Walking Backwards

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.