This Christmas like last is different. It is the extended mix for sure. We are Into the third year of this Goddamn plague and much has changed. Never mind the extremism, polarization and trying to hold on to our egg nog while we grit our teeth and wait for the plague of locusts and the rivers to turn to blood. We try to hold out for hope. Feliz fucking Navidad . "Here comes Omicron ,"Here comes Omicron, right down variant lane.." You get the picture.
What do you take with you into the future that brings comfort and helps you go on to celebrate the Holidays, maintain one's sanity and optimism in the face of the biggest health crisis of our lives? What do we hang on to for dear life that helps close out the year and ushers us hesitantly into the unknown of a new one? Today marks thirty six years since my Mother died. Right before Christmas.This Christmas seems bleak for a lot of people and it seems hard to find joy in the face of the constant escalating toll of the virus.What does one do?
My best year professionally-EVER!!!
Hang on to something. And stay the course. I find myself short tempered this Holiday, completely out of patience and resting bitch face ain't even remotely accurate. I shouldn't be I know , work is beyond amazing I had a phenomenal year professionally - my best year ever actually. A flood of work, teaching endless Kettlebell swings and chin ups... Yet the underlying sense of doom brings visions of angst ridden sugar plums dancing in my head. I did manage to get to my beloved Mexico at the end of October and hoping against hope booked for January, I don't think it's going to happen, thanks to the giant Christmas turd at the bottom of my Omicron stocking .
Dream on beach boy, Santa ain't sending you south next year...
I Recently read a theory about the role of memory and how it operates in our brains.
The gist of it was that memories don't exist after a certain point- when we ' remember' something we are actually remembering the last time we remembered it. Wrap your head around it. We are only 'remembering the last time we remembered it' The best analogy I find for that statement was in a pre internet world listening to bootleg tapes of one of my favourite singers. 3rd and 4th generation cassette copies, muffled sound but some essence of a great performance . What remains? So much lost, much held close.
Friends and acquaintances seem older now. Like a fuzzy third generation cassette their younger selves are muffled but the essence of a younger them remains. In the rush and push of daily life I'll see faces I recognize and it's a bit different. The other day I saw someone I used to work with and it took me a second- his hair was completely white. It wasn't white when I worked with him but that was ten years ago and a millisecond to the minute hand of the universe. Old Man time marches on. Memory fades people come and go. Memory. How accurate can it be in these trying times?
Those 'Remembered' memories resurface at odd times . For me the oddest was after my return from Europe in October 2019. As the winter days grew darker something crept in to illuminate the dreary days. Overwhelming thoughts of my parents and the sister I never knew. The over the top Christmases I'd had as a kid. My brisk walk to work at 630 in the often soggy mornings filled to bursting with remembered memories clinging to those echoes of my parents, visits to the Woodwards Food floor and seeing Santa and the gorgeous decorated windows, family dinners, the omnipresent soundtrack of 'The Hugo Winterhalter Christmas Magic' album serenading my parents during the holidays.
I also reflected with that seasonal melancholy on the heartbreaking death of my older sister Kathy - the sister I never knew who died tragically at 16....some years I visit her grave where she lies in repose together with my parents. That year I placed a small poinsettia on their graves during the Holidays and part of me wonders if out there in the great beyond they know..Meh, too much Navidad navel gazing Ryan. And yet the potency of those thoughts and memories predominated. Why?
It didn't all make me sad per se but it oddly brought me....Comfort. Smart enough to know how lucky I've been. it was a most curious sensation. It was almost as if my parents and sister were reminding me of the things that mattered. And maybe just maybe giving me comfort to prepare for what was to come in 2020 and what to take with me. That Christmas of 2019 was wonderful. Nothing significant happened Just the warm holiday glow of friends and family being together and ' comfort' Brace yourself. Here comes the pandmeic and the death of your older sister.
What does one do? What do you cling to that can provide a semblance of normalcy against this chaotic onslaught and chipping away of what we thought ' normal' was ?
Being grateful is a really good start. I've had an incredibly fortunate life. If I ever get into the rut of taking anything for granted I take a quick look around my living quarters at Casa Encantada 'The Temple of Ruined Glamour' and it's not so bad . There are souvenirs of how fortunate I've been. Italian, French and Spanish Exhibition catalogues from various travels. An ottoman full of imported Japanese jazz CDs. A full wine cellar.( in reality a somewhat lugubrious corner of the dining room decked out with creaking Ikea) my carefully preserved and cared for Canali suits, mocking me from the safe confines of their cedar infused closet ' You won't be wearing us this year' Sartorial sarcasm aside, Casa Encantada is that rock of well heeled stability in these ' interesting times'
I've decorated it ' To the tits' in an explosion of twinkling lights, cotton ball snow and a vaguely sinister nutcracker that freaks me out first thing in the morning as I stumble around with my coffee. Some semblance of normalcy as the world outside rages. Or at least my 'Nightmare before Christmas' normal.
So what do we leave in the past and what do we cling to to help us ' remember'? In that mental box of my memories 'much held close' is a black and white photo of my mother holding me a few hours after I'd been born. It's Jimmy Durante singing ' I'll Be Seeing You' it's a Christmas card from someone I loved very much, insignificant in its dedication, significant that they showed how much they cared to send it. It's my name carved in wood by my Fathers hands, and it's an old passport with a stamp from Mexico in 2008 where 'we' rediscovered each other. It's a kitschy old 80s song that makes you leave the mall immediately or you'll burst into tears and it's the smell of my Mother's homemade turkey stuffing and the gentle feel of my Fathers work sock stuffed with an orange, small toys, and chocolate placed on my bed by my mother in the wee hours of Christmas morning. It's finally realizing how much work went into Christmas from both my parents to show us how much they loved us, and it's a song at the right moment when you've picked up the pieces for the umpteenth time and carry on living. It's tokens of survival and mementos of those who once existed.
Some days over the Holidays I just want to curl up go back in time to being eleven years old curled up on my parents sofa smelling my Mom's cooking, and gaze at the huge Christmas tree illuminated by the blue floodlight that always gave off the sickening burning electronics smell any kid who grew up in the 70s remembers.
And other times I want to forge ahead gleefully oblivious to whatever challenges are popping up. We view the past imperfectly and perhaps or perhaps fortunately we remember the good. Living in the past is an impossibility, nor a destination I'm aiming for. Until it's Christmas.
I put that mental box of memories away tied in an imaginary red velvet bow for another year. And I hope and pray those memories remain as clear as they can through the fog of the years , hoping and praying that something, some essence of my parents and childhood remains.They are my touchstones of comfort and joy during the Holiday season and I'm taking them with me into a post pandemic world for however many more Christmases there may be.
The end of 2021 finds me older wiser bitchier, funnier, fitter, and above all else finding that looking back can be a way of moving forward. It is all one can really do.
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