Ho Ho… Ho?

Please don’t call me a Scrooge (okay, go ahead if you must), but since the holiday hoopla started just about the time Halloween was winding down, I’m really tired of it by now. The endless catalogs cluttering my mailbox; the flash sale pop-ups  each time I turn on  my computer  – they’re like those pesky black flies that keeping dodging the swatter and are impossible to kill! – the commercials at decibel levels that make my ears ring; the Christmas songs that play…and play…and play…in an endless reel long after they’ve actually stopped playing but instead get stuck in my head and follow me to bed each night when all I want to do is go to sleep.

And then there are all those incessant inquiries: Did you do all your Christmas shopping yet? What are you getting from Santa? Wanna come to an ornament exchange party? Where are you eating Christmas Eve? Better buy your tree! Who’s on your list this year?

Um…I’m Jewish. So I have no ready answers for you. And please do me a favor and stop asking.

Personally, it doesn’t help when there are so many other things clamoring  for my attention – getting ready to move out of our house (this subject deserves more than a quick mention, but who has the energy right now?), a father in hospice (another weighty topic, best saved for another time), paperwork, phone calls, schedules, leases, mortgages, selling furniture, buying furniture, disconnecting utilities, taking measurements (and taking them again because the first time you screwed up), dealing with the lingering  pain from a broken wrist… I’m just trying to get through each day.

These are the real grown up vicissitudes of life, the so-called roadblocks and challenges that we all have to somehow slog through; and hope we can come out on the other end and manage to find some room for pleasure. I mean, it’s not just me, is it? Don’t we all have real-life challenges we are dealing with? At what point are we able to push those aside if not only for a few moments?

So, what do you do when the there’s so much of a divide between the way you’re feeling inside and the glaring demands of “that” time of year??

It’s all a part of getting older, I suppose; the discrepancy that grows between real life and play. Oftentimes they just don’t match up; like two ships passing in the night.

But sometimes I  yearn for those carefree moments in time that allowed me to stop, listen, look and appreciate the joy – however manufactured – of the holiday season, all those years ago. Sometimes, I want to go back in time to when decisions were no more difficult than “Do I wear a white or red shirt today?” or “Do I eat vanilla ice cream or strawberry?” The choices were pretty simple. Without much consequence.

You know what I mean. Adulthood…it can be utterly challenging at times. It sometimes gets in the way of having fun. A trade-off of aging, I guess.

But whatever, I say. You can’t plan some things out.

 

You can only do your best with what you’ve got.