the holidays deyz done upon us
yup, yup, yup. just about a week ago, i was standing in my driveway around midnight, looking at the stars and enjoying a near 70-degree breeze. by the following afternoon, the temperature had dropped 50 (count 'em) degrees, and yesterday afternoon, the flurries came in.
i am so not enthralled by the winter. there was a time in my life when i looked forward to it simply because i'd be able to pull out the wool sweaters. that penchant too has waned. these days in my life, i spend most of my hopeful energy during the winter looking forward to spring. if i'm lucky, maybe i'll do some sledding with my son, or ice skating. i did purchase a pair of snowshoes to give me one less excuse to not go outside this season. you see, there are things about the winter that i do like, love even. i love how the woods look during and after a heavy snow. pristine. crystalline. i love how the woods sound when it's snowing, millions of ice crystals pelting what the ground, the frozen branches, the creeks. i love how it smells.
but i don't like the cold much. and i hate the early darkening of the afternoons. the growing piles of sludgy, black frozen snow that begin to line sidewalks and curbs with gray-black lumps of rood soot and gravel encrusted ice. i hate the way drivers become absolute idiots, their road behavior being the only trivial matter that nonetheless makes me wish harm on my fellow man. i hate having to consider how many layers i will need to wrap around me before leaving the house for any reason, and i hate having to devote mental energy to coordinating said layers. and i hate the familiar harsh blast of cold air in my face at every turn. i especially hate it when it happens on the street or in open spaces between buildings, when the icy blasts feel capable of penetrating every inch of your clothing and you truly do understand how the weather can kill a person.
the holidays are upon us. most people in america have already started. it's odd -- so many people, such huge numbers of people, all doing similar things, moving in similar ways, repeating similar tasks. sure, your stuffing may have almonds in it while your neighbor's has water chestnuts, yours cooked in the bird with store-bought bread crumbs, theirs in a separate pan with homemade croutons; through the years, your family may have upgraded to cheesecake over pumpkin pie, while your best friend's family continues to swear by apple pie; maybe you have baked beans instead of corn; or macaroni and cheese instead of yams -- whatever the case, families, friends and i'd imagine a good collection of strange individuals are already, as you are reading this, defrosting 30-lb headless headless farm-raised birds, if not stalking their wild cousins in the aforementioned woods with hearts set on murder.
the luckiest of us among them will retreat to various homesteads, to either our mother's homes, or our grandmother's homes. sometimes an aunt picks up the duty of hosting the family's traditional feast, sometimes the eldest daughter, or the first-born son's wife, or the youngest daughter, or a coalition of the unmarried daughters of the family, yielding to the demands of their society and a culture that offers them some small level of redemption for not contributing to the gene pool, let alone the future tax base, through the act of reproduction......instead, they work off their unpaid tithes through the labor of cooking and baking and basting and carmelizing and frosting and slicing and kneading.........
the less lucky will attempt to capture the spirit of the homestead celebrations, but in some faraway place. like hawaii, if you're from the midwest, or somewhere in europe, if you're an american. or in the middle east, if you're a soldier, a sailor or a marine. displaced fellow ohioans will say annoying things like, "it's just not thanksgiving without snow" to people like me who would sacrifice something of great value without much hesitation to be living in a place where snow in november is no more than the basis of a silly joke.
the unluckiest of us will not celebrate at all. and there's no justice or fairness in that, because we live in a nation that can afford -- maybe not easily, maybe not all on the same day -- but we can afford to feed the world. why don't we?
oh yeah. i forgot. gotta start getting ready for christmas......
happy thanksgiving, everyone.
