I was looking for the big, winter floor mat to put down by the back door, so I moved a big box of Christmas ornaments out of the basement closet. The kids found the box and, delighted, went about “decorating” their playroom for their “Christmas party.” There are now Christmas ornaments strewn across the basement, mixed in with toys and probably broken in pieces in the corners.
They are feeling the holiday spirit, those kids. I am not.
I should probably just pick them all up and go get a tree to decorate, but I don’t want to. Not yet. People are making polite and gentle inquiries into holiday plans I’m supposed to be organizing, and I’m getting annoyed. Can’t they wait?
Shouldn’t I at least be excited about shopping! and wish lists! and presents! and food! and parties! and people! I should, I should. And I’m sure I will. But for right now it feels like one more giant item on my To Do list. There’s the endless, rolling deadlines and groceries, cooking and laundry. There are closets and entire rooms to reorganize, personal paperwork to catch up on and deep beneath it all there’s a churning in my gut borne of the guilt that I’m not really doing what I should be doing. This feeling, this sour mix of Catholic guilt and the Protestant work ethic that is my birthright, nags at me constantly, urging me to somehow carve out the time to do something more. How can I clean out my bedroom closet when I can’t even find the time to address the yearning of my very soul?
And now I’m supposed to redecorate for the holidays on top of it all?!
This, in itself, is so absurd, though; this notion that the holidays are somehow something I need to get done before I can back to my real life. Isn’t celebrating the holidays with family and friends, in fact, what my real life is all about? Why don’t I wish away my kids’ childhoods and my marriage while I’m at it, so I can really just shut myself into a room with a pen and paper and go all Emily Dickinson-like.
Clearly there needs to be time for everything, for all these multiplicities. They feed one another after all. The paid work that feeds my children and who, in turn, fill my heart and give me something worth trying to express. And when I look back on this December, it’s the memories of celebrating with the people closest to me that I will want to keep.
So, yes, I’ll have to pick up those ornaments and get this place ready. And I’ll have go to the grocery store and the mall and spend hours wielding ribbons and bows, and chef’s knives and rolling pins, rather than paper and pen, and it will be good.
But maybe next week.