“When we can accept all of life’s contradictions, when we can completely flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free.”
Deepak Chopra
It is truly amazing the wild ride Christmas Day can bring you on. From the sweetness of our children and their appreciation, to the smiles and jokes in finding the perfect gift for each other, to strawberry crepes made by your daughter, to your son forever changing out Christmas Music for Rap, from waiting for relatives to arrive, and then onto the sleepiness after a big ham dinner, to the awkward silence between little seen relatives.
And as space opens up, and as a few members exit, the party finds its way back to rolling along, until the last guest leaves and you lay content on the couch, home restored to its natural harmony, giggles and familiarity restored, what a ride it has been, a mixture of all the senses, emotions and even energies, a reality blasted day.
I also noticed how I changed between people, like they truly can make you respond differently bringing to surface different aspects of your self.
I noticed the inner peace and comfort that I feel around my husband and kids, and how I become more silent and watchful around ‘distant’ relatives, not willing to share myself, but rising instead to social niceties, or not even to that.
I watched the ‘relatives’ resort to news and the weather, a common ground where strangers eagerly seek, yet made odd for history stands behind fully loaded, emotions near surface you can almost hear them bubbling.
Christmas seems to make you spend time with people you don’t seek out all year long, for a multitude of reasons, an estrangement that grew little by little, or years of disappointment left unexpressed or voiced, you are now made to share a few hours or minutes.
For the Spirit of Christmas, we pretend.
Is this odd to anyone but me?
That we feel ‘forced’ to invite and be with family that we are no longer comfortable with, where for the rest of the year we stand back from, we now invite them in.
I am astounded, that on the most special of days, we drag in the most uncomfortable people we know, to spend time with, to be uncomfortable in our own homes!
Is that the meaning of Christmas?
As the day ended, and the natural state of being returned, in the peaceful knowing I survived another uncomfortable afternoon, barely scarred, the phone rings.
My daughter answers, ‘it is for mom,’ she says. As I pick up, I am too tired to wonder who it can possibly be.
I spend more than a few uncomfortable minutes with my brother, he rambling about on hockey, hunting, and the various trips he made up here, to his job, his family, his birthday, to his Christmas. My silence and unnatural forced response didn’t put him at ease.
This conversation we have repeated countless times.
Another holiday tradition I didn’t break off this year, but it was different on my side.
I sat with the emptiness between us, unable or willing to fill it up with junk.
Emptiness meeting emptiness, a vacant spot where sister and brother used to stand.
The call ends, as it started, uncomfortable.
Back to the couch, my husband, the tree lights, the girls banter, my life.
Merry Christmas.
