Mmm. Tired. Many miles. Complete sentences over-rated. Actually, I’m doing okay. For whatever reason, something didn’t post here when it was supposed to. Now that I think about it, it’s probably because I didn’t post it. Weird, huh?
But I had some other things on my mind. Like a big winter storm hitting Iowa and deciding to try and outrun the bugger because I am me and redheaded and crazy. So I drove 12 hours to Salt Lake City and then hopped in a car for another 16 hours to Iowa. Have I mentioned I’m crazy? Because I’m crazy.
So even though I’m a day gone on my Christmas-themed blogging, well, who’s really counting? I’ve never done anything for an entire week. Except for that one time I had a week-long soup binge, I’ve never done one single thing for seven days in a row.
So. Christmas-themed blog numero…seis? Right now, I have just one question, why do we pack all of this family togetherness and food and gifts and arguments and stress into one tiny little day? We have 365 days in a year; let’s spread this crap out. Share the love. Give each day a dose of Christmas cheer instead of shoe-horning it all into December 25th.
It’s the American way, I suppose. Bigger, better, faster, more money, more things, more and more and more. I see this at Christmas more than any other time of the year. It’s marketed into this day…and the angel just fell off the tree top. I don’t remember what I was going to say. Except maybe this: carry a little Christmas cheer with you past this weekend. Hello? Erica? The little person with tiny mitts on the end of wavy little arms who is writing…are you listening?
So. Anyway. That family? Sharing the love? They are ready to eat. NOW. And I’m sitting in the way. So out I go. I bid you good night from the Iowa backwoods.
For it to feel like Christmas, and I mean really feel like Christmas, there has to be snow. It’s just how it has to be. It’s not an option. I grew up in Iowa for crying out loud. You know how many snow days we’d get in a year? A lot. It was rare for there to be a Christmas without snow. I got mad when there was a Christmas without snow, because it didn’t feel like Christmas. And dang it, when it’s Christmas, it needs to feel like Christmas.
And then I went to San Francisco a couple years ago for the holiday season. It was a balmy 40 degrees with rain. Everything was drab and dreary, and it did not feel like Christmas. All the Californians were buying their Christmas trees and getting gifts and putting up Christmas lights, and really…what’s the point? It’s California. There’s no snow. There’s not even the chance for snow. That’s how the rest of the world lives? With a Christmas that isn’t white? I don’t want it.
I suppose that’s the little girl inside of me. Sometimes I get irrational about things like the weather. About little details that I have no control over. About the things that really don’t matter that much but are integral to the atmosphere of an occassion. Maybe someday I’ll grow out of that. Probably not. But maybe.
I had footie pajamas as a kid. Yellow ones. And pink ones with a Carebear on the front – it’s the closest I ever came to holding a Carebear in my arms. With the dawn of Christmas still a faint whisper on the horizon, I’d be awake and staring at the ceiling – checking the clock every 30 seconds to see if it was late enough to get up.
Finally, I’d wiggle out of bed and tip-toe down the hall to the living room. I’d crouch down near the tree to look at the gifts under it and wonder which were mine. And then I’d check the clock again on the stove. And then I’d look at the calendar to make sure it really was December 25. And then back to the clock.
I loved Christmas as a kid. The excitement. The anticipation. The days off from school. The decoration of the tree. The atmosphere. The warm, fuzzy moments of time when you sigh and everything feels just right.
The funny thing is, Christmas really wasn’t a full-blown affair in my childhood. At least that’s what I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten older and seen and heard so much of other families’ Christmas celebrations.
We had a tree every year, sometimes it was up a week before Christmas but oftentimes it was the night or two before. One cut out of a ditch or one of our pastures. A cedar tree, one of the thousands of volunteers in that part of the country. I never knew you could buy a tree until – well – for a long time. I just thought that’s what a Christmas tree looked like: scraggly, lop-sided, spindly little branches, half-dead. It smelled good though, and to me, it smelled like Christmas.
We weren’t raised to believe in Santa, not because my parents didn’t think gifts were appropriate but because they didn’t see the need to perpetuate the image of a fat man in a red suit. So we gave gifts – each of us kids got a gift from the rest of the siblings and two gifts from the rental unit. Most years anyway. I thought that was normal too. I truly didn’t realize how elaborate the gift-giving was in so many households. It’s not bad…I guess I just don’t understand.
And as we got older – us kids – we started opening gifts later and later in the day. When I was a little redheaded girlie, we opened gifts directly after breakfast. The excitement, you know. And then it was after the kitchen had been cleaned up. And then it was after the yearlings were fed. And then it was after the cow herd was fed. These days, I think they open gifts Christmas night. I don’t really know…I haven’t been with my family on Christmas for three years now.
Somewhere along the line, Christmas faded for me. I know that’s normal. It’s an adult thing, to not anticipate Christmas like we do as children. We get caught up in our lives, our jobs, our daily worries of making life happen. As children, we didn’t have any of those burdens so we could focus solely on all the beautiful things of Christmas. As children, we didn’t have to worry about travel arrangements or the weather. We didn’t have to worry about having enough money or what to have on the Christmas dinner menu. As children, we could just be children.
And as adults, we are just that – adults. We’re not Scrooges, I don’t think, we’re just – maybe we just need to focus a little more on finding those warm, fuzzy moments of time when you sigh and everything feels just right.
I know it may be a little late to be talking about resolutions. I mean, it’s already the eighth. If I can’t even get around to making my resolutions on time, then how in the world am I ever actually going to keep whatever resolutions I do end up forming?
Just one more reason why I don’t have any this year. For whatever reason, by some stroke of something, it never really even crossed my mind to make resolutions for the new year. Maybe it had something to do with dancing in a hayloft or maybe it had something to do with being in the middle of nowhere.
Or maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with who I’ve become. New Year’s resolutions are primarily about not being happy with yourself. Sometimes they are just genuine goals that focus on something like – I don’t know – finding a job. That’s a good goal to have. So many are about losing weight or making a lot of money or doing this or doing that.
It’s all this materialistic crap. So you’d like to be a few pounds lighter. Good for you…but why did you wait until January 1 to do something about it? Is there something magical about the first of January? Wouldn’t the first of May work just as well? Heck, let’s get crazy and say that even September 8 would work.
I’m not saying I’m not materialistic. Because I can be. I’m not made of stone – not most of the time anyway. Just think about it….I’m not telling you to throw your resolutions out the window. More likely than not, they’re going to be defunct shortly anyway without my help. But maybe next time you won’t wait for the first of the new year to do something with what you’ve been given.
It’s always interesting to me to see how others ring in the new year. I’ve done it several different ways myself, but saying good-bye to 2007 was one of my most…ah…memorable. I think that’s the word I want. It works anyway.
And so for this new year’s celebration, I reverted back to my past. And for the first time in awhile, I think it’s a good thing.
I never talked much about my growing up years to my college friends so for those who aren’t fully aware, I grew up on a cattle ranch. Like – a real one. I spent the better part of my days working cows, talking about cows, selling cows. I was a regular Mary Jo Prairie, complete with Carhartts, boots and flannel shirts.
When I went to college, I was ready to leave it behind. So I lost my “I reckon’s”, quit listening to country music and I stopped living and breathing cattle. I became as citified as one can be in the size of a piddly-dink Midwestern town.
And now I find myself back in the middle of what I grew up in. But it’s okay this time. You are who you are and you can’t hide from it forever.
So I waved good-bye to 2007 in the middle of nowhere. I talked and laughed with generations of cattle ranchers. I drank a beer or two and told stories about the old days. I two-stepped with Brother Mark and did some country swing thing with Uncle Bill in the hay loft.
And I loved it. Life is a journey and you discover who you are along the way. I found a little bit of myself in a hay loft on the last day of 2007. And for the first time in a long time, I embraced it.
