Posts Tagged ‘holidays’

Before Christmas, I wasn’t too bummed about spending it away from home for the third year in a row. I survived (and enjoyed) previous Christmases spent skiing in New Mexico and feasting with other journalist orphans in Casper. The actual holiday stretched weeks, brown boxes from friends and relatives arriving weeks before the holiday and into January. I made it home for Thanksgiving both years with some good luck and a one-way ride as far as Colorado from my sister.

Thanksgiving at home didn’t happen this year. Plane tickets were expensive, my sister’s schedule didn’t align with mine and Josh’s dad, stepmom and stepsisters decided to drive to Wyoming for the weekend. I hosted my first Thanksgiving and proved once again I am my mother’s daughter.

Perfect turkey. (Nov. 24)

We served way too many appetizers, including $40 worth of cheese, and enjoyed leftovers for a whole week afterward. We drank wine and played games and watched movies. We were too full for dessert (pumpkin-apple and French silk pies, a la mode) but ate it anyway.

A few weeks before Christmas, I found out family from Virginia that I hadn’t seen in years were driving home. I scrambled to find a plane ticket: $650-800 to fly out of Casper. Flights from Denver were a little cheaper, but I couldn’t afford booking a $350 ticket in the case I-25 closed and I never made my flight. And I didn’t have $800 for a guaranteed flight.

So Christmas at home didn’t happen, again. We ended up driving to New Mexico for a long weekend with Josh’s family. Of course, Nola came with and she behaved so well during the 10ish hour car ride.

Outtake from the Christmas card photo shoot. (Dec. 12)

And when I called my mom’s house where everyone was gathering on Christmas day, no one answered the phone. I called three cell phones before my brother answered, roaring laughter in the background.

They were doing the white elephant gifts, he explained. Apparently, in the Christmases I missed, my family started a new tradition. At that moment, I made a vow to go home next year, no matter what, even if it is only for two days.

Although I’ve done a good job of finding family around the holidays to celebrate with, nothing beats going home.

Get ready because we’re going on a journey in this post.

Yesterday I a friend sent me a post about crying in public, about how the fast-paced rhythm of the city shrouds yet magnifies our most private emotions from others. Melissa Febos hits it right on the head, describing the public train experience:

“In a place where we are so rarely alone, we find privacy in public. We all have our masks, behind which we are free to be, yes, depressed, or any other emotional state we may not want to share with 30 fellow passengers.”

and

“Public criers ask nothing; they don’t need anyone to take care of them.”

And it got me thinking of the four months I lived in Spain. Madrid taught me the cathartic experience of being personally vulnerable in the most public places. I cried many times in Spanish streets, and only once did someone ask me if I was OK.

I consider my short time in the big city the best and worst of my 20s, so far (still have a few years to go…). Freer than I’d ever been — no drama, no newspaper responsibilities, no clubs, few difficult classes — I felt lost. Without all the activities and things that cluttered my life, I didn’t know who I was.

I lived with four American girls and one Spaniard. I made friends at school. I taught English once a week. I traveled. I went out.

But I also spent a lot of time alone. Sometimes I felt lonely. I usually didn’t miss anyone. I missed the feeling of knowing what I had to do and doing those things.

I dealt with the loneliness in three ways. I left the apartment and walked to stores, to the market, to parks, to nowhere. I ate pastries and apples instead of meals. I drank a lot of cheap, red wine. The combination of these things resulted in an uncanny knowledge of the city and major muscle loss.

I often cried in the middle of my walks. Something would remind me of home. Or someone would be rude to me in a store. Or a nasty man would “compliment” me and my blond hair in the street.

And I would cry, usually while walking away from whatever sparked the waterfall.

I spent Easter 2006 like most of that semester — alone. During Holy Week, I traveled France and Italy with a friend who was little more than a classmate.

I met up with my little sister and her high school trip to Europe in Rome, which included a few people I knew for a long time. For the first time in months, I wasn’t alone. But however I’d changed into in three months fit with my past.

I returned to Madrid on Easter Sunday to an empty apartment, which I would have relished before. Instead, I took to the streets, even more empty than usual for Sundays because of the holiday.

Despite Spain’s plethora of churches and cathedrals, none were open for me to wander into. So I walked to a little park in the next neighborhood over, sat on a bench and said an Easter prayer. I didn’t cry, a first for me on major holidays away from my family.

Holidays and personal moments away from people I love have become the norm; I’m not lonely and I’m rarely alone.

Flash-forward to 2011. During this morning’s Easter sermon, the pastor said, “Something must die in order to have a resurrection.”

I didn’t realize it on that Easter Sunday in Spain, but I had a resurrection of sorts. I lost the neediness to define myself by what I did and what I could accomplish.

Not all resurrections have been that big. I had one last week after spending three days on my couch, sick as a dog. Man, it felt good to wake up without a Nyquil hangover, dress myself and leave the apartment. Hallelujah!

“]

Hardy daffodils. [Casper, Easter Sunday 2011

Most would say my Valentine’s Day sucked:
- my valentine was 1,000 miles away
- I spent most of the day with the school board
- in between shifts, I went to a matinee of the Natalie Portman/Ashton Kutcher rom-com. So did one other guy, which made laughing a bit awkward.
- I came home to half of the young couple above me standing outside with her parents and two police officers. I don’t know what happened to cause the situation, but the husband locked the wife outside and refused to open the door, even for the cops.

Lovely. After that, I was more than happy to sit in a school board meeting for 3+ hours.

Then again, every day last week gave me something to love.

Tuesday: Firemen were called to break out the husband. He had rigged some wires in between the front door and the door up the stairs. They didn’t pay their rent, so they had until Friday to move out. And now they’re gone and I don’t have to hear their baby crying at odd hours of the night. I love sleep.

Wednesday: Reporting road trip! I traveled down to Elk Mountain, a tiny town off I-80 in between Rawlins and Laramie, for two stories: one for business and a food story for the Live Well Wyoming magazine we publish quarterly. A photographer, videographer and I were treated to the best meal I’ve had in Wyoming: venison wellington, duck, salmon, samosas, hummus and white chocolate bread pudding. I love food. And getting out of the office.

At the Elk Mountain Hotel, suited up for chopping duty. [Feb. 16, 2011]

Thursday: My friend Cat bought tickets to visit Wyoming for my birthday in a few weeks. She’ll be my 11th visitor! I think a snowshoeing trip in the Wind River Mountains is in order… I love Cat.

Friday: I finished writing the mainbar and editing three national stories for a package about federal education stimulus funding. I had forgotten how much fun editing others’ work can be. I love what I do.

And I received my last v-day card from my first valentine, my mom, whom I obviously love.

If the point of Valentine’s Day is to send red cards and eat chocolate and tell people “I love you,” mission accomplished. If it’s to experience joy and feel loved, mission accomplished.

Has it really been more than a week since Christmas?

Clint checks the turkey. It was done. [Dec. 25]

Christmas truly has become a season for me, beginning the day after Thanksgiving when I buy and wrap 90 percent of my gifts and ending a week into January when cards and packages stop trickling in. The weeks in between offer parties, treats and warm, fuzzy moments that make you say, “It feels like Christmas.”

The guys might kill me for writing this, but Christmas night had several of those moments. Two sports guys hosted the journalist orphans for turkey with all the fixin’s.

It’s not Christmas without oysters.

It seemed Christmas was white everywhere but this part of Wyoming. Everyone else got snow except us.

The dry weather helped me get down to Colorado and Arizona, to continue on to Missouri and Kansas. It also allowed me to return safely to a very snowy Casper.

The week away was eventful and uneventful at the same time. Arizona was all about the Insight Bowl, but Josh and I also explored Phoenix, spent time with the illustrious Ryan Gibbons, shopped used book stores, hiked through a cactus forest and visited the new Musical Instrument Museum.

Phoenix Mountains Preserve [Dec. 30, 2010]

In Missouri we both worked New Year’s Eve — I finished a 50-inch legislative preview and he compiled a “best of” photo gallery in the car. We both have a hard time not working during vacations.

Friends hosted a casual New Year’s Eve dinner of fondue and champagne before we shuffled to the Power and Light District. We only stayed long enough to watch an imitation ball drop and greedy people dive after cash confetti shot from cannons. Just like last year, we were in PJs, eating pizza before 2.

Also like last year, we spent New Year’s Day lounging on the couch, watching the Jersey Shore marathon.

Holidays don’t have to be extravagant to be celebrated. Vacation doesn’t have to be exciting to be vacation.

Hanukkah has come and gone, celebrated with good friends and an excellent brisket/latke dinner.

mmm latkes, best with homemade applesauce.

This will be the second year of my mail-order Christmas, with various packages arriving every few days. Last year, I put them under the tree for a couple days until my mom told me I should just open them.

My first gift came Wednesday but before I could open it, I made myself clean and finish decorating. The snowman bell door hanger never made it off the doorknob, so the 3-foot tree and wreath were all I had to do. Also, I keep the lights and ornaments on the tree when it goes in the box for the rest of the year. Low maintenance decorating always preferred. I’d rather spend my free time baking goodies for the newsroom.

I didn’t bake these. But I helped decorate and eat them!

These I did make: Kolaczki for a coworker who pined for a Polish bakery.

Last Christmas was the first I didn’t spend with family in Illinois. Plane tickets out of Casper were ridiculously expensive and I didn’t have enough days off to make a trek down to the Denver airport worth it.

I drove to New Mexico and you know what, it was fine. I missed the family time, but there was enough Christmas (snow, fires in the fireplace, gingerbread houses) to make it memorable.

Christmas and New Year’s Day are on weekends this year, which means I can take them in the same week. And Josh happens to have some of those days off, too. A Christmas miracle! Because if there’s anything harder than a journalist trying to take vacation it’s a journalist trying to take vacation around another journalist’s vacation schedule.

For that reason, the best I could do was Wyoming for Christmas, Tempe for the Mizzou/Iowa bowl game and somewhere in Kansas for New Year’s Eve. It’d be nice if there was some snow in there.