When I was a kid, I used to fall out of bed.

Not just occasionally, but every. single. night.

You’d think my parents would have put one of those attachable crib-like railings on the side of my “big girl” bed because clearly, a big girl I was not, but no.  I suppose they figured the best move was to leave me free to fight my monsters of the night without first making me launch myself over a barred piece of metal.  Because, you know, concussions are so much better when you don’t have to work for them.

Not that I was ever concussed from the ordeal.

In fact, I never even actually woke up.

Nope.  I just rolled on out of there, landing with a muffled thud on the (presumably) orange shag carpeting, and continued right on sleeping.  I honestly think my parents did nothing to stop my nighttime base jumps because they enjoyed coming into my room in the morning to see where their toddler had ended up in the night — curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed, or sprawled out like some sort of beached squid, my limbs all knotted and contorted, jammies unshamefully bunched up to expose my baby pot belly and white little calves, the epitome of nonchalance and innocence and bendiness — all the stuff it is to be a toddler.

Then, one night, all of that changed.

One night, I woke up.  It was pitch dark.  I was lying on my stomach, on what I knew wasn’t my bed, so I pushed myself up.

Or at least, I tried to.

But I couldn’t.  Thwack!  The back of my head struck metal, just inches above where I lay.  I scootched up onto my elbows, chin tucked down, and tried to raise my tush.  Thwack!  My bum hit metal again.

As an adult, my reaction in this situation would be, 1) What. the. f*ck.  2) Sheer panic.

As a kid, my reaction to this situation was, 1) Sheer panic.

I screamed, I cried, I yelled for mom and dad with such urgency that I’m pretty sure they must have thought someone was trying to kidnap me in the middle of the night, especially when they barged into the room, in panic mode themselves, and couldn’t see me anywhere.  I could hear their terrified voices yelling, Katie? Katie?!, but they sounded so far away and muffled by the walls of the wormhole into which I surely must have slipped.  The carpet turned soggy with tears below my cheek — carpet? — and suddenly, there was light.

My dad had lifted the bed skirt, took one look at his terrified daughter lying helpless under the bed, and started laughing.  My mom’s face popped into the window he’d created, and she joined in.

Now.  If you’ve ever asked yourself whether toddlers can feel embarrassment, believe me when I say that they can.  And to this day, I’m pretty sure either one of them would react the same way if they woke up in the dark and couldn’t move.  But my humiliation didn’t stop me from reaching my arms out to them so they could drag me to safety and place me snugly back in bed.

After that, I stopped falling out.

It’s like the inner workings of my unconscious little mind said, Enough.  We can’t handle this kind of stress.

Just one little scare is all it took, and my nighttime antics ceased.

But I think, ever since then, a little part of me has missed the unleashed feeling of the free fall.

And I think that maybe, many of us spend our adult lives trying to get that feeling back again.

But, really.

Is that so wrong?

If you celebrate Christmas, you probably fall into one of two categories:

1. Those who honor family tradition, cooking the same meals, drinking the same drinks, playing the same love-worn Harry Connick Jr. Christmas album year after year, and taking comfort in the thought that while everything else changes — people grow old, babies get born, the ovens are stainless, not avocado, and presents arrived pre-wrapped at the front door — these other things, the ones we can control, will stay the same.

2. Those who forego tradition and family gatherings to sip mai tais on a tropical island somewhere and forget that the world even exists.

Me?  I’d say I actually fall somewhere between the two extremes.  When I was younger, my family did the whole gathering thing.  We baked, played with cousins, sang carols, annoyed each other in that hate-you-yet-love-you way families do… the works.

Then it fell apart.

And I started moving.

And my sister started moving.

And we eventually came to learn that while some people really can go home again, it becomes a little impossible when home no longer exists.

When most of your belongings were sold while you were away.

When someone else is living in your room.

Sliding down your stairs.

Playing your sheet music like it’s theirs.

And we realized that traditions can break — will break — if the people you counted on to keep them going are no longer on speaking terms.

Then I met Justin.  The first year he invited me to his family’s Christmas gathering, I felt all crumpled.  Broken.  Out of place.  How come they could hold it together?  How could they be so happy?  Every year 40+ people, related by blood or by choice, all gather in a single house to eat Grandma’s famous lasagna, play a detested (yet loved) family trivia game, watch the children take turns opening gifts one-by-one, exchange white elephant gifts and laugh, once again, when the 20-year-old cousin tries to grab the one with the beer, Mom shakes the shake weight, and Grandpa wins the coveted gift card to Omaha Steaks.

Rinse, repeat.

Sure, there’s gossip.  There’s bickering.  There’s family tension.  But, in all of its stagnant predictability, it’s all kinds of wonderful.

So I started to love it — to look forward to hanging out with the “outlaw” aunts who speak my language, to see how many cousin’s names I could remember, and to absorb through the pores of my skin whatever the stuff is — egg whites, perhaps? — that makes his family stick.

But sometimes we don’t go.  Whether we can’t afford the tickets one year, can’t muster the energy for holiday travel another, or “accidentally” book a trip to Hawaii instead, some years we just don’t go.

And inevitably, we miss them.

I miss them.

Family via osmosis, not marriage.

But, for the years we’re not there, we’ve started our own tradition of sorts, maybe in honor of my own crumpled history.  We invite all of the misfit toys — those who can’t travel or have nowhere to go or just haven’t gone yet — to our house for a little dinner.  Only this year, it turned into a big dinner, where nothing was traditional:  The turkey was smoked, the lasagna was vegetarian, the potatoes were au gratin, and the stuffing was German.  There were meatballs.  And hummus.  And peach something-or-others.  And white chocolate cheesecake.  And mulled cider spiked with Southern Comfort.

And a new kind of family.

Not one we were born into or chose through marriage, but one we made on-the-fly, built purely from us leftovers who somehow managed to come together to make something worthwhile.

So, thanks to our motley crew of misfits on Christmas Eve and my friend Alaina for inviting us to her family dinner on Christmas, it felt, strangely enough, like ours.