I have narrowly escaped Christmas celebrations with outlaws and in-laws, parents and step-grandparents.
I have held my naked baby in the freezing cold while my brother-in-law cleaned vomit out of her car seat in a Target parking lot in the middle of Georgia. I have yelled at my kids in Wal-Mart in four different states, and I have moved all of my earthly from South Carolina to Mississippi.
And I am tired, but I survived Christmas of 2009.
I drove the roads of my hometown on autopilot and missed having a car accident by the grace of God. I stopped at imaginary stop signs. There are stop signs in the place of traffic signals and yield signs where stop signs used to be. The whole town has changed in the 13 years since I lived there.
My body was exhausted as I drove hundreds of miles to get home. I've packed and unpacked a hundred overnight and diaper bags. I've tucked my kids into beds, futons and couches.
But on Christmas day as I drove down Corridor X from Jasper to Birmingham (for what I think was the third time in a week) I was fueled by more than caffeine.
I was pulled along by a force greater than myself. I listened to the sounds of the Nutcracker Suite coming from the DVD player in the back seat and thought of my brothers, my sister, my niece and my nephew all headed the same place I was. Home.
We were driving in from opposite directions on the map, my younger brother and his pregnant wife were snowed-in in Ohio. My younger sister, her husband and son were driving up from the Gulf Coast of Alabama, and my older brother and his family were driving in to Birmingham from Tuscaloosa.
It was a sense of belonging, a sense of family, and the spirit of Christmas that was pulling me like a magnet toward the epicenter of my family, my Momma.
Once I walked in her back door, nothing else mattered. Not the dried up baby puke in my car, or the hundreds of boxes still waiting for me in Mississippi.
All that mattered was that I was within arm's reach of some of the people that matter most to me in this world, and life was good.


(Robin O'Bryant is a Mount Pleasant resident and mother of three. Read her blog online at www.robinschicks.com or e-mail her, zebandrobin@hotmail.com.)