"We've been invited to join other neighborhood families for caroling around a bonfire on Christmas Eve!"
As she placed the cordless phone back on its wall mount, my mom had that particular kind of excitement that an outcast teen has when she is finally invited to a keg party.
I groaned audibly.
"Oh come on...you are Little Miss Christmas Spirit! What's wrong with you? This will be fun!"
I had nothing against caroling. The problem was the neighborhood families. Seeing them meant seeing many of my former classmates from high school again. In high school I had been that outcast teen. I was known to slink through the halls sporting polyester clothing and pink patent leather platforms. I was subjected to many of the hallmarks of the social pariah: teasing and the occasionally odd, completely false rumor (did you try to drown yourself in a swimming pool? Did you get in a fistfight with another girl over a boy?) Every day I parked my dented Pontiac station wagon next to everyone else's brand new jewel toned Jeeps and indulged in a morning ritual of flicking my cigarette butts at their empty windows. It became a toxic push and pull: as much as I was angry at my fellow students for not accepting me, I was also angry at myself for not being a seamless part of the high school tapestry. So much was my disdain for this monochromatic morass of zombie clones, and for my awkward self among them, that I transferred schools before junior year. In my new school, I found friendship and belonging. Before long, my old school, and the people in it, became like the memory of a bad dream.
So when my mother suggested the activity of caroling, the bad dream came back again. My mother tried her best placation techniques by reminding me that I was in the middle of my sophomore year of college, had moved halfway across the country, and really the old ghosts from high school shouldn't be haunting me, because I'm better than that and should have more confidence.
"Besides," she concluded, "getting invited to this means a lot to me."
I stared hard at my mother. Perhaps she had some old wounds of exclusion from high school that she needed to heal as well.
"Fine, I'll go," I said, "but I won't have any fun."

Christmas Eve was the following day, and we found the house filled with the usual celebratory cast of characters: my parents, aunt and uncle, their toddler son, my sister, and her boyfriend. My family had many flaws, as all families do, but Christmas was the one thing that we seemed to do right, year after year. The halls were always decked with fresh wreaths and boughs, handmade ornaments dating back several generations adorned the tree, my aunt made her artery-clogging eggnog, and there seemed to be a general easing of the subtle tension and dysfunction that flavored my interactions with my sister and parents.
As we all prepared to leave the house to join the caroling festivities, my father -- who was essentially a teetotaler -- handed me a small shot of Irish whiskey and we silently toasted. He was a man of few words, but I think he might have been telling me that he wasn't all that excited about the idea of caroling either.
It was unseasonably warm for a Minnesota Christmas, as the temperatures were in the dizzyingly high teens with no wind chill. This heat wave gave me the bravado to venture out in a cute dress with leggings and completely insensible ballet flats. After all, I needed to look casually stylish, and weren't we going to be standing around a bonfire?
We managed to cram ourselves into two cars for the short drive, with me taking my usual spot in the middle. My parents lived on the charming border between suburbs and country, and after leaving the perimeter of the house's floodlights we were surrounded by the familiar darkness of fields and sporadic streetlamps. The sky above us was coated in clouds, and the headlights made a dent in the blackness like a boat through water.
We arrived at the bonfire in the middle of a snow covered field, and if I hadn't been so nervous I would have found the whole picture to be almost painfully Rockwellian. Happily for me we had managed to find a fairly dark patch by the fire, and I huddled close to my aunt and uncle. Everyone took a moment to warm up both their bodies and voices around the fire (plus I'm fairly certain there was a brandy-filled thermos being passed around), but by the time we got around to Deck the Halls, the singing was in full swing. I even found myself bouncing along with everyone else to Jingle Bells, and wincing while we butchered O Holy Night.
As we were singing, something stirred within me that I wasn't expecting: confidence. Why was I letting these people make me feel uncomfortable? Why did they get that power? I wasn't the insecure theater nerd I had been when they knew me. I was a straight A student, had a great group of friends, and was going places in this world. By the time we had reached the second measure in Joy to the World, the final song of the evening, I had made up my mind: I was going to go over to the gaggle of former classmates that were huddled judgingly in the corner, reluctantly mouthing to words to the songs by parental order, and dazzle them.
"I'll be right back," I said to my aunt and uncle, my voice coming out louder than expected. They were at that moment playing hot potato with their melting down toddler, passing him back and forth in a vain attempt to comfort him.
I strode off to talk to my former classmates, and spent the majority of the conversation trying to adjust my body language to seem relaxed and confident, while making sure I didn't laugh too hard, but also continuously nodded thoughtfully at what they were saying. It was so much work I can hardly remember what we talked about.
Amidst the chorus of goodbyes and wishes for safe travels home I walked back to where my family had been standing, chest slightly puffed under my flimsy yet fashionable winter coat, while trying to appear as though it didn't bother me that I was ankle deep in snow. I was so concerned with watching my step that I hardly noticed walking right past where everyone was. Or rather, where they should have been.
They're just saying their goodbyes, I told myself, and casually scanned the setting around me, searching for them. I tried to remember what they had each been wearing, as winter clothing tends to blend together. My terrible night vision also placed me at a particular disadvantage. Bonfire light, as it turns out, can play tricks on the eyes. Searching for people in a warmly dull, wavering light is hard to do when any hint of darkness seems to swallow one's sight. Families waved to me and wished me a Merry Christmas as they headed in cozy clumps to their SUVs. I could have asked if they had seen my family, or if they could give me a ride home, but that would mean undermining the cool veneer I had worn all night, even as the winter chill seeped into my ballet flats and up my legs. It would mean admitting to everyone that I wasn't, in fact, the confident and accomplished superstar that I had led them to believe. I wasn't spectacular and popular. It would mean admitting what I had previously suspected: that I was actually forgettable. So forgettable, in fact, that I had been left behind by my own family.
I waited until everyone was gone and all that was left was an empty field, and, the fire having been doused, a collection of now dying embers. As I was still a year away from owning my first cell phone, my only option was to walk home. The waiting was necessary lest a friendly pair of headlights from the party were to catch me walking home alone. In ballet flats. Like an idiot.
As I started walking I found myself immersed in a kind of darkness that made me claustrophobic. I couldn't see where things began or ended, and it made me feel strangely trapped. My arms felt bound by the heavy expanse of the dark, while at the same time I felt certain that at any given moment I was about to fall off the edge of a cliff. I tried to make out the shapes of trees, silhouetted against the unhelpfully dark sky, to demarcate the boundaries of the road that would lead me home. With each step I sent my inquisitive big toe out in front, searching for danger, before allowing the rest of my foot to step down into the glassy crunch of the frozen snow. With each crunch the cold seemed to settle more deeply into my bones, as the feathered heat of my social anxieties had left my body to make room for a more legitimate fear. I tried to not let that pesky survival fear enter my nervous system wholly, keeping it at bay the way a brittle fence keeps out a vicious dog--a dog that paces back and forth with its gleaming eyes on you. Given the chance it would tear you limb from limb.
Nothing inspires self-reflection like a walk on a dark wintry road after you've been left behind by your family. The old wounds I thought I had healed in high school were savagely torn open again, and I had nowhere to run. I couldn't turn on the TV and let the flickering lights distract me from my pain. Memories came blazing back with no mercy, followed by their henchmen of shame and self-consciousness. A white-hot ball of anger towards my family began to choke my breathing passages, filling me with an acrid smoke. How could they leave me behind on Christmas? Christmas was our thing. It was what we did well. And I liked to think that each year I was at the center of all of the holiday cheer, acting out my role as, what my mom had called, Miss Christmas Spirit. Not only had my family left me behind, but they were also taking their sweet timing coming back for me, if they were coming at all. The internal smoke grew thicker and thicker, and my lungs started to revolt against being filled with the cold air. When my shortness of breath became unbearable I stopped walking. I was starkly and utterly alone, and finally that vicious dog broke loose and tore into me. A voice growled deeply inside of me: No one has even noticed you're gone. No one cares.
I stood for a moment, listening, straining my eyes against the unrelenting darkness. And then, in the distance, I saw a pinprick of light. It was small at first, and then rapidly grew until I could make out that there were two of them. Headlights. I was still too frozen, internally and externally, for them to have any meaning for me. They were moving toward me faster than they should have been, given the hazards of deer and ice patches, and they were aimed right toward me. I had to practically jump in the ditch to avoid being hit by the SUV to which they were attached. It was my parents' car. The cavalry had arrived. Finally.
My dad (again, a man of few words) was a babbling brook of apologies. My sister's boyfriend had apparently noticed my absence while everyone else sat around the fire setting up our traditional Trivial Pursuit game, and he was riding shotgun, telling me over and over how missed I was. I didn't speak to either of them for the short ride home.
At home, I was greeted with hugs and apologies. My aunt and uncle had been forgivably distracted by their child, and everyone else had assumed that I had ridden with them. The swig of whiskey had clearly not done my father any favors in terms of mental clarity either.
I knew I had a choice. I could have thrown a tantrum, or given everyone the silent treatment, or barricaded myself in my bedroom-turned-guest room. I could have let the smoldering ball in my throat consume me, incinerating my feelings until I spewed hateful words and punished everyone. I realized as I scanned that fallible crowd of relatives gathered there that everyone was just doing their best. The right thing to do that night, for the sake of the holiday, was to let everyone off the hook. And so I did, and in doing so felt strangely empowered. Really, though, isn't the key to surviving anything with family just holding it together? Making the choice to not explode?
By the same token, sometimes it's the small and unintended slights by our families that can sometimes do the most damage and be the most difficult to shake off. In that careless mistake of getting left behind, a seed was planted: a seed of questioning my role and value in the family. Those questions would grow larger and more pervasive over time. Once they took root, they were challenging to weed out.
Eventually that Christmas Eve would become less about the painful slight and more about forgiveness. With time, Getting left behind at the bonfire simply became a part of our family lore. It became one of those stories that we would simultaneously groan and laugh about. After all, families are collections of failures and triumphs, loving interactions and painful ones. I would also eventually forgive myself for not fitting in perfectly, and for being, well, a little bit different.
One thing was for certain, however: I was never going caroling again.