When my grandfather bought a new car last year, he wasn’t concerned with foolish things such as safety test ratings, gas mileage and passenger legroom. Like any other rational human, he purchased the car after hearing it had “hot seats and that XL radio.”
While heated seats and satellite radio may seem like trivial luxuries, to my grandfather these options provide his greatest pleasure: sitting in warmth listening to six stations of Christmas music.
While I personally despise Christmas, it’s these holiday classics my ears have been enduring since before Thanksgiving and were enduring last Sunday morning as my family drove through Downtown to enjoy brunch at the Royal Sonesta Hotel (classy as hell) for my grandmother’s 80th birthday.
As we walked through the hotel lobby adorned with bellhops, statues and enough holiday decorations to deck my entire neighborhood, I couldn’t help but feel out of place. We aren’t the people who eat brunch. We’re more of the family that laughs at erectile dysfunction commercials and knows the lyrics to most Neil Diamond songs.
“This is how the ‘other half’ lives,” my mother said as the waitress placed cloth napkins on our laps. As she poured mimosas into our glasses, a pianist played “Moon River.” Although I’ve heard the song before, the rendition almost moved me to tears. For some reason, it sounded much more beautiful than when my friend Brit and I drunkenly perform it at karaoke.
As my parents argued whether the pianist was Billy Joel or Elton John, I began to eat. I cannot pronounce or describe what I ate. For me, Little Chinese Kitchen is high class.
I drank a few more mimosas and began to realize that I could get used to this. We belonged here, too. We were classy as hell.
After brunch, we explored the hotel.
“Look Justin, I’m a rich b-” my mother exclaimed as she walked down the marble corridor pretending that she was a hotel guest. As a rather uptight looking woman walked by, my mother grabbed a life-size Nutcracker decoration and said, “I’mma take him home to keep me warm at night.”
While the crotchety woman blanched, I took satisfaction in knowing that you could take my family out of Chalmette, but you couldn’t take Chalmette out of my family, and there’s no one else I’d rather spend the holidays with.
Well, maybe with Amy Winehouse, but only because instead of stuffing she’d bring the really good pills.
Happy holidays.
