Your Christmas actually sounds kind of peaceful to me, Claudia, very adult and civilized. It is my theory that we should enjoy these moments while we can, as the pause between generations is brief. Just as we get adjusted to nice quiet evenings with a little seasonal music in the background, the unsettled cries of babies and toddlers who haven't yet grasped the joys of Christmas begin to ring out from the next room. Gather ye eggnog while you may.
And speaking of eggnog - does anyone make it from scratch any more, or is it too scary? I have been contemplating eggnog, but somehow, in the interval between when my dad used to make it with many eggs and clouds of whipped egg white on top, and the current moment when it all seems to come pasteurized and homogenized out of cardboard containers in the dairy section, I've lost or forgotten the recipe. Are we still allowed to eat raw eggs?
The holidays just get more complicated all the time.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
No gifts, no kids, no fuss, no huzzah
My husband and I will be going to my Aunt's house tomorrow for the holiday. It will be good to see my parents and cousins, but I will miss having any kids around. Mine will be with their father this year in New Jersey. But my girls are young adults--I meant kids as in under the age of ten...somehow the holidays without any wide eyed participants just seems a little flat. I look back on all the years of my girls being girls and it seems like it went by too fast. At the time it was not rushing by. Every day had its tides of small dramas. Ah well, this is middle age, and it is my turn to look forwards and back, to see both shores and know this too is temporary. I also know I am lucky at my age to have parents and even a grandmother around. Lucky to be able to love them all through another year.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Wrong Suitcase
I know that wrong suitcase feeling so well, Hilary - every time I gear up to go on a trip - and especially around the holidays - I am in a complete panic that I will somehow get it wrong. I won't bring the right suitcase, I will forget all the presents, I'll lose my ID or tickets, I'll bring all the wrong clothes - the list goes on.
The funniest part about it, really, is that on those rare occasions when things have gone all wrong - flights missed, baggage lost, medication misplaced, no coat brought and a blizzard in the offing - it always gets fixed. Clothes can be bought or borrowed, doctors and pharmacists can be called, and there's almost always another flight in an hour or six. But we almost all approach trips as if we were in the final scenes of a Hollywood movie, where if the flight is missed, the person not found immediately, we have lost our one and only chance to ever fly to that place or see that person. If you don't catch your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancee/spouse/master spy at EXACTLY that moment before their plane takes off and they leave forever, you will never see them again. Apparently, in the movies no one has cell phones, email, or even a Post Office Box at which to receive messages about missed flights and opportunities.
And that's exactly how I feel before trips, even if they are to a conference half an hour away on the commuter railroad. Anything I don't remember is lost to me forever. And maybe that is just what Claudia was saying about holidays: if we don't remember, who will?
The funniest part about it, really, is that on those rare occasions when things have gone all wrong - flights missed, baggage lost, medication misplaced, no coat brought and a blizzard in the offing - it always gets fixed. Clothes can be bought or borrowed, doctors and pharmacists can be called, and there's almost always another flight in an hour or six. But we almost all approach trips as if we were in the final scenes of a Hollywood movie, where if the flight is missed, the person not found immediately, we have lost our one and only chance to ever fly to that place or see that person. If you don't catch your boyfriend/girlfriend/fiancee/spouse/master spy at EXACTLY that moment before their plane takes off and they leave forever, you will never see them again. Apparently, in the movies no one has cell phones, email, or even a Post Office Box at which to receive messages about missed flights and opportunities.
And that's exactly how I feel before trips, even if they are to a conference half an hour away on the commuter railroad. Anything I don't remember is lost to me forever. And maybe that is just what Claudia was saying about holidays: if we don't remember, who will?
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Is God gonna bring me a suitcase?
I hate vanishing dolls and headlines that print themselves but what I was going to add to Debbie's blog was that
once upon a time a long time ago, my daughter had a doll named neither Barbie nor Strawberry Shortcake but otherwise was like any other little girl's doll in Istanbul. I think her name was Vivian? Megan? At any rate, my 4-yr-old daughter, Alexandra, was completely satisfied with the wealth of wardrobe enjoyed by her doll, but she had nothing to put all those doll crinolines in when Megan went to bed and so needed -- for Christmas -- a suitcase. (Megan had written it in her letter to Santa.) At the same time, Alexandra's Sunday School was preoccupied with the religious story of Christmas, to which end the visiting English padre (bearded as any proper Santa Claus -- or Heavenly Father, for that matter -- would be) had come to explain to all the children the lovely story of the Nativity --
& not unnaturally. Alexandra had all of Christmastime's Principal Players mixed up and that would be all of my comments on Debbie's comments on Christmas, although I might have added comments in re: last week's NYT editorial, commenting upon all the lovely layers of belief upon which Lewis bases Narnia....and all of these comments would have agreed with Deb's excellent comments as Christmas is indeed, a bittersweet event -- except I wanted to add
that we are programmed, genetically, I think (Claudia, you are the expert) to take all our holidays with a Grain of Salt, to add to any expectationa sense of forboding brittle hope, which was mostly in Alex's facial expression not in her words, of course, and --
I don't know what in the world I am talking about....
Except I am panicked, packing for Christmas in Boston, where the youngest among us will be 13 (Alex's daughter, Elizabeth)worried that we will somehow all be disappointed (like there won't be enough suitcases to go around, or I've chosen the wrong suitcase for one of us --)
MERRY CHRISTMAS , Andrew, Bill, Debbie, Claudia!
I love you all, and I will never never knowingly (aye, there's the rub) bring you the wrong suitcase,
Hilary
Writing through the Holidays
Up until Thanksgiving, I was moving along merrily, working each Saturday on my novel, and on my other works in progress on Sundays and during the week. And then - I was scrambling to get something done for the last workshop - and, truth be told, without the workshop to give me a deadline, almost nothing would have been written before the New Year. And I don't think it was just me - we probably set a record for the shortest River Writers ever this week.
What is it about turkey and trees and holiday lights that slows us down so much? (I notice, for instance, no one has been blogging here either.) Well, unless turkey has long term effects not yet identified by science, I guess it has to be mood and memories. I don't think it's just that Christmas was a time of such great anticipation as a child; I think it is an ongoing sense of loss that settles in as we get older, loss of all the people who are no longer with us as we gather to celebrate. Grandparents, parents, the generations behind. When I was ten years old, I visited a nursing home with my class at Christmas time and met a 102 year old man who was born during the Civil War. I was thinking of him this week, and thinking he was born almost 150 years ago. That's a lot of Christmases. It's not exactly that I miss the Christmases of my childhood - it's that my childhood is receding through time, becoming historical, subject to sentimentalization and ossification. If I had a time machine and could go back and ask that nice man a few questions, one would be if the Victorian Christmases we see on our cards and Christmas windows today have anything at all to do with his memories.
Oh well, this too shall pass, the New Year will arrive, the roar of the crowd from Times Square will wash over us, and writing will become easier again. But it probably won't make next December any easier - maybe we should just declare a writing holiday and dedicate ourselves to consuming cookies instead!
What is it about turkey and trees and holiday lights that slows us down so much? (I notice, for instance, no one has been blogging here either.) Well, unless turkey has long term effects not yet identified by science, I guess it has to be mood and memories. I don't think it's just that Christmas was a time of such great anticipation as a child; I think it is an ongoing sense of loss that settles in as we get older, loss of all the people who are no longer with us as we gather to celebrate. Grandparents, parents, the generations behind. When I was ten years old, I visited a nursing home with my class at Christmas time and met a 102 year old man who was born during the Civil War. I was thinking of him this week, and thinking he was born almost 150 years ago. That's a lot of Christmases. It's not exactly that I miss the Christmases of my childhood - it's that my childhood is receding through time, becoming historical, subject to sentimentalization and ossification. If I had a time machine and could go back and ask that nice man a few questions, one would be if the Victorian Christmases we see on our cards and Christmas windows today have anything at all to do with his memories.
Oh well, this too shall pass, the New Year will arrive, the roar of the crowd from Times Square will wash over us, and writing will become easier again. But it probably won't make next December any easier - maybe we should just declare a writing holiday and dedicate ourselves to consuming cookies instead!
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