Archive for the ‘Home’ Category
It’s the homogeny of Christmas that bothers me. I find it absurd that, during a time when everyone is supposed to be all in tune with their common man, those of use who don’t give a hoot about what the baby Jesus did or did not do are sublimated and expected to fold on in anyway. Sure, you set aside those special “Happy Holidays” cards for the families you haven’t seen wearing reindeer sweaters just in case, and you make a point to at least consider whether making the children wear Santa hats in the school performance adheres to the diversity policy, but you’re already knee deep in the peppermint cocoa and Mariah Carey Xmas Pandora station and I don’t think you’re capable of objectivity anymore.
“Back off! It’s my holiday,” you retort. “The sleigh bells are jingling! It’s going to snow! Why can’t you just have fun?”
Maybe it’s an odd perspective that comes from having supported non-Christian families for my nearly two decade career, but I just can’t get past that while you’re up to stocking stuffing, the Jews are going about ramping up Hanukkah nine times beyond its original importance, the African American community is working hard to instill in its youth a sense of heritage and singular culture, and Ramadan, the holiday of approximately 1.8 billion on the planet is a freaking WHOLE MONTH LONG. And of course the trees and the North Star and all, well, that’s all co-opted pagan ritual. But that all goes along invisibly as the public streets are decked in sparkly lights and wreaths with red and green ribbons. Christmas time doesn’t feel like a spectacular winter melting pot to me. It feels like an undiagnosed global episode of Stockholm syndrome.
It’s the worst voice to have this time of year, I know. Cloyingly grinchy. But don’t worry. No one listens to me.
Last year I tried to celebrate Solstice. It feels the truest winter event to mark for me, a humanist with little tolerance for the Catholic goings-on of my childhood, and since turning back toward the sun is universally appreciated, the little grass shoots and tulips and bunnies all agreeing that change and newness and more daylight in the northern hemisphere is a good time, I thought I had a chance of getting everyone excited about it. I even dressed the holiday up, got everyone liquored, invited some favorite people and plied their emotions with a table full of Dungeness crab.
I don’t really have a solution, and I don’t expect your support on this one.. honestly I’ve got to get back to reorganizing the bookshelves at 2am because my mother in law is coming next week and I’ve got to make some room for presents under the tree. You won, okay?
I bought red and green paper to wrap the gifts, but dammit, I’m using hot pink ribbon. The silver glass ornaments are pasted over with Dia De Los Muertos skulls (calaveras). The decorative ornaments are mostly tin hearts we found in Oaxaca, disco ball garland, and miniature buildings from all over the world (I insist that the Taj Mahal be placed near the top). Like the smallest, most pathetic protest. But I’m sticking to it. And not even a magical red nosed baby Jesus on a sleigh can stop me.
.
The coming of fall always makes me long for my hometown. The one I ran away from as soon as possible in my teens, reluctantly visited but mostly eschewed in my twenties, and now revere as a place of gorgeous solace, albeit baggage. I accept it at face value: a tiny little country town in the Sierra foothills, population of 175.
My sense memory comes into full action this time of year and my childhood is more vivid than ever. Early fall rains remind me of slow roasting persimmons on our wood stove aside the teakettle. Fields of thick, dew-heavy grasses surrounding my quiet house atop a small hill overlooking the American River canyon. Fawns poking around below the apple tree with quiet expectation in the front yard. Watching the stars develop in a dusky sky from the roof in a guttural, body-filling, forever and everything quiet. The kind your senses will remember, no matter how old you are, or how much you turn your back on your origins. Pervasive, graceful silence, punctuated only by stray geese and a lawn sprinkler somewhere, clicking and hissing in rhythm.
Lately I keep catching myself trying to find that slowness and to feel actually in the moment of fall calm while still in my buzzing and urban surroundings. While a coworker curses the rain falling outside my office window, I’m secretly longing to run outside and to hold on to it somehow. To find the scent of crushed pine needles and dried blackberry leaves amid the exhaust and whirlwind of a workday and to-do lists. Maybe to just stop and be silent as things change, and have the luxury of not needing to nurture anything at all.
I’ve been sick for the past three days, partially due to the recirculating germ factory on my flight back from New York, partially due to the fact that I pretended like I was 23 and childless the whole time I was there, but also due to the fact that I’ve been far too nice lately.
Perhaps it’s the settling of the fever, or that I’m antsy because in this state I cannot work hard OR lay down and milk this for all its worth by watching Blue Crush for the 634th time, but today I’m having this distinct feeling that I’ve been suffering from niceness for years, and it’s got to stop.
I’m good at accommodating. It’s my job. You want to throw a cocktail party for 30 in 24hrs? Absolutely! I’ll start churning out spreadsheets and get the rental people on the horn, and totally make that happen for you without once mentioning you’re out of your mind. You want to refinance your house tomorrow? Sure thing. Those 600 documents are already on their way to the loan specialist and I’ve wrapped them with a big fat bow.
This skill, however, has seeped its way into my personal life. I’ve been so busy checking to make sure everyone else is okay, the ratio of returns has taken a nosedive.
Enough. Having two kids, perhaps, has changed me. We need function and process and most of all we need peace in these 1100 square feet. It’s getting real in my Whole Foods parking lot.
The cure, of course, is not meanness. I just could stand to be discriminating. Selective. Not a big welcome mat with champagne on ice waiting inside. Let me take your shoes off. Here’s a pillow. That sort of thing.
All my lawyer clients are so damn good at that. They’re hardly ever gracious (that’s what I’m brought in for) but they’re very good at putting a foot down firmly and telling it like it is. Might as well learn from the pros, I suppose.
Having spent every working day for the last 20 years within the intimate confines of the lives of the families I support, I have seen my share of freak outs. To survive in that moment as an outsider, you have to simply revere the fact that everyone needs to process in that sacred and important space, to emote and deal with their personal lives in their own homes. That’s where you get to make mistakes, say the wrong thing, feel bad, and ask for forgiveness later and feel okay about it because it’s not work, it’s family. Due to this tolerance level, suffice it to say that by the time I think someone is losing it, they’re well and gone past the goal post and have been running blind in the wrong direction for miles.
Throughout my career, I have been surrounded by an awful lot of wealthy doctors and lawyers who all speak a language that sounds like a teabag of English dipped in a hot, over-educated bath of anxiety and micromanagement. Summoning compassion for that personality takes a LOT of understanding if you’re the kind of person they make fun of behind closed doors (“No Ivy League degree AND a musician? She must be a MORON! How does she even make executive decisions? Does she even speak the LANGUAGE?”).. fighting on their behalf takes even more. Even if you’re faking it, you still need to do it because deep down you believe they deserve good in life.
Today a personal someone (not a work someone, thank god), freaked out on me. And I am just left with the plain reality that she did not give me the courtesy of calming herself down before lashing out, of taking the high road, and being a grown up.
Only once before in my life, has someone decided to discard all my efforts to honor the relationship, even if it was ending badly, and instead hide behind closed doors. To throw me back to the wolves. It stings.
In the end, all ou’re left with is a question mark as to how everything went so HORRIBLY wrong when you did everything you could to make it right, and the reminder that self-reliance is king and Emerson wasn’t whistling Dixie when he said it.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m an asshole to be married to sometimes, probably a crappy mom in my worst moments, and have done lots of shitty things to people in my life (Megan from the 1st grade, I’m sorry Reyme and I stuck our tongues out at you while we were getting on the bus after you peed your pants in class. I really do think about it still. Your mom was mean to you. It wasn’t your fault). But this time I know, I KNOW it wasn’t me.
And that’s where it ends, because the relationship is over. Somewhere out there, that person goes on living their life and so do you.
In tribute to this mess of a totally therapeutic post, I am posting the brillz Money Changes Everything performance of everyone’s favorite trashcan-kicking lesbian, Cyndi Lauper. If I could change the lyrics I would say that a sense of entitlement, often resulting from a wealthy upbringing, changes everything, but that wouldn’t really have the same lyrical zing.
In the waning days of sleeplessness, as the baby was having a nice little lull before I went all HARDCORE and told him we were no longer going to entertain one another at 3am, and all consideration of him would be available only during proper daylight hours and that there would be no period of complaining about it, I started realizing I needed tshirts.
After the private school fundraiser this year, I had learned that drinking three mojitos was not a good precursor to silent auction bidding and I barely escaped purchasing home delivery of four weeks of pastured eggs for $180.
The tshirt buying went somewhat the same way as they make those paypal transactions incredibly painless and before you know it, your bank account has been drained and your mailman is shoving cute white envelopes through your door.
The tees, all in all, are awesome. The tragedy struck when I realized nearly all the ones I had chosen were 80’s themed.
Nicely folded in my drawer now are Lloyd Dobler holding his boombox over his head, Miss Scarlet in the Ballroom with the Leadpipe, and lots and lots of printed references to Analog being of superior quality, surrounded by images of cassette tapes.
Around this time, the tax refund check came and I splurged on something ridiculous I had been eyeing. Anyone recognize these new additions to my garden?
I freaked and got a bunch of brand new music and proceeded to watch The Social Network three times to shock my nostalgia into submission. But secretly, I’m totally geeked.