Holidays

Since I'm in a better mood this morning, I thought I'd try to improve myself even more by thinking of good holidays. When I was a kid, I didn't really have a lot of great holiday memories-- it comes when you live with an alcoholic that holidays are great excuses for the drunk to drink a lot more, get mean, toss the Thanksgiving turkey down the stairs. The kids have to hide. Stay out of the way. Which is difficult in a tiny trailer. So for a long time, holidays were just another day for me. Usually a bad one. As a grown up, away from the drunk, I just avoided them. I didn't really get it how much other people seemed to look forward to them; even if they weren't having bad days like mine, could it really be that much better?

When I married my husband, it was May. My first "holiday" with him was during our honeymoon, when we stopped off on our way to Washington state to visit his family in Texas. We stayed at his parents' place and there was a Memorial day cookout. His dad grilled fajitas; his mom set a gorgeous table; everyone drank yummy margaritas and scooped homemade guacamole onto chips. It was happy, and that was my first exposure to big family-- as I shyly dipped into the food, Andrew said "You have to grab what you want; there are no shy Wellses, they died off of hunger years ago."

The next holiday was Fourth of July. We lived in Washington, just a little outside of Seattle, on the Puget Sound. We had a lovely little condo that was right off the sound; in the morning, often, while I ate my breakfast I could look out and see a Bald Eagle perched on the washed-ashore log in the low tide, looking for scrumptious tiny fish to scoop up. The mountains peered bluely over the horizon. On the fourth, the little town had a fireworks show over the harbor, and we invited the ten or fifteen new friends we had made with Andrew's work over for coffee and firework watching. It was cold, believe it or not. There were low clouds hanging in the sky, and the fireworks blasted into those clouds and looked spooky. But we were all warm, sitting on the gold shag carpet of our little rental condo, drinking hot coffee laced with Bailey's. The fireworks were almost secondary to the warmth and laughing that was going on in our little condo living room. There may not have been hot dogs and cotton candy and a picnic blanket out in the hot summer park, but it was a great summer moment anyway.

On my birthday that year, just around dinnertime, Andrew disappeared for about an hour. I didn't know where he went, and I wasn't really sure if I should be annoyed or a bit concerned. I thought he had gone to get gas for the car (cause we were going out to dinner at fancy restaurant). But he was gone so long! Early marriage, you aren't used to each others' patterns so much yet-- every delay of five minutes brings fears of some terrible accident, death, and you alone forever. He showed up with roses and emerald earrings. He had already bought me a present, so I was totally surprised by these perfectly green sparklies.

I'll finish with our first Christmas together. We drove his beat up red truck that we rode in on our first date out to the country and bought a real pine Christmas tree that we actually watched the guy cut down. (This more than made up for the moment in my childhood when my mom & her friend cut down a scrubby trash pine at the dump for our Christmas tree). We got up in the morning, drank Andrew's lattes, exchanged our little presents (slippers, robes, wallets--the kinds of things people get for each other when they're not sure really what to get.) I made something yummy for dinner (this I can't remember for some reason-- but I'm certain it was delicious cause hey, it was me!)

Since then, we don't really exchange big Christmas presents. What's the point when you're just giving each other slippers and pajamas? But we basically make it a point to treat each other really well every day of the year. We say "thank you" to each other for performing the most mundane of tasks, the ones we do every day (like maybe take out the garbage, or load the dishwasher). We buy presents for each other when we see something cool-- not because some commercial holiday shops have declared you must spend thousands of dollars right now cause it proves you love each other. So we never have a "special thing" that we've been dying to get all year cause we just get it if we want it, whether it's June 18th or December 25th.

But I did get him a present this year. It's something I saw at Williams-Sonoma, and a "random guy" walked by as I was talking to the salesgirl, he said "Wow that's a great thing, I love mine, use it all the time." After checking to make sure he didn't work there, I thought, yeah. Andrew will love this. It just so happens it'll be wrapped under the tree. He's gotta get me something now, cause otherwise it'd just be awkward, right? :)

Think of the origins of the word holiday (from dictionary.com). : Middle English holidai, holy day, from Old English hlig dæg : hlig, holy; see holy + dæg, day; see day. It's a holy day. A day that you set aside to count your blessings, to acknowledge that there are miracles occurring in everyday life. At the risk of making you all get cavities with the sugary sweetness of the ending, I consider every single day I spend with this fabulous man a holiday. When I tell him I think I'm the luckiest girl in the world, I. really. mean. it. Even after a cranky day when I've had to resort to eating an entire half quart of orange sherbet and lay on the couch watching Dirty Dancing* he can say the perfect thing to make me forget how annoyed I was earlier. Make me wonder why I was annoyed in the first place. I would wish this kind of relationship on everyone.

Happy Holidays to you, too.

*cause nobody puts Baby in the corner.