Walking Backwards

It is so easy for me to put journalling on the back burner, even though I don't want to. When I was able to do it regularly I found it very satisfying and relieving and enjoyable. I loved having something to look back upon as well. Now it is more like work, another task to complete. I think that falling out of the habit of journalling every day has something to do with it, you fall out of the pattern and you lose your journalling 'voice'. When you journal everyday you have a cadence to all of your posts, the messages you try to write out all have the same rhythm and show a more complete picture. So with that in mind, I have signed up for the portal on Holidailies again. I do solemnly swear to post at least once a day between December 1st and January 1st, or at least think about it really hard. You should to :).

The day after Thanksgiving always has some interesting traditions in my family and in my husband's family. Growing up, the day after Thanksgiving with my parents meant we were in for a good house cleaning from top to bottom. It was a preparation for the upcoming season, my father was outside hanging up christmas lights and my brother and I were scrubbing baseboards around where the Christmas tree was going to go. My mother was slightly obsessive-compulsive and all of the transitions in our house were marked as such arm-tiring, dirty work. I never asked her why she chose periods of seasonal transition to recruit her child-laborers into deep cleaning something that would not be marked or noticed until our spring cleaning weekend was begun by flinging the windows open and allowing the cool air in, but now as the parent in her place I understand why. Today Joe let me sleep late and began the process of deconstructing our holiday table and after my coffee kicks in I am going to pick up my broom and my dust rags and begin to brace my household for the changes that will be coming through our door soon. With all of the chaos that we are going to subject ourselves to in the coming weeks, I will always have my oasis at home in the form of a house where I can find all of our throw blankets neatly folded in the chest where they are supposed to be and where my friend's small children can visit without worrying about finding outlet covers gone missing or small bits stuck into dust bunnies in the corners. I will be able to find things in the pantry and all of my clothes will be mended. The process is cathartic as well giving us all a chance to reflect on our surroundings, on everything we've brought in and taken out through the year. I'm looking forward to it more than I probably should be.

Joe's family, I have discovered on the years we have spent in Houston for the holiday, spends the day after Thanksgiving like so many other people in the country: they shop. The women of my IL's family wake up insanely early in the morning and down cups of coffee and a pastry or two and set out with store ads that they had poured over at the kitchen table the night before amidst laughter and my FIL watching the Sci-Fi channel in the background. Despite my initial misgivings about the process and my hesitation to buy anything myself, the one time I went so many years ago I really enjoyed myself. Unlike the scenes that I had read about in papers of people trampling one another to get in doors of shops offering insanely cheap prices (but only to the first five customers), the people that I encountered on my first time out were smiling and laughing. Waiting in long lines, everyone sat discussing their holiday plans with complete strangers and talking about specials in other stores that some may have missed. I didn't buy anything, but I did get wrapped up in the spirit of the moment. It felt as if we were runners on a starting line, waiting to hear the shot that signaled the time to begin the race, headlong, into Christmas. I'm sure the experience we had was an anomaly, who can be that cheerful at 6:30 in the morning, but it did teach me to not make assumptions about people's motives during the holidays. While everyone can be crazy, they just want to make the season the best they can and will get up at five to guarantee that they can get what their family has asked for. I could go on about how it would be so much easier for them to reassess their priorities and find out what they truly 'need', but at that time it didn't matter, this was important to these people. I didn't buy anything, but to me it was worth it and I would go again in a minute. Well, as long as I was okay with getting up at 5.

So now, I'm properly caffeinated and need to begin the process of cleaning that will take me most of the weekend because I can only clean in spurts (unlike my mother who would plow through her tasks one after another and be finished after one long hard day). Welcome to the holiday season to all who celebrate.

I should be sleeping now instead of writing. At the very least I should be cleaning my house which has had almost every shelf and every toy bin emptied today onto the floor, the contents soon forgotten by the roaming band of children who had discovered the next shelf. And there is the kitchen which holds the remnants of my Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd, I'm too tired to do dishes. I should be in the shower rinsing off the green beans guts that my garbage disposal regurgitated on me half an hour before the large happy group of people who graced me with their presence this holiday sat down to eat. I shouldn't be writing. But as I sit down after a wonderful meal which had elements brought from all of the lovely people who attended, I felt the need. I wanted to write about my Thankfulness for it all. This year, more than any other, I was able to put aside the work of it all and all that I should be doing instead and all of the personal drama that days like this bring and I was able to look around and think about how graced we are to have what we do. Admittedly, we were surrounded mostly by close friends, our family having mostly abandoned us to more pressing obligations (which were REALLY more pressing), and the family I'm closest to, my dad, my brother, and my brother-in-law. Still, from the first moment of the day when I woke up to my baby, sorry - my big boy, squeezing in between Joe and myself, I've felt content and happy. I've felt really warm. Now, with my blissed out contentedness I think I am going to slip into the bath with the last glass of wine in a jelly jar since we seem to have run out of clean wineglasses (and, really, glasses altogether) and enjoy my warmth for a bit.

Why is it that I can remember 32 different ways of conjugating a Latin verb, but I can't remember to put the white beans in the crockpot to soak overnight? And why do I always, always end up wearing two different socks? I'm worrying that as I get older the little bits of daily life that make everything run smoothly and that ensure for domestic bliss are silently slipping out of my mind. Or maybe they have been demoted in importance behind watching Grey's Anatomy on the computer while eating grapes and sipping tea with no lemon because I forgot it. I have to admit that I have become a little frustrated with myself. I am a OCD, crazy, detail-oriented, type-A personality after all, I should be able to handle this, this multi-tasking distraction stuff. Is there a finite limit on the amount that one person's brain can hold? Does remembering to vote yesterday (and remembering the research on all the candidates and propositions) mean that I am going to miss question 7 on the exam I have on Friday because the voting stuff needed a little more room and just pushed that little part out? I hope not. I just can't believe how much there is to juggle sometimes. A friend once told me something that helped and that made me pause for reflection as my mind dumped out my son's social security number, that life isn't the juggling act, it's the balancing act. So more balancing act ahead it seems as I was just accepted into big people four-year college and received a letter from the head of the Anthropology department about my application specifically, apparently they were impressed. I hope that I can find not only what I can do but also what is best to do and what I can be okay with not doing.

Sometimes I have to wonder about the patterns of other peoples lives. Whether or not people wake up prepared to spring upon the day or if they, like me, cling to the last vestiges of warmth their blanket affords and bury themselves in their pillows until little grabbing hands or little dragging obligations bring them into the land of consciousness. I wonder whether or not they read the paper at the table while drinking their coffee or if they sip tea while taking the dog for a walk. I don't know why, but it is these things that my mind has been preoccupied with every time I go to the grocery store or sit in the car lately; whether or not the man at the next library table over eats dinner at the dining room table or if he eats standing over the sink. It is my attempt at humanizing everyone, I suppose. Because when you humanize people it makes it easier to forgive them from cutting you off trying to get onto the highway or cutting in line at the pharmacy. Not that these things don't get me riled, don't get me wrong, but I sooner realize that all these things are a drop in the bucket, that we are all trying to get through in some way. Some more oblivious than others. It is why I get drug kicking and screaming out of bed in the morning after all.


A small note from the land of the absent blogger, Joe and I have recently, as of November 1st, started following the Compact. We are joining for many reasons, financial, environmental, ethical, but some of the effects we are experiencing in the first week are unexpected. It has brought Joe and I closer, it has made us take another look at the priorities in our lives, and, unfortunately, become a huge consumer of our time. A large amount of planning now has to go into our purchases and spending, which is the way it should be, but I would much rather be reading. I have to remember to put in requests for books I need before I have to write my papers. By the end of this year I hope that Joe and I have made some changes for the better and that Nicholas gets to learn the difference between want and need. I think that that is going to be more difficult than not buying anything new.