It’s Sunday night, snow piled up to the window and I’m on a saggy single bed in a plaid flannel nighty, one that has a ‘Made in the USA with Love’ tag. It could be 1992, except it’s not. I’m home for the holidays.

This is where comfort begins: in clothes you wouldn’t be caught dead in in New York City. Not even indoors, just in case the cute guy with the vinyl collection happens to be emptying out his wine bottles at the same time you’re running down the hall with your own. No, that’s a time for butt-loving yoga pants.

Forget the cute vinyl guy already. This isn’t about him.

It’s five days til Christmas and just as long until Mom gets her list of hardcover titles. Oh, and could I get those Magnesium and Calcium tablets from that drugstore I have downstairs too? ‘Duane Reade, Mom?’

The vitamins have been delivered already, but she’s giddy for more.

“Do you have any easy reading?” she asked me before bedtime, in a hole-y version of a sweater my sister wore sometime in the mid-90s (What? It’s comfortable!). Mom had already plowed through the New York Times I borrowed from Finnair.

“Here,” I said, handing over the January issue of Vogue – my plane reading. Disclaimer: “You’re not exactly the target demographic, though.”

Seven minutes later, I hear howling from her bedroom. Laughter. She comes back waving a Vogue spread at me. A bone-thin model in ginormous hot pink pants and even bigger hair.

“Look at these people, they look like they’ve escaped from an insane asylum!”
“Mo-om. It’s VOGUE. Fashion art. Plenty of people like that stuff. And two of them are called Anna.”
“Seriously? You read this? Are you crazy too?”

It’s ok, she’s just kidding. And I got my magazine back.

Mom, in turn, received a premature Christmas present.

“Here, guess, which hand?”
“What do you have now? More nuts for me?”

No. Nora Ephron’s ‘I Remember Nothing’.

The laughter down the hall kicks in again. I popped my head in to get the verdict.

“The first four pages – written just for me!”

Merry Christmas, Mom.

Copyright: Annatonic 2010