It isn’t until 9pm on the night of Christmas that I start to wonder why and how it is that we do this every year. Granted, I haven’t been 100% clear of late while living in a Mucinex/Sudafed/DayQuil fog. Apparently, while medicating my Christmas cold I’ve played Words with Friends games where I don’t actually recall most of the words that have been played. I spent a good part of the day yesterday marveling at how sound I was being beaten in all of my games and how 7 or so words had been played in each game that I simply had no recollection of. Disclaimer: I haven’t had a drop of booze since...ok I can’t really remember that either, but it’s been a few days.
To the point though, I found myself looking at a living room filled with gift bags, glitter, opened gifts and a tree that I hadn’t bothered to plug in all day and wondering why in the world we do this to ourselves. The traffic, the stress, the overeating, the “can I afford this” and the planning and attending events is really enough to make any of us marginally sane people quit the entire business of it. Let alone do it again next year (and with enthusiasm).
In the past week alone, I’ve done nearly all of my Christmas shopping, hosted 3 events at our place, the smallest having 7 people and the largest having 16. We’ve done 2 proper dinners and an appetizers and booze night. They’ve all been fantastic fun, but have required constant house cleaning, grocery shopping, booze shopping, scheduling and lack of sleep. I’ve had skirmishes with my mom, stressful work days and the occasional realization that I’m having my first Christmas without my grandmother. It really is enough to make anyone realize that her “Christmas phrase” of last year should really be an annual tradition.
However, there’s a constant to the middle of all of the chaos and stress that can only explain how I’ve retained any thread of sanity and that’s the boyfriend. Jason. The first time I’ve used his name on the blog. Because, ultimately this post is as close to a love letter as I’ll probably ever give him. Neither of us are the romantic type. What I suppose some couples say with flowers or dates we say with a snuggle on the sofa while we watch Top Chef.
There really isn’t much more that I would ever need. In the past few days he’s ensured I’ve taken the appropriate cold medicine (even if it’s resulted in some memory loss), made me sit down when I wanted to be up doing things, made me tea, rubbed my shoulders. While in the middle of his own Christmas chaos, he's cooked every morsel of food that has been served here and in what I think is the ultimate act of love: he served my mom (someone who hasn’t always been especially nice to him) Christmas dinner with a smile.
There’s something that makes you fall in love with a man a little more when you see him pulling a turkey out of the oven, knowing he’s intending to serve it to your family, not because they consider him family, but because he knows it makes you happy. To have them (and their crazy) and to have him in the same room, with paper plates, a flame retardant tree and the aforementioned turkey is somehow this year’s definition of happy. And he understands that without my even needing to say it.
And so, with the gifts having been given and received, the food in TupperWare and the whole EVERYTHING of everything the past week has been, I’ll say I couldn’t have done it without him, and he probably already knew that too.
