I feel like as we get older we start to be more realistic about certain thing like how the “big guy” Santa isn’t the one that comes down your chimney on Christmas eve night to deliver your presents… it’s your parents, and we now know why maybe we didn’t get as many gift as we did last year and we find out who and what things are real in our life as we get older.
Last year on Christmas Eve my family stayed home and hung out and did our little traditions, like make ginger bread houses, watch Christmas movies and got chinese food. On Christmas day we traveled to Rhode Island to see my dad’s side of the family. Once we the got their the kids reunited and went outside and played game and did “kid things”. As usual the parents stayed inside to talk about their every day life and tryed to one up each other about everything. But that year I think the talk about there everyday lives went a little further then everyone expected.

Abby, brock, ellie and I and the little kids were down stairs having a fun time messing around until us older kids start to hear a lot of movement and yelling but we were all a little too scared to go up there so we just tried to keep the little kids entertained so they didn’t ask questions we couldn’t answer. Just about five minutes later my mom comes running down stairs telling us that “the new Hampshire Hammonds will be leaving in ten minutes so get your stuff together”. We did what she said because we didn’t want to risk anything. Once all the kids made our way upstairs we began to put the piece together… my uncle Ed and my grandpa were head to head with each other yelling and getting physical. My mentally ill aunt was in the bathroom making her self throw up due to the fact that the attention wasn’t on her. So my mom had Abby and I go in there and stop her and call her rehab center place. My mom had brock get all our stuff we might of forgot so as us kids were all busy doing our things we need to get done to get out of the house we hear something… we haven’t heard this in years so it scared us all. I guess while we were gone the tables were turn towards our family…
My dad was yelling like he never yelled before because his family was calling him a “screw up” and saying we think where all that” and telling us to have a nice life” and that “they never want to see our faces again”. We all got really scared and were weirded out because we have never seen him like that so that’s when we knew that this wasn’t just a little family drama. It was much more than that so my mom got all the kids together and our stuff and we started to head toward the door, I decided to give my grandma a hug because I figured I wouldn’t be seeing her for a while and that this was between the parents not the kids… but I was wrong as I was giving her a huge she yelled at my mom saying “get your hideous kid the f*** off me” so I did what she said and got “off” her.

The whole family went to the car besides my dad because he was trying to make things write and was trying to say sorry but after thirty minutes of waiting for him he got a glimpse of what was happening and where my dad was, all of a sudden my dad was shoved to the ground by his own dad… mined you can’t talk to my grandpa after 5 because that’s when he gets drunk and physical, and let me tell you he got physical. My mom ran out of the car to go help my dad and they started to come back to the car but as they were getting in my uncle Derek came up to the car and said thank you guys for all you have done and he was sorry and Derek is the biggest cutest “little big” guy.


Once everyone was in the car and we were on our way home the car was filled with a waterfall of emotions. The only thing you could hear in the car ride home was the skipping of your breath when you would breathe in from crying so hard to the fade voice of my dad praying everything would be alright.

This Christmas was what I felt the worst Christmas. But I was surprisingly wrong… it made our family stronger and closer together and we found out who our real family is and was. Yes family fights can ruin a lot of things but I think it happened for a reason. Family is family and you can’t get rid of them. The only thing you can do is just be there for the people that matter to you the most and you believe would do the same for you.