Not the Holiday We Imagined, but Still a Good One
We started talking about the last two weeks of December early this year. I mean back in July and August. We were looking forward to two solid weeks together, which we have not had all year as a result of the beloved’s new job and commute to New York. We imagined what the holiday would be like in our home in Maryland. We imagined opening gifts with all of the animals. We planned our trip to Michigan and a weekend for making holiday cookies and sending them out to our usual folks around the country. We planned to lounge at home together, to see a movie or two, to cook and eat and drink and sleep and celebrate.
Our holiday has not been as planned. Holed up in our undisclosed location, we have none of the objects around us of our imaginings over the past six months. There is no lounging in a kind size bed, we sleep in a full size with all of the arm and neck and back kinks that seem to come from the arrangement. There are no long hours of binge watching TV on the big screen. We watch on an iPad or on the 20 inch TV in the house. For the first time ever, I fumbled holiday cookies. I had to throw out the rum ball batter when, distracted, I put in too much rum and couldn’t figure out how to fix the proportions . After four different types of cookies, I ran out of steam. I packaged up only a few parcels and mailed them in haste. Some people got happiness in holiday baking, but some of our loved ones went without this year.
For some reason, it seems, when it rains it pours. I thought we were in Michigan to save my dear Tibe. And of course we are, but on Monday, I discovered that my grandmother is in the middle of a medical crisis and the past five days have been about doctor visits, medical tests, prescription pick ups, shots, and organizing home health care. I worry that I may be in Michigan to help my grandmother with the last months of her life and that makes me extraordinarily sad.
Still, there were lovely things about today. We did all open presents together. It was Tibe’s first Christmas, and though I fiercely maintain that there is no way he is a Christian dog (his adolescent crisis led us to a realtor and lawyer, after all), he loved opening presents. The beloved and I bought each other the same things: coats, sweaters, warm clothes, and other winter things. We had a lovely hour together, then went to attend to a variety of family issues. Now we are getting ready for a delicious dinner that the beloved has been cooking for the past few hours. So there are some things that are just as we imagined. And everything else? If I believed in signs, I might think we were meant to be here.
Filed under: personal writing, Tiberius, Uncategorized
