Christmas in the unexpectations

This particular Christmas is a peculiar one.

Same pull toward haste, same lure of chaos, same eerily gray, melancholy days, as in the past.

But this year, by both choice and necessity, I am trying to meet it all on a moment-by-moment basis. I am trying to let Christmas and New Year’s come to me as they wish to, instead of my chasing their frantic neon tails.

As a result, we still have no Christmas tree (the Christmas Eve plan for tomorrow is to find the last, and surely most Charlie Brownesque tree in the Berkshires, and decorate into the evening). There will be no lights on the porch this year, we are finally admitting to ourselves. We have only the vaguest concept of Christmas dinner (involving turkey sizzling on a currently ice-encased Weber grill, surrounded by a ring of festive poo dollops a la Eli).

But it will be all right. I trust that it will.

Tonight, I spent hours and hours wrapping gifts at my mother’s apartment. We laughed at memories of Christmases past, and she teased me about my anal-retentive wrapping style—learned, of course, from many years of wrapping with her. Dinner was leftovers from a Thai restaurant the night before, and a crappy McDonald’s salad, and some Bailey’s Irish Cream on the rocks, and some herbal tea for my hacking wheezing cough.

It was a chore that was not a chore—not this time around, although I cannot say exactly why. It was my mom, and it was me, spending hours upon hours doing the exact same thing she had always done with her mother (my very beloved Polish grandmother) just before Christmas. We talked about where she and my grandmother used to hide presents for my brother and me—my grandmother’s front closet! who knew?—and in the glow of my mom’s hilariously tacky fiber optic tree (like a lava lamp mated with a reluctant pine sapling), it was good. I knew as we wrapped and laughed that I would remember this. Nothing all that special, and yet, yes, quite special indeed. Funny how sometimes it is possible to visit the memory before it’s been made. To know that, yes, it will stay. That this one will be for keeps.

The other week, two friends invited me to their home to shower me with Icelandic-style love. They turned their already beautiful home into an official Icelandic guesthouse, and served me (there were no other dinner guests for this feast) Icelandic recipes such as fishklummer (fishcakes) and lamb soup and a bizarre Icelandic drink made from caraway seeds that scorched my throat and made me feel like a true Icelandic wimp. They even had a hot tub to stand in for hot springs, and the ice and snow fell hard, leaving me happily stuck in faux Icelandia for two nights. The kindness of these friends moved me deeply. They know my Iceland dreams, and they offered what they could (including a vintage Icelandic dictionary, and an array of Iceland coffee table books, and so very much more). Again, not the usual pre-Christmas event, but more gorgeous and unexpected and remarkable than I can express. This too will stay.

This week, I had lunch with my friend Sarah. She listened to me for a while, and then said, You need to jump in 10-foot bean bags. Right now. I said, Yes. Yes, I think I do. I could easily have said what I would have said in other pre-Christmas weeks, which is, Oh, my, no no, too much to do, but something in my gut said this was another memory in the making, something I could give to myself, something that would stay with me. So we wandered over to MASS MoCA and spent an hour at the Jenny Holzer exhibit, flinging ourselves into gigantic beanbags, running leaps, insane rolls, and then lying in them together, breathing heavily like the old ladies we are, discussing life, love and the pursuit of joy. I will not forget this. This was rare beauty, beauty especially rare in its timing, happening during a week of general hecticness and rush rush rush. Leaping, rolling, flopping, whispering secrets with a friend in the middle of the day, in the middle of modern art. Not bad for a couple of housewives, we decided.

The memories of this Christmas will be peculiar indeed. But then, it is nice to drag one’s peculiar light out from under a bushel once in a while. It is, I daresay, necessary, if joy is on your Christmas and New Year’s list. I know it’s on mine. How about you?