I left work early, skipped bonus dinner, and took a $540 flight for Christmas Eve. My chair had a sticky note: “Reserved for Brian’s fiancée.” “She’s new here,” my mom said. “We figured you’d be fine standing.” I said sure, then picked up my bag and left. Thirty-one minutes later, my sister texted: “So sensitive. It wasn’t a big deal.” I opened my app, paused the family support. But what my dad said at 9:04 PM changed everything….
The first thing I remember about that Christmas Eve is how hard I was trying to believe in it.
Not in Christmas itself. I had outgrown the clean, polished version of that years ago. I mean the idea of home. The private myth I had kept alive long past its expiration date. The one where distance made people softer, where time apart made reunion sweeter, where effort mattered because surely someone, somewhere in your family, was counting the cost of what it took for you to show up and loving you harder for it.
I had paid five hundred and forty dollars for a one-way flight that should have made me hesitate, but I booked it in less than two minutes. I had left work at noon, pasting on an apologetic smile to my manager, waving off the company bonus dinner everyone had been talking about for two weeks, ignoring the half-joking boos from coworkers who told me I was insane to choose airport security over free steak and open bar. I had shoved gifts into a duffel bag with the kind of frantic tenderness that only exists when you’re trying to make something meaningful look effortless. I sprinted through the terminal with my coat half-zipped, my laptop bumping against my thigh, the bourbon I’d bought for my father wrapped in a scarf so it wouldn’t break, and all the while I was telling myself the same stupid thing over and over.
It’ll be worth it when I get there.
