Ever since I've been home from college I have noticed an influx in religious memorabilia scattered throughout the house, purchased by none other than the woman who brought me into this world. She's taken to watching a little something I've dubbed the "Jesus channel," a network hosted by priests and nuns found in the higher numbers of satellite programming. There's about six or seven rosaries laying on tables and dressers, along with a statue of the virgin Mary and several books and DVDs with titles such as "The Mystery of God" and "Angel on my Shoulder." From the time she wakes up to the time she slips back into peaceful slumber, my mother sprawls across the couch and absorbs hours of cloaked men and women reading passages from the Bible and answering theological inquiries from people via telephone. I even caught her watching the black gospel choir one time.

Perhaps my mother feels as though she is near the end of her life and must hold onto something other than her earthly possessions and human relationships. Maybe she's finally gone off the deep end, succumbing to hours and hours of television viewing because she lacks the energy or desire to do anything else. A sad life she leads; I hope never to meet a fate like hers. It's not her fault she got the cancer. Twice. I'm starting to think she doesn't see the point of living anymore, if living entails being pumped full of chemicals and going to screenings every six months. But I guess there is nothing any of us can do. It is what it is; her fixation on the Jesus channel is just her way of coping and hopefully it's working.

Today is Christmas and I did not get anything but evidently it did not bother me. Each year I'm coming to realize that life isn't always about wrapping paper and an appropriate bow. My parents pay for my tuition and they helped with my car, so what more could I ask of them? They feed me, give some spending money here and there, we live in a nice house. I got my mother and sister presents and I took more pleasure in watching them enjoy their presents than I would have taken in opening my own. I always deemed that better to give than to receive theory a load of crap, but I guess you reach a certain point in your life where you stop thinking only of yourself and realize that being happy can come from making others happy. I'm beginning to sound like those drab priests on my mother's favorite channel now.

We are starting our own traditions as a family. For as many years as I can remember we would trek to my grandparent's for the holidays, but now my grandfather is dead and my grandmother is too old to cook and her kitchen is dirty anyway and we don't want to eat anything that was born from it, so we're making an eclectic dinner of homemade pizza, dumplings, vegetables, sushi and ice cream cake and giving the dog food he shouldn't eat only because it's Christmas. My family is not very warm and mushy like other families. We don't have a Christmas tree and we don't eat turkey for Thanksgiving and my parents don't go out on dates and vacation, but they're the only family I have and once they're gone, they're gone; so I'm going to stop wishing my family could be like everyone else's and take them as they are. Time to take the dog for his Christmas walk.