My Kind of Christmas

tried to ignore it. It was still quite early, but she hadn’t brewed coffee and didn’t feel like cooking breakfast, so she pulled her scuffed-up cowboy boots over her torn jeans and grabbed her jacket. The phone was relentless, so with a heavy sigh she picked it up. “Hello.”
    “You’re not staying with Jack,” her mother said.
    “Hi, Mom. No, I’m staying in his cabin.”
    “But I thought we understood each other—you would stay with Jack or Brie.”
    “Nope. That was your expectation. I’m very interested in seeing them but not living with them. I was hoping for the cabin or, at the least, Jack’s guesthouse. I want a little time and space to myself.”
    “This is exactly what I’ve been talking about. You’re not yourself at all. I’ve made an appointment with a neuropsychiatrist,” she said. “We should get to the bottom of this.”
    Angie laughed. “Listen, Mom, do yourself a favor. Cancel it. You don’t need much more than an everyday counselor to figure out that my brain is fine. The problem isn’t me. I’m not doing things your way and it’s making you crazy. I have to go. I don’t want to be late for the raising of the tree.”
    “Angie…!”
    “Bye,” she said, disconnecting.
    Neuropsychiatrist? Never gonna happen. Besides, she’d already seen at least one of those and no one, no matter how many degrees they had, could convince her that rejecting her mother’s plan for her life automatically signaled a personality disorder.
    The phone rang again, but Angie zipped her jacket and headed out the door. She stopped on the porch to indulge in a moment of remorse. Sadness. There was bound to be friction between a firstborn daughter and her strong-willed mother. Angie had always known how to please her parents and, in fact, usually had. Her mother proclaimed her a handful to raise, and yet, she’d managed to be Donna’s pride and joy. Angie had never rebelled so thoroughly before.
    Donna didn’t seem to push back on Angie’s younger sisters with the same kind of determination. When Jenna or Beth resisted their mother’s plans, Donna seemed to let go faster. Easier.
    “Dr. Temple, do you think my personality has changed?”
    “It’s possible. And there’s always PTSD. Catastrophic accidents and long recoveries can have that effect.”
    “Do I have a disorder?”
    “Disorder? I’m no expert, but I don’t get the sense of a disorder. Do you think you have a disorder?”
    “You know, I just feel like I finally woke up. I feel as if I should change things. It’s filling me with a sense of relief, of second chances, but it’s upsetting my family. They’re worried and angry, especially my mother. I’m battling with her over things like school. Battling like never before.”
    “Hmm. Well, have you asked yourself—do you like the new you?”
    “I do. I want to be more independent. But I hate disappointing my mother. She’s had it in her head I should be a doctor for a long time.”
    “I think, Angie, that you have to act on what’s in your head, not your mother’s. You’re an adult, not her little girl anymore. Maybe you two need a little space to figure things out.”
    Not long after Angie had that conversation with Dr. Temple, Uncle Jack and Brie had stepped in. Jack called Donna and said, “The two of you are fighting like a couple of cats in a sack. You’re not going to get better this way. Send Angie up here for a while. A few weeks. Let her get some perspective and take a breather. This is ridiculous.”
    It took a follow-up phone call from Brie, but Donna finally came around. She was persuaded to put off the head butting at least until after the first of the year.
    Angie could almost hear her father breathe a sigh of relief.
    * * *
    When Angie arrived in town, she saw that even though the hour was early, the place was already a circus. The big flatbed with an enormous tree strapped to it blocked the street and mounted on another truck was a giant winch. The ground had been plowed free of snow right between the bar and the church, back off the road a bit in the area where, in milder weather, there were picnic tables. That’s where the tree would stand. The sound of a hydraulic post digger assaulted the morning air as meanly as a jackhammer, and a lot of people stood around watching while the tree was being attached to the lift. Cables trailed off the tree—likely to be anchored to stakes in the ground to steady it.
    It was so big .
    Someone pressed a cup