Everything’s unwrapped, the champagne’s gone flat, and even the hangovers are over. While my holidays were full of warmth and good cheer and that uniquely Simmermon brand of stressed-out love, I’m glad to be entering that great grey yawn of real winter. Running around outside SUCKS until mid-April and when I have my daily panic that my life is slipping past, I can look out the window and feel fine about having a laptop strapped to my face. In the factory-blended oatmeal that is an East Coast winter, every numbing day that ends like all the rest is at least one day closer to spring.

My New Years’ was spent having cocktails and a home-cooked meal with my girlfriend, best friend, his wife, and their new baby. My New Years’ celebrations in years past have also involved copious amounts of booze, screaming and vomiting, but this years’ was different.

While the first decade or so of David Allen Browne’s life is going to be happy and full of love, he’s going to have no choice but to become grim, selfish and willfully ignorant in order to rebel against his hilarious, brilliant and loving parents once he hits puberty. Hopefully he’ll snap out of it before it’s time to take the SATs.

Christmas was different, too. I brought my girlfriend home, for one thing. It’s a big deal for me to bring somebody home for a number of reasons:

• My sister and I have pretty well inoculated our parents against cultural/racial hangups, accidental profanity, body art and punk-influenced fashion choices … all known causes of heart failure to conservative parents. My mom can even say “fuck” without making a face now. But my family can smell a bullshit heart from a running mile, and the false politeness that ensues is deeply embarrassing. Nobody makes it across the threshold of the Simmermon unless they’re top shelf for real.
• Also, my grandmother kind of hates anyone that me and my uncle have ever dated. She comes around eventually, but I can take no responsibility for any eye-rolling, interrupting, or ignoring until she does. Folks that can’t handle it don’t make the cut.
• The relationship must be about much more than the physical. As I mentioned before, my family can sniff out a bullshit heart. In a small house with two parents, a sister, two lively and curious dogs and a “no ring, no shared bedroom” policy, that physical side is going to have to take a little holiday of its own.

Between caring for my ailing grandparents, driving for my semi-blind father and attending to a home-based business, Mom’s had a lot to cope with this year. She is an Atlas in sensible shoes, still warm and funny as ever, but she’s carrying a weight that I can’t even imagine. To take some of the burden off of her this year and make her feel better about sharing Christmas with a stranger, I volunteered both me and Maggie to cook for the whole family the whole time we were visiting. “Ooh, Jeffrey, bring her down,” Mom said. “I’ll have someone shovel out your room and you can have the couch by the tree.”

We shopped and cooked the entire time. Four days worth of meals, some of them feeding nine people with enough for leftovers. I don’t regret it for a second and I’ll do it with a smile next year. That smile might be a little forced, though.

It must be said that I am a compulsive pleaser. This works out really well for the significant other when it’s one on one, but in front of my parents, sister, grandparents, and the aforementioned S.O., I turn into Marge Simpson for 48 to 72 hours. For that time, everything is fine, I’m making jokes, everyone’s happy, I’m Johnny on the spot getting chores done with a smile. Hour 73 hits, and I freaking lose it. We are all congruent but somewhat different people to everyone that loves us, but when they’re all on the same piece of real estate, it’s exhausting.

I got 4 hours of sleep on Christmas Eve and was drunk by noon the following day, a process that was triggered by my mother asking me and the lady at the last second “weren’t you guy going to make a pie for dessert? We need to leave in a few hours.” I just smiled, dumped more rum in my coffee, and started looking for the apples.

“Dinner smells pretty good,” my grandpa said, early Christmas evening. “I bet it’ll taste pretty good, too, if you ever get around to serving it.”

One night, my sister and mom were discussing some minute, emotionally charged detail about the following day’s festivities in my room in hushed tones, trying very hard not to argue. I honestly can’t remember who said it, but someone said “look, I just want to spend Christmas Day with my family, why are you making this so hard for me?” At that moment, needed to take the dogs for a walk. Right that second.

Me and Maggie were sitting in the living room on Christmas Eve when Jess came in and flopped in a chair, sighing and picking her dog up like an infant.

“Mall was a BITCH today,”Jess announced. “You know I about had to get ghetto on somebody, too, on Christmas Eve. I can’t even believe it. Motherfucker hit my car while I was STILL IN IT and drove right off, too. I got out and chased him down, held up a whole thing of traffic in the parking garage to do it, too. He came all waddling up to my car and said ‘what, you mad about, baby girl,’ like I was tripping, said ‘naw baby girl, that’s gonna wash right out, you ain’t even need to worry about it,’ like I was just making the whole thing up! I told him ‘well if it this big-ass dent in my car DOESN’T come out in the car wash, I got your license plate right here,” she said, tapping her temple ominously. “That big somebody said all slow, like he just remembered, ‘Oh. Well I guess I should give you my number, then,’ and I said, “YEAH, I think that might be best for everyone involved.”

“Really, I’m proud of myself,” she continued. “I went through all that shit with him and didn’t even cuss once. It was hard, too.” She finished her egg nog and looked over at the tree for a moment. “You know, all those gifts look nice and all, but it’s just not as fun when I bought and wrapped almost all of ‘em myself.”

She had a point. My sister and I have always been the only two kids in our family’s Christmas celebration, and we’ve definitely enjoyed the attention and generosity of our aunt, uncle and grandparents at holiday time. In years past, Jess and I have been able to just show up and sit in the front row, the two-person audience to our family’s Christmas production. This year it was different; This year, Jess and I were Christmas Producers, juggling responsibilities and fulfilling expectations as a team for the first time … and something tells me it’s going to stay this way for a good while.

On Christmas night we had all finished eating and were lingering over dessert when my uncle said, “Well, Dad, I think I’m gonna go in and sit by the fire while you do the dishes.” We all laughed, hard, and wheeled Pop-pop into a spot near the sink so he could watch and comment while we all took turns cleaning.

I could see other people putting their coats on from my seat next to Pop-Pop’s wheelchair when he started to say goodbye. Not “goodbye, see you soon,” but goodbye for REAL. It wasn’t in anything he said, specifically. He’s not from a generation that articulates their feelings. It was in the pauses in between his sentences, the way he searched for words and and the vibration of his voice, shaking at a different frequency than usual. This elephant has been in the room for a long time, and when Pop-Pop said goodnight, it sat down with a heavy thud. I didn’t want the moment to end and delayed putting on my coat as long as possible.

If I didn’t put the coat on, maybe if we didn’t leave just yet or I sat there for as long as I could, maybe that elephant would’ve gotten bored and wandered off to bother someone else. I just wanted to sit there, in the glow of the lights and sound of silverware dropping in the drawer until the end of time, just to keep Pop-Pop going and the moment suspended for the rest of time.

Like I said, his generation doesn’t talk about their feelings much. When I started getting into comics, punk rock and video games, I must have seemed like an alien to him, like a distant friendly creature who flitted in and out of his life, eating, smiling and chirping in an alien tongue. Pop-Pop never really understood my artwork, read this blog, or knew so much about me that most people get immediately. I’ll never be able to explain how it’s possible to love someone so much and understand them so little — but you can.

It’s not in conversation, it’s not shared interests and its’ sure as hell not about a similar political outlook. It’s something between those, too, the unsaid pauses and the way you look in each others’ eyes when you talk about the weather and whatever’s on TV. It’s having someone be benevolent, loving, and utterly dependable 100 percent of the time, with no slip-ups, ever, for your entire life. It’s agreeing that in each other, you can see only hope, warmth, and love so huge you couldn’t understand it even if it was explained one thudding syllable at a time.

That’s pretty much Christmas around my house, anyway — working hard, going a little nuts, and loving each other real, real hard without even really knowing what’s going on.