do you get it up?"

It only took a second for everyone else to start laughing at my unintentional faux pas that passed as double entendre. About five seconds later, I realized what I had said and joined in with the laughter. I heard too many high-pitched laughs for just Muranda and my mom. I turned around to see three tweens laughing as well. The four youngest took a few more seconds, but started laughing just because everyone else was. They completely missed the joke. Thankfully.

To this day, every one of them will still ask me if I'd gotten my kite up lately. With Brandon, it had become a bedroom joke, normally followed by getting a couple of other things up, though not nearly as large. And then using them in the most enjoyable ways. We both joked that our favorite midnight snack was kite milk.

Christmas was pretty much a repeat of Thanksgiving. There were a few key differences, though. No flying cranberries. Hmmm, that'd be a great name for a music group. 'Is That Blood on the Floor?' by 'The Flying Cranberries.' Um, sorry, I digress. Nobody snorted eggnog, and there were no kite jokes. Karl had recently met a woman that he was seeing regularly, Emma Canton, so she joined us. Jason would have shown up as Santa Claus, but Derek and Erik had recently discovered that Santa was a concept, rather than a real person. That, and while he'd gained a little weight as he got older, he wouldn't fill a Santa suit that wasn't also a fat suit.

For New Year's Eve, we continued the new fourth quarter holiday tradition of gathering at our house. This time, it was pizza, hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and the largest crowd since Halloween. Vin DeMarco came with his family. Since it was between semesters, Carson, Catherine, and their Jason came as well. Bart Hamilton and his boyfriend Noah Hankins came too. I had only seen Bart three times as a patient, the last one being nearly a year before. I felt there was no conflict there. Finally, Karl brought Emma, and Sofia, the nanny, along as well. Thankfully, we had twenty-four seats in our home theater. We needed almost all of them. I'm not going to apologize for bragging. We lived in a big house and made the most of it. I haven't mentioned the indoor pool yet, have I? Of course not. We don't have one. But don't ask me about the indoor/outdoor hot tub we had put in during late summer, though. I ain't admitting nothing.

Brandon and I weren't big on New Year's resolutions, but we made one that we actually stuck to as long as it was possible. We resolved to visit our parents, and have them visit us, more often. Brandon's Dad had just turned sixty-three. Both of mine turned sixty this past year. With Brandon's Mom passing away last year, we knew our time with them was limited. Perhaps not severely limited, but they wouldn't be around forever. There was another resolution in the family that had little chance of being followed, until it got a qualifier. Billy and Carla promised not to fight. The qualifier being 'as much.' I guess if we used 'more' in ours, we could give them 'as much.'

EPILOGUE

Brandon's Dad lived another twenty-three years. His estimate of having sufficient funds for twenty-five years came true, with a tidy sum of a little over nine thousand being left to each of his grandchildren. They were all adults now and, in some cases, the funds were a down-payment on a new car. Some others put it aside for a rainy day. Little Jason, however, inheriting his parents' intelligence, he invested it and increased it tenfold it in around eight years.

Billy and Carla are both happily married to members of the opposite sex; providing further proof that gay men didn't only raise gay children. Of course, recent studies have clearly disproved that fallacy. They each have two children, a boy, and a girl, who Brandon and I spoil like crazy.

Karl married Emma after dating a year and a half. Karl had already adopted Calvin. Emma later adopted all three. Karl had moved up in the sports agency world and was a multi-millionaire.

Little Jason outshone both his parents, as Catherine predicted. While he didn't win, being honored with a Nobel Prize nomination in physics at twenty-six was quite impressive. He was very career-focused and, at this time, had not yet married.

Shortly after consummating their relationship, Bart and Noah got married. They adopted two boys, both with minor disabilities. They obviously had a lot of love to give.

Brandon and I remain together, having recently celebrated our thirtieth anniversary. The news wasn't all good for us, though. Three years after the Duncan Hanratty fiasco, I made another mistake during a group session and lost my license to practice psychiatry. We still got by, because I was able to get a counselor's job with a national group. My responsibilities were limited compared to before, but I was still able to help people. Nobody died, but that doesn't mean, I want to talk about it.

Finally, the wicked witch of the east; Stephanie had long before given up her parental rights. At one point we heard, she was living in Austin, Texas, with her sixth husband. Both Karl and I joked, it was her ninth and, like a cat, she was on her last life. Unfortunately for Stephanie, karma turned out to be victorious once again. Having very few skills, and another low-life ex-husband, she had been working with a cleaning service. She was working alone in an empty office building after moving to Los Angeles. In a freak earthquake on the outskirts of the city, the building she was working in was the only one to collapse. It was apparently not a pretty sight; her head having been squashed flatter than a pancake by a falling two-ton chuck of concrete. This was after her eighth divorce. She never made it to nine.

Damn it. I said don't skip ahead!!

The End