The time from Thanksgiving to Christmas was, well, nuts. At work we had the pleasure of a particularly ugly round of staff cuts (as per previous post) and, for me, an increased workload. I’ll do a little bit of work over the next week, but for the most part my office is shut down until January 5. Happy Birthday, Jesus! I need the break; on January 5 I expect all hell to break loose again. But in the meantime, I’m taking care of me.
Actually, a lot of people are taking care of me these days and I’ve got to admit I like it. There’s something a just a bit fabulous about having people go the extra mile for you. Case in point: my Christmas presents this year. My first gift arrived on my cell phone a week ago. A message was left on my cell by a beloved friend who’d seen me making a spectacle of myself in an online video and called to say how happy he was to see my smiling face. This would have been gift enough, but he then managed to give me a spot on critique of the video, and commentary on my boss, which had me in stitches. I’ve shared the message with a select few friends, who all ask which of my boyfriends it is (I wish!), but I never tell. As hard as I laughed when I got the voicemail, it is nothing compared to watching other people first smile at the sweet tone, then double over with laughter at the caustic commentary. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
My second Christmas present also came via phone. I arrived home on the 23rd to find this message on my answering machine (yes, I still have both a landline and answering machine—call me old-fashioned, but at least I gave up the party line and rotary dial):
Hiya, yeah, this is Brandon from the Global Data Center with a message from Aircraft 123XX from Captain Lucky to Goo. “Tuesday about 4:30, passing by high and east on our way to West Palm Beach. Merry Christmas!” End of message.
I played the message. Then I played it again. And again. If it isn’t obvious, Capt. Lucky is a pilot. I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone call to let you know they’re flying past and wish you a merry Christmas, but it was a first for me and made me feel incredibly special. If he made this same call to a half dozen other people, including his mother, sister, and fiancée, I have no idea; but it worked on me. Better than roses on Valentine’s or diamonds and champagne, Brandon’s voice on my answering machine was one of the high points of my holiday. To top it off, Capt. Lucky called again in person the next night; unfortunately, he caught me just as we were opening the doors for the first Christmas Eve service and I couldn’t really chat. Don’t worry, we caught up on Christmas Day as I recovered after the last of four major services in 18 hours and he cooled his heels doing a jigsaw puzzle in West Palm Beach. Poor boy!
I did manage a late night Christmas Eve phone call with Lit while I opened my presents over the phone. Luckily, Santa had already stopped by my place and she got to share my holiday glee. I’m not quite sure what Santa was thinking this year—not that I didn’t get great gifts—I did! I did!—but there was some sort of theme going on that caught me by surprise. I received a packet of my favorite cookies, a little case (similar to a pencil box) containing two pair of chopsticks (one big, one little, one smooth, of textured—kind of like the Japanese equivalent of dinner pair and luncheon pair), a jar of chicken-tomato bouillon, a packet of instant soup, and a used VHS copy of Mr. Holland’s Opus. Okay, maybe “glee” was overstating it a little, but Christmas in our house has never been about the expected. From Lit I received a set of six tiny Bohemian glasses, which at this point we assume are for liqueur, a British dessert cookbook published in 1980, a single, brand-new hot pad (which she claims had been left in the gift box recycled from two years ago when I got the box and an ornament at a choir party, so technically it was given to me by someone else and she just shipped it along), a pudding mould she’d picked up at an estate sale, and a boxed pair of Royal Worcester egg coddlers in the “Birds” pattern (regular, not king size). I’m willing to bet I’m the only person you know who got egg coddlers for Christmas. It’s definitely the coolest gift I’ve gotten in years. Of course, I’m now obligated to come up with a menu that involves coddled eggs, liqueurs, and steamed pudding, but Lit knows I like a challenge. And, if this seems like a weird, random list of stuff to make up a Christmas gift, well, maybe you’re right. There’s certainly not a bit of I would have thought to ask for, but it does clearly exhibit that she’s always thinking about me. Everywhere she goes, every sale she hits all year long she’s looking to see what she might find that I don’t even know I want and she’s usually right.
Then I got a gift via e-mail. This one I asked for, but didn’t really think I’d get—kind of like when you ask your parents for a pony. (Actually, I don’t think I ever asked my parents for a pony, that’s something kids in books and movies do, not kids who grow up in major urban areas. If your response is that YOU asked for a pony (and got one), good on you, but this is my Christmas tale I’m telling, so go blog on your own dime.) But this year, I mustered up my courage and asked a friend for what I really wanted and miracle of miracles if it didn’t show up in my inbox on Christmas Day! And, even though I asked for it, it caught me totally by surprise and it was even better than I hoped.
The last Christmas present I’ll tell you about involves my friend B who came over for Christmas dinner and by coming gave me a terrific Christmas present. I got to clean my house (kind of), and shop for groceries, cook a delicious meal, lay out my best china, and sit at the dinner table like a civilized human being. She also brought Mississippi Mud-pie brownies. Delish! Now in order to understand how fabulous a present this was, I have to back track and tell you have awful my Thanksgiving was. It really, really sucked. I was exhausted and angry from work (what with all the layoffs and other assorted changes) and spent the day alone. No phone calls, no e-mails, no dinner companions: alone. Several people said to me going into the holiday things like “you should go out with/get together with some friends”; they said these things until I wanted to scream out to them that telling me what I “should” do was a wonderful way of pointing out that I wasn’t included in their plans and I had best make plans to be with other people. No one ever explained who those other people were. If I haven’t made it clear, I was miserably depressed. I did try and make plans with local friends, but everyone was leaving town, or having family in, or generally booked and their plans didn’t include me. I spent the day wound up and pacing, too busy chasing myself around in my head to watch parades or movies, or read, as I nibbled on leftover Chinese food. Capt. Lucky did call late in the evening and chided me for not having gone out, but he can’t really conceive of my reluctance to force myself on other people. He’s known me so long now that he has no memory of my ever having been shy or cautious with him. So, having endured such a crappy Thanksgiving I looked ahead to Christmas and got pro-active and invited B over for dinner and I’m so glad I did, because without her it would have been, if not awful, at the very least lonely. By coming over to my house and letting me coddle her little bit, she helped me make Christmas out of what would have otherwise just been exhaustion. And it was lovely.
