My First Christmas As An Orphan
E.E. Lippincott (NYC)

This was my first Christmas as an orphan. I spent it in Las Vegas in a glamorous hotel suite at the Alexis resort, just a stone's throw from the biggest and most flamboyant of the strip casinos. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, until it was night and I was alone in my room watching the TNT channel play every version of the Christmas Carol ever filmed. Then I thought about being an orphan and there was a chain around my heart.

My mother is alive but she never loved me. This Christmas was the first time I'd accepted that and thus, my orphan label. I faced it this year saying to myself, oddly, something that my mother always said but never meant: "the truth sets you free."

It was surprisingly easy to say and quite easy to be rational about. But it's like an oil slick and sticks to everything. Even when you've cleaned it all up there's still an unpleasant residue. If your own mother doesn't love you, the saying goes, you must be one sad fuck.

So I sat at night in Las Vegas, surrounded by nice things in a beautiful resort and thought about whether life is really that different if your mother loves you. You still have to face sickness, struggle, death and destruction. Lots of people with great childhoods died in the World Trade Center in September and now their loved ones, also probably the product of great homes, were feeling far worse than me this Christmas.

But they were good and then had bad things happen to them whereas I started out bad. Ebeneezer Scrooge started out bad. His father hated him because his mother died giving birth. As a result Scrooge became a twisted old man, full of heartless though logical philosophies that isolated him from the world. Perhaps his father couldn't help hating him. I don't know why mother didn't love me but perhaps she couldn't help it. But it really doesn't matter. The spirits didn't give Scrooge a break because he had it rough as a kid. You gotta move on.

I never really cried over my thoughts this Christmas. The closest I came was on Christmas morning. My face crunched up for a few seconds when the soppiest commercial in the world came on depicting happy families in woolly hats and scarves arriving at their parent's houses for dinner. I knew I'd chosen too ludicrous a moment for a breakdown and so the moment passed quickly, and the tears were unspent.

Later that day I received a present from my long-lost father. We were reunited this year as part of the orphaning process. He made me a photo album of my childhood. I have had no record of that time in my very young life and so had never seen the pictures before.

A tiny, tow-headed girl was exploring leaves in yard or studying a drawing or looking peaceful. I could see my face in her face and realized I've made it all the way from then to now, regardless of the quality of the road. In a stupid way, I'm proud.