Merry Christmas Again

He spent Christmas in rehab, a whole month on doctor's orders. This is because the doctor claimed that he almost died four times during treatment. The treatment began immediately following his having been flown back from Mexico. He went to Mexico for a week, on his own and apparently spent the entire time drinking. Given his recent medical history, it sounded a little like a suicide attempt on some level, going out in a blaze of boozy glory, that sort of thing.

He's not a bad guy but he's obviously an alcoholic. He's younger than me, and yet his eyes are going and he's had two hip replacements. His optic nerves were somehow not long enough and were being stretched to capacity within his skull, requiring expensive and complicated surgery, one at a time with the eyelid sewn shut so as to allow the eyeball to recover. Even without the inherited propensity for alcoholism, you can see why the man might drink.

So he was in rehab until after Christmas and we figured that at least we'll be spared the usual dog and pony show; but no. He's out, he's not drinking, he's attending AA, and he wants to do Christmas this Saturday even though it's January.

Well okay.

It will be just us - the boy and his three parents. I'm the stepfather in this picture.

He looks well, or at least better than last time, given that I don't have much contact with the man. He still seems a lot bigger than has been commemorated by my mental model, formed around ten years ago; but he's actually mobile, walking without crutches, and his face has returned to ordinary human complexion. Last time we met, he looked about ten years my senior but I guess rehab has done him some good. Nevertheless, his head seems big and round, almost like a puffer fish, and with that downturned mouth I can't help imagining fins sprouting from just below his ears and his head swimming away, glub-glub-glubbing up towards the ceiling like something from a nightmarish version of Finding Nemo.

Being heir to a fortune, he's never wanted for helpers and hangers on, and this once omnipresent entourage seem at least partially responsible for his drink problem. He's a social guy, an entertainer, kind of an arsehole but one that's very, very difficult to dislike no matter what he does because at the heart of it, he really does have the best of intentions. This is why he's big on Christmas and why we're having this belated version, because even before rehab he had a closet full of stuff he'd bought for people, for more or less anyone he ever said hello to; and the problem is that he wasn't around to wrap any of it so the wrapping was delegated to one of the entourage. She wrapped everything in the closet, including things he'd bought for himself but never got around to taking out of the box, things for the kitchen and so on; and with no clue as to who any of the legitimate presents had been intended for. We have a tree with a pile of boxes in wrapping paper at the base. He knows some of them by shape, but mostly it's a mystery. We're just going to have to open them all.

He really doesn't need to buy me anything - not least because I'm the guy who nicked his wife, for fuck's sake - but he always does, and it's usually something English because I'm from England. This year it's teabags - a gift set of artisan teabags, Earl Grey and all the usual suspects.

'You still drink tea, don't you?' he asks, concerned.

'Yes,' I smile broadly like Ralphie in A Christmas Story - probably twice a year but never mind.

He always buys my wife hot sauce and novelty corn holders. The novelty corn holders are in sets of eight - plastic things you stick on the ends of a corn cob while eating so as to circumnavigate the misery of greasy fingers. We have a garage full of the fucking things because, as with tea, we probably eat corn from the cob maybe twice a year. The hot sauce is usually of the kind consumed by idiots on YouTube who treat it as a competition. It's the kind of thing with which one might spice one's fajita if you have tattoos and don't really give a shit about flavour. I remember once trying a few drops from a bottle of something called Total Insanity and it rendered my taco fully inedible. It may as well have been bleach.

He always buys my wife corn holders and hot sauce for a joke, the joke being that he always buys my wife corn holders and hot sauce; but not this year.

We open books about animals and marine life - which turn out to be for the kid - no less than four life jackets, and a variety of blenders and kitchen utensils, none of which had actually been purchased as Christmas gifts. It has been a thoroughly bewildering morning, and less than a week later I can't remember what anyone got, aside from the teabags and books; but it was still better than the scheduled version, with neither hot sauce nor corn holders anywhere to be seen.

Frankly, we're all just glad that he's alive.