Ahhh yes, the post 9/11 Christmas.

Basically, from the moment I stepped foot on the pater land, my people demanded my presence every hour I was there. It was...totally...bizarre.

My uncle who normally humiltates me to shreds, was...dare I say...kind? His wife, a wonderful woman although often a bit aloof, gave me a warm hug for the first time in my life. And from the moment I faced our first guests, the photographs started. I could be standing, mouth open and munching a bit of a cracker and someone was taking a shot of me. Can I just tell you how annoying that is? We haven't taken photos in forever and frankly, I liked it that way. This year, everywhere I go, my friends and family have turned into ruthless paparazzi.

Christmas Eve, paparazzi.

Christmas Day, wake up at 9:30AM and run around like maniacs to make it to 10AM mass. Come home at 11AM, and my mother gives us 10 minutes to open our gifts. 10 FREAKIN' MINUTES. What the F is that? My father wasn't even able to open gifts because he was preparing brunch for 10 people that was to be ready upon their arrival at Noon. Due to the fact that I had 10 FREAKIN' MINUTES to open gifts before I had to shower for our next Christmas soiree, I couldn't open them all.

Oh, but don't worry. My mother brought them up to my room, so that after my shower, as I'm wearing a towel and bent over drying my hair, she held the hair dryer on the underneath portion of my hair while I opened the rest of the gifts upside down.

This is not Christmas, people. This is my worst nightmare. And I wonder where I get this crazy double booking lifestyle from, until I go home and have to participate in my parents' triple booking lunacy.

So our 12PM comes and we have brunch. Four hours and many, many bottles of wine later, my father has to break it down for the guests that we have a 5PM gathering to make and they are going to have to go. I'm somewhat happy to hear that, at least our family friend sitting across the dining room table from me with the new digital camera will be forced to stop taking candids of me while my mouth is filled with french toast.

We show them out the front door and the next thing I know my father is standing at the backdoor with our coats, ushering us into the car to make our next party. En route, my mother drops off a casserole for the party after the next party - I can't even make this stuff up, people.

We hit the next party, where we have more 9/11 conversations, but at this point, I beg off at "ill" and sit quietly in the corner as yet ANOTHER person starts taking candid shots of me. At this point, I'm starting to get paranoid. Do they know something I don't know? Did the FBI issue another high alert? Is the alert for my apartment building or something? I mean, honestly.

After 2 hours there, my father shows us the door again, and takes us to the final party.

Now, I've had enough. Saturday night was rough, from my own doing. When I arrived home on Sunday night, I found out that all the gifts I had bought on Saturday were broken, probably a combination of those nasty IRA freaks and my end of the night wrestling match with A, so I ran out until midnight and re-shopped. Christmas Eve Day was non-stop, with my parents waking me at 8:30AM to help prep, go to lunch and then do last minute shopping before our guests arrived. Our celebration that night went until midnight, with my parents breaking out the Irish Mist (nasty) for an appertif after the guests were gone. Good Lord.

I barely laid my head down on the pillow before they were waking me again on Christmas Day.

The last party on Christmas did not go so well for me. All relatives, so they had no boundaries whatsoever.

"How's New York?"

"How's New York?"

"How's New York?"

"How's New York?"

"How's New York?"

JAY-sus. I was fucking tired. And I'd been drinking all day. And the same question kept coming at me, regardless of my enthusiastic answer of "It's great!," like they thought if they asked me enough I would break down and say we are all living in desperate fear or something and give them the "real dirt."

And then the photos started again. Several camera's. Now I'm drunk and tired and sick of answering The Question and there are flashbulbs going off in my face and while standing among a group of my cousins and my immediate family who are laughing and shouting over each over, as one married cousin talks in my ear with assumed horror about how one of the pilots of one of the downed planes lives on her block so she knows just "how awful this experience has been and can't imagine how it must have been for me," I put my head down and I started to cry.

I'm just. So. Fucking. Tired. Can anyone fathom this kind of exhaustion?

It was too much. I excused myself before most could see and I locked myself in the powder room. When I got my act together, I came out and my father had my coat again. We were leaving.

I don't think they knew what happened, but they knew it was time to go.

My Dad said that everybody feels like they need to know someone in the buildings or someone who was affected. He says that now they can say, "their cousin knew someone." Several someones. And that means it affected them.

I can't say I wouldn't react in the same way, if we were in different positions.

But it was the photos that broke me. Everyone wanted a photo with me, not because it was me, but so that they will have something to show their friends if I am in the next plane or building to go down. If I die, they will frame that photo and show their neighbors. They will post them on web pages and make collages in memorium.

No one said it, but I know. I know what they are thinking. And I was just as guilty because I was thinking, I want to go home to see everyone, because I'm lucky to be here this year. Six friends and countless others aren't that lucky, but I *can* go home.

After that, I took my parents car and I drove to the mini-mart and I bought a carton of cigarettes. As I lit up and drove down a familiar road, Hootie came on the radio. That was B's., my friend's husband, favorite song. My first impression of him 5 years ago was that I didn't like him because he liked Hootie. It became a joke between us. Their wedding song was Hootie. And God Dammit if that bastard wasn't in that car with me on Christmas Night, making me laugh with Hootie on the radio. So I yelled a few obscenities to him in the car, tears running down my face, and I reached over and turned that Hootie up as far as it would go and I sang my heart out for him.

Today, exhausted, I traveled back to NYC and ran errands like a bat out of hell.

Tomorrow, I fly to Ireland.

I just don't stop. I have to keep going. Because I'm here and they, are not.

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