2007-12-20

Are You Ready for Christmas?

I'm spending Christmas by myself this year.
And I don't feel one bit sorry about it. Most holidays find me running from one group of friends' to another, being a flitting butterfly on the outside and a sad, lonely person on the inside, missing my family and my homeland.

This year, I decided I am going to take Rosie up the mountain and let her run around, make some rich potatoes and flavored coffee, and watch Season 3 of Deadwood.

If the mountain, Mt. Lemmon, is too cold or snowy, I'll go climb this one hill that's a long walk for a fat girl and her dog, come home tired to my potatoes and my favorite, filthy HBO guilty pleasure.


I can hole up like nobody's business and I think that's what I would like to do. Me, my dog, my phone, and my presents to open.

It's weird, how it can be more lonely to go around to a lot of people's places and see a lot of people you know. I don't know what that phenomenon is but I am looking forward to Christmas in a way I haven't looked forward to it in a very long while.

There's no pressure, no expectation, no nothing but a cold desert day for me and my reform schooled dog. I can call my family whenever I want to. I don't have to shower or pretend to like what is being served. I don't have to bring any generic gifts or smiles because I'll be doing what really makes me smile - working up a good sweat with my dog and then relaxing the day away with a story that I love.

When people ask me if I'm all ready for Christmas, they mean, "Do you have all your gifts purchased?
Do you have your baking done?
Is your house cleaned and ready or are you going to someone else's house?
Is your tree up?"

I smile secretly and flash the dimple for the asker, "Yes. I am totally ready."

Little do they know that what I mean by ready is my having some chicken, a Russet potato that I'll bake with Gruyere, cream, butter, and garlic and I have apples to cook and coffee to brew.

I have clean pjs.

Little so they know how quietly private a holiday can be and how much it can fill you up when you feel like you have almost everything you need right there in your hand-me-down furnishings with your pets and your soul.

This might just be the best Christmas of all, the one where I finally get it about being okay by myself, about being really happy with myself.

arizonasarah at 10:50 a.m.

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