Holiday Intermission

I do believe the week between Christmas and New Year’s is my favorite week of the year.  However things turned out, Christmas day is over and it’s intermission.  It’s time to slow down and take a deep breath.  For me the rush to finish everything by Christmas always comes down to the wire.  Even this year, when I had an extra day, I was working up to the moment things were packed into the car for delivery.

 Just like Thanksgiving, our family did not gather for Christmas.  Usually our children and their children, (twenty of us now!) have dinner and gifts on Christmas Eve.  This year our younger son created a Zoom 2020 trivia game for us, with questions for every age group. Then on Christmas day, wearing masks, we made driveway deliveries of presents and food. 

 This year’s handmade gifts were a quilt for our newest grandchild; the second youngest grandchild received her first birthday book, and a knitted bonnet.  Her sister has a matching one I’m just finishing.   And for the grownups, a pair of knitted slipper socks, 8 pairs total!  I once asked my oldest son if a hat he was wearing was one that I had knitted.  He replied yes, and that he had a drawer full of them.  So I decided to start working on the other end and knit socks.  That same son liked his socks so much I’m knitting him another pair for his birthday on the 8^th.

 So that’s it; a lot of work but not a lot of hoopla this year.  One of our daughter-in-laws receives her first round of the vaccine today.  Here’s hoping to the beginning of the end and better days to come, one when all twenty of us and can be together again.

 

 

Imagination versus reality

How was your Thanksgiving?  We made the decision as a family not to gather.  I have to admit, I was dreading it.  In an effort to make it seem a little more normal, I committed to making pans of stuffing, apple crisp and pumpkin bread to drop off at three of our kids’ homes.

 So I still rose early and started cooking, still with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on in the background.  The funny thing was, I didn’t count on how much more cooking that actually worked out to be.  But, had I not been cooking that morning, it would have made the day so much worse.  We then loaded up the car and headed out, making short driveway visits to hand out our food gifts.  And the kids were very grateful, which made it all worth it.  We took the long, scenic route home.  The weather was gorgeous.  Later we sat down to a candlelit dinner for two.  It later occurred to me that in 41 years of marriage we’ve never had a Thanksgiving dinner just for the two of us. 

 On Friday I stuck with my tradition of putting up a tree.  I’m not going to lie; the thought of going out to buy a tree freaked me out a bit.  But as luck would have it, a week before Thanksgiving I noticed they had live potted Christmas trees out in front of our local Walmart.  I was picking up my grocery order at 7:00 am.  At that hour there are no crowds.  It was the perfect solution.  And now, after the holidays, we will have a living memory of 2020.  I hope it survives!

 One of our daughters was married on Black Friday six years ago.  Their anniversary was on Saturday.  As it turned out, their family was exposed to Covid 19 two weeks before Thanksgiving so they were under quarantine up until Thanksgiving Day.  Since that was the case, we kept their girls overnight Saturday night so they could have a romantic dinner at home, without the girls.  The next day she brought us a gingerbread house to build; another tradition saved.

 A little over a week ago I had my turn at a Covid birthday.  Paul and I made the best of it.  My kids all Portalled, (it’s a verb now right?)  They all sent me fantastic presents too.  I now own Steve Martin and Harry Bliss’s new book, A Wealth of Pigeons, and Barack Obama’s new book, A Promised Land, an RBG action figure to add to my collection of political action figures,  some fantastic new drawing pencils, and a Lego Architecture set of London to honor my trip there and my love of most all things British.  They know me pretty well.  And then I had notification that I won the library's November adult reading program; a copy of Ina Garten’s new cookbook, Modern Comfort Food.  I had just returned the copy I had checked out!

 November has always been my favorite month, as it contains both my birthday and my favorite holiday.   But this year, at times I had imagined that ignoring it might be the best way to get through it.  In reality, I’m so glad I didn’t.  That’s not to say I’m not concerned about how we are going to face December.   But maybe the lesson here is to face it head on.  We can’t change what is out of our control.  We just have to do our best to live through the reality of what the circumstances hand us.