Our first Mother's Day with cancer.

I'm glad that this post isn't called "Mother's Day from Room 302B" or something to that effect. My mother has been home from the hospital since Thursday, after going in for a planned stay on April 23rd.

Still, I was dreading calling her yesterday morning. As much as I miss(ed) her and want(ed) to talk to her, I knew that hearing her voice would hurt as much as it helped. Her voice...isn't hers. My mother's voice is strong and sassy. This is one of those times when Spanish makes more sense to me than English, because for 22 years of my life I've thought of the "is" in that sentence as a permanent kind of is, a this is how it always has been and this is how it always will be kind of is. A "ser" kind of is. Cancer taught me that "estar" can sneak up on you. La voz de mi mama estaba fuerte. Now, her voice is barely above a whisper. It is characterized only by its hoarseness. I feel bad asking her to repeat herself, because I know that the shortest of conversations is draining to her. It's draining to me too, because I don't know who this frail person on the other end of the phone is. Mi mama es una mujer de fuerza. 

But the woman on the other end of the phone, who can barely muster the strength to thank me and ask about my exams, is my mother. I guess doing the impossible for 22 years can catch up to you. She's not invincible. (She's too young to not be invincible.) Forty-two and fragile just isn't fair.

On your first Mother's Day with cancer, tears spill out of your eyes after approximately two minutes of hearing your mother labor to speak with you, and you try with all of your might to keep her from hearing them. You use every bit of strength you have to keep your voice steady. When that strength begins to falter, you quickly tell her that she should get some rest and you'll talk to her soon. The heaving sobs come as soon as you push "End". You feel like a woman of despicable priorities for not being there, despite the impending deadlines, despite her telling you not to worry. You are ashamed of yourself. You are six years old and having a nightmare again, only this time it doesn't go away when you wake up. Before you can stop yourself, you wonder how many more Mother's Days you'll get to wish her. And the rest of the day feels impossible as you move your sobs from the bed to the shower. On your first Mother's Day with cancer, you wish you were sick one. You feel like being your mother took everything out of her. You wonder if anything will ever feel right again. 

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa

and while I don't officially celebrate Kwanzaa, I respect it as an entity, and feel the need to defend it from haters like my bestie K. Hence, this post. 

A little background: Kwanzaa is a week-long holiday created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a major figure in the Black Power Movement of the 60s and 70s, to "give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society." There are seven principles, each with a day devoted to it and represented by a red, green, or black candle that goes into a specific place in the kinara, a special candleholder. You're supposed to spend each day reflecting and talking about the principle with your family and friends, and each night feasting and exchanging gifts (which may or may not be supposed to be handmade as a rebellion against American consumer culture.) And that's a little much even for a self-righteous Black woman like myself, because I have no problems with Santa (who was Black in my house anyway, but that's another story for another time), and I hit up the after-Christmas sales LIKE A BOSS today, but I like the spirit of the celebration nonetheless. I like that it's something created by and for our peoples as a way of celebrating whatever it is that connects all of us Diasporic individuals.
Growing up, my family usually lit the candles, and my dad usually mailed me a Kwanzaa card, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say we legitimately celebrated Kwanzaa. As I’ve gotten older and have to start thinking about which traditions from my childhood to keep and which to let go of, I’ve decided that I want to start taking Kwanzaa more seriously. I don’t know if I’ll go so far as to make and exchange gifts for each of the days, but I want to get a kinara, light the candles on each day, and spend some time at the very least seriously reflecting on each of the principles, hopefully engaging in discussion with friends and family about them.
I don’t understand people who criticize it for being “made up;” how is it any more made up than the secular version of Christmas or Easter or any other (even non-religious) holiday? All holidays are social constructions, and I like the principles and values this particular holiday tries to construct us around. Maybe people who dress in “traditional African clothing” or go around speaking languages that originated in Africa or cooking foods from various African countries for this week ONLY every year might be “faking it” or “making it up,” but I think that just by being a socially conscious person of African descent in this world, I am living my culture every single day–on these particular days, I’m just reflecting on specific principles that may add strength and depth to my own understanding of that very culture. And I see no problems with that.


That being said, today's principle is Umoja, which means "unity" in Swahili. It is a day for reuniting with friends and family, and more broadly, for thinking about ties that bind. I spent this whole semester taking "Diversity in Black America," and after 12 weeks I say "Black peoples" and "Black cultures" and "Black identities," yet I don't believe it's possible to walk away from this concept of "out of many, one." Sure we may come from as many different backgrounds as you can possibly imagine and go through quite a range of experiences and have diverse interests and have been raised in cultures that are nothing like one another's and have different languages, vocabularies, styles, and tastes...but there is something that keeps "the Black head nod" and the either gravitation towards or strict avoidance of the other Black person in the room when you're few and far between in some social setting. Maybe that something is nothing more than the legacy of racism in this country, which has molded us all within a racialized understanding of the world, and maybe it's something more, but whatever it is, it is, and that is fine as long as we can still come together in our difference.
Unity is not casting out members of our communities for being different. It's accepting those who are Black and Women, who are Black and LGBTQQIA, who are Black and nerdy/awkward, and even who are Black and Republican. It's recognizing the "Black card" and terms like "oreo" and "sell-out" as ridiculous entities that no one has the authority to project onto anyone else. I think the truest form of solidarity to which we can strive as Black peoples, or even as human beings on this great green earth, is just to accept each other for that which we are without trying to quantify the authenticity or validity of anyone's sense of self. Recognizing that I am what I am, you are what you are, and we are what we are...that is being united.

Decorating Alone, Or How Father Time Stole Christmas

I've been fighting them on this for a few years now, but ever since I left for college, my family has slowly but surely been boycotting Christmas. Well, "boycotting" may be a strong word...at the very least, they're rather disinterested. My mom dragged the dusty boxes of decorations up from the basement, but has left them sitting in the living room for weeks, bothering only to put a wreath on the front door. Her excuse is that I love putting decorations up, so they were "waiting for me." (Feel free to roll your eyes.) When I told my siblings I wanted to put the decorations up, their response was, "Why?!" My brother and sister also adamantly refuse to get a tree this year. They say there's no point. They didn't want one last year either, but I wore my mom down. As it's mere minutes from being December 21st, however, I think this year will be the first year of my life we don't journey to the Christmas tree farm to pick out and cut down our tree. The tradition is dead. My brother asked me what I wanted for Christmas via text, and my dad and I have lost all forms of surprise. I want to sneak out to Walmart tomorrow to get the ingredients to make Christmas cookies surprise the family when they come home from school on Friday, but somehow I just don't think they'd appreciate the time I took to mold each little piece. It seems there's no point in even hooking up the DVD player to watch Rudolph, Frosty, and The Year Without a Santa Claus; I'll watch them on my computer.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my entire household is void of Christmas spirit, and no one cares but me. I went away to school and my family became Grinches! It's the middle of the night, and I'm sitting in my living room surrounded by garland that I wanted to wrap around the banisters, but I can't find the staple gun, and I'm a little PMSy, so I'm just wallowing in how useless it seems to decorate if I'm only decorating for myself. 

What happened to my family? Once upon a time we started decorating the very first weekend of December. Christmas music was always playing throughout the house, and the tree was the featured object in the living room. It was always so big that we couldn't put the angel on the top because the top bent over against the ceiling already, and decorating it was an EVENT that the whole family had to be present for. We made what seemed like more cookies than we could possibly eat (though that never proved to be an issue). We left cookies and milk out for Santa, and reindeer treats for Rudolph, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. Our lights outside were never particularly fancy, but they were bright, and made me feel warm and fuzzy inside when I came home at night. We all sat down to watch our Christmas movies together on VHS--the old Claymation Rudolph and The Year Without a Santa Claus movies, the animated Frosty, Charlie Brown Christmas, classics like The Preacher's Wife. Once upon a time, we were jolly.

And then we grew up and apart. My little sister is graduating from high school this year. My brother is a year younger than her. They're working on Christmas eve, for goodness sake! I can't speak for certain, but to the best of my understanding, after I left for college, there were individual rooms on individual floors of the house for every member of my family (we have a split-level house), and my family basically stopped regularly interacting throughout the day. We're not close anymore. No one has come out and directly said this, but it seems to me like everyone feels like the whole Christmas thing is too family-y for us to engage in. Like we outgrew it or something. WHO OUTGROWS CHRISTMAS?! It's the most wonderful time of the year! 

I will admit that it gets harder to think of things to ask for for Christmas as I get older. Well, even when I was a kid, I was never the kind to have a Christmas list that went on for miles and miles. I never really asked for big things; I'd much prefer a collection of little things. I was the oldest, and I feel like I always knew Christmas was a struggle for my mom [and my ex-stepfather of whom I don't like to speak], so tried to not be much of a burden. My dad has always half-criticized and half-condemned me for never asking for anything, and not much has changed. Now, generally speaking, when I want/need something, I just buy it. But I do generally keep a wishlist, or more accurately, a list of things I haven't gotten around to purchasing for myself yet, that can be picked and chosen from for gift-giving occasions. I understand that maybe not everyone does this, but it can't be too hard to wrack your brain and go 'Oh, I could use...' or 'What would make my living space/wardrobe/morning routine/study habits/any-other-aspect-of-my-life better?' 

And I love GIVING presents so much! I love scouring the internet for hours on end while I should be reading / doing my damn thesis, clicking the next button thoooouuuusands of times until I find THE PERFECT PRESENT when I'm surprising someone, or the best-rated-and-coolest-featured-in-a-particular-price-range of a specific thing I was asked for. I love wrapping it and that feeling of anticipation you get before the exchange. I love the shininess and the colors and the warmth in the midst of the cold that the season brings. I love getting to be a kid and an adult at the same time. I. love. Christmas. And I don't care what my family thinks; I WILL BE JOLLY! 

...But what's the point of coming home for the holidays if you're the only person celebrating? What's Christmas without traditions, without joy, without spirit? No one ever wishes anyone an apathetic Christmas...

 

Reblogged from PostSecret

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Columbus Day disgusts me.

It disgusts me like moving tables and accidentally putting your fingers on someone's gum, like people who smoke, like stepping in dog-shit, like having to clean up someone else's vomit, like ass-to-anything. I love this country, but there's a long list of shameful ways we conduct ourselves with regard to various sensitive topics, and the fact that we're still equating Christopher Columbus with Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. (as the only two non-presidential individuals to be honored with federal holidays in their names) cannot be left off of that list. We might as well add a holiday for whatever day in 1619 the first shipment of African slaves was brought to the Virginia colony, or days glorifying rapists and practitioners of biological warfare. Because, just in case you haven't brushed up on your history since the lies your first-fourth grade teachers taught you, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT COLUMBUS DAY IS DOING.

I don't mean to sound unpatriotic, but Columbus and his crew were basically TERRIBLE TERRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS. Let's recap: He begged the royalty of Spain for a shitload of money to find a faster route to sail to India for spices or whatever shit they were trading in at the time. He gets HOPELESSLY FUCKING LOST, to the point where the journey has taken like three times longer than expected, and his whole crew is ready to make him walk the plank. Then someone's like HOLY SHIT I SEE LAND and they forget they were ready to kill him. Now, Columbus has some knowledge of India...he HAD to know that the land he had stumbled upon was, in fact, nothing like India, but rather than fess up to the fact that he had fucked up, he just started calling the indigenous peoples in this "New" world [JUST BECAUSE YOUR PASTY ASS DIDN'T KNOW IT EXISTED DOESN'T MAKE IT NEW] Indians to save face. Then, when he and the whole posse of greedy Europeans he summoned decided that the indigenous peoples were doing more of the "being in the way" thing than the "ensuring that the idiot White people didn't kill themselves" thing, they started a HUNDREDS OF YEARS LONG tradition of kicking them out of their homes. When they wouldn't leave peacefully, the SYPHILIS-RIDDEN sailors started raping the women, and the tribes were given gifts of SMALLPOX-INFESTED BLANKETS. 

And they called the Natives "savages." For the next five hundred and counting years, these people have been "in the way" of progress and modernization and wealth and greed. I suppose they're the only people in this country who have been a "problem people" for longer than Blacks have. And I just don't fucking understand what about this man or anything he started possibly deserves celebration. What is the justification for this holiday? HAPPY IMPERIALISM DAY! Happy Hey, We Got All Kinds of Great Knowledge from the Natives and then Raped Them, Killed Them, and Drove the Survivors Away Day! Happy Tap Dance All Over the Little Guy's Back Day! Happy We Will Never Ever Give Two Fucks about Minority Cultures Day! Happy Capitalism Was Built on the Backs of Racialized Minorities AND IS STILL THRIVING ON THEM TO THIS DAY Day! 

Get the fuck out of my face, Columbus Day. I can't believe he's still being lauded as a national hero. There is blatant disregard for historical accuracy...and then there is this. And the worst part is, most Americans will never learn anything but the rosy stories our elementary school teachers told us. Most Americans will never see anything wrong with Urban Outfitters's Navajo flask and 973947390847 other cultural misappropriations designed to both take money from and make money for the descendants of the very people who tried their damndest to destroy Native American culture in the first place! 

Sadly, I'm not kidding. Right, because Native Americans TOTALLY need more people to contribute to the stereotype that they're lazy alcoholics.

How can we ever expect to develop tolerance for other cultures when we still GLORIFY their destruction? WHAT ARE YOU DOING, AMERICA?!  



I just posted this video on Facebook, and Facebook informed me that 9 other friends/pages I've liked posted about Columbus day: all but one was some sort of pathetic outreach of consumer culture begging you to go shop Columbus Day sales or asking what you were doing with your day off. I bet no one was stopping to think about what we're actually celebrating and why we shouldn't be. 

Spending Holidays Alone is Weird

and reminds me how awkward a stage of life your early 20s is. It's like, I'm not still living at home with my family, but nor have I truly established a permanent independent life with a family (biological or chosen) of my own with whom to celebrate. I'm too old for one option and too young for the second, I suppose. 

Anyway, I'll spend today partaking in that reason for my New-Brunswick-independence this summer, actually doing some of the reading for my independent study/thesis research that I've been woefully neglecting over the past two weeks. I think I'll treat myself to a burger and fries from the restaurant down the street for dinner so I can feel patriotic. 

Everyone needs a private party sometime though:

 

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 17--Letter to a Politician: Freddie D and my thoughts this 4th of July

Dear American Politicians,

This letter contains excerpts from Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 

1. "This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations."

 So today I ask, is America still young? 235 years is much longer than 76, but cannot hold a candle to thousands, as Freddie D suggests so eloquently. So do we still have time to work things out and became a nation whose values are not, in any way, hypocritical? Do we still have time to develop the backbone to stand for things we believe in rather than fall to popular opinion? Do we still have time for popular opinion to become informed? Do we still have time to care, to see the bigger picture, to remember the meaning of the word democracy? Or has our window for greatness closed? If all the masses do to observe today is barbecue and drink and watch some fireworks, who will remember the gritty history and the gritty details of the present? Sometimes I feel like we as a nation are hungover after having gotten drunk on our own ideals, and now we're too out of it to do anything but lay in bed with a cold compress and watch it all play out. We need to wake the fuck up and do something. That's the meaning of independence. In that vein:

2. "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence."

 Next I say that having never really experienced any other part of the world, I am patriotic almost to a fault. Though I hope to do some traveling eventually at some point, the US of A is the end-all be-all for me, and I'm okay with that. There's nothing I'd rather be than American. There is nothing I would rather be than a black American, but that means that, like Freddie D all those years ago, I would like to call attention to the things America overlooks as we celebrate ourselves today. He calls attention to the peculiar institution of American slavery:

3. "I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light?"

I would like to call attention to its lasting effects, as well as to the lasting effects of the fourth value this country was raised on: 'life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness[, and patriarchy].' I want to ask you, America, whether you are celebrating poverty and the disproportionate percentages of women, children, and people of color [and their women and children most of all] who fall below the poverty line in this country. I want to call attention to the wage gap between men and women. I want to call attention to the fact that, according to multiple very-well run audit studies by one of my professors, Devah Pager, it is easier for a white man with a criminal record than a black man with no criminal background to get a JOB in this country, and that was BEFORE the recession hit. I want you to remember the founders' cries of "No taxation without representation!" and ask yourself who exactly our legislators represent. Is the nation's best interest those of its richest or its poorest? America, are you celebrating our failing public schools? Our inability to truly separate church and state and recognize love in all its forms? The tightening and tightening of border control and anti-immigration sentiment in a land that once proclaimed 

"Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" --Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus", mounted inside the Statue of Liberty

America, have we EVER truly been the land of the free? Certainly not when my man Freddie was talking to you, certainly not now while we have the highest incarceration rates in the entire world. Certainly not now when getting caught with a bag of weed can lose not only your liberty, by sending you to prison, but also silences your voice (as many states ban ex-felons from the ability to vote), and makes it impossible to break the cycle of poverty and self-destruction (as you cannot receive federal financial aid or welfare).

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."

So I ask you, how much has changed? I don't want to feel like I've abandoned my people--American women, American children, American people of color--by wearing my red, white, and blue today.


Maya

Does King Deserve to be King?

One of the biggest tangible changes being an African-American studies certificate pursuer has made in my life is my like, newfound...let's say "objection" to Martin Luther King Day as a holiday, as part of a larger...yeah, I think we can actually say "disgust" with the commonplace representations of the Civil Rights Movement in contemporary American classrooms and homes. I hate being lied to, particularly by authority figures. I hate the images of Christopher Columbus and Abraham Lincoln that are portrayed to young children everywhere. I hate when culture tries to rewrite history to make it more convenient. And similar to all these hatreds, I hate that America puts MLK up on a pedestal without addressing any of the flaws in his strategies and ideologies. 

Now don't get me wrong; Martin Luther King was an incredible man who did phenomenal things for black people in this country, and who tried to do similarly phenomenal things for poor people. There was a time when I would have said that I owe my very lifestyle to him; but that kind of statement, and the mindset it reflects, is exactly what pisses me off so much about this holiday. I owe my lifestyle to the Civil Rights Movement, fact, but while culture elected King as the Movement's face, there are so many other people who made contributions just as--if not more, in light of the fact that I am a black WOMAN--relevant and effective on my day-to-day being. With all of my knowledge of African-American history, I can think of NO reason King deserves to be elevated over Malcolm X or Ella Baker. I can think of NO reason for the American public--even the BLACK American public--to think of Rosa Parks as just some little old lady who wouldn't get up from her seat on the bus one day, as opposed to the die-hard political activist she really was.

Martin Luther King was many many wonderful things, but he was also a stickler for some pretty bad ideas: a) political sexism, and b) passive resistance. I think that to some degree, the black "community" as a whole is still struggling to recover from the lasting implications of the utter dominance of these ideologies, and the effective hero-worship and idolization of King in this country simply pushes conversations about the inherent badness of these ideologies further and further under the rug. If we can't address the faults of the persons we are told to view as having been great in the past, how will we ever recognize them in the future? Sexism in the black community is STILL un-talked-about by anyone but black feminists, and fact: no one really listens to them anyway. My mother STILL says she's oppressed as a black person but not as a woman, and black women's position in society will NEVER increase until we can eradicate the existence of such limited mindsets. But how can we if we continue to praise King as our savior? Political sexism is, in some aspects, even worse than in-everyday-life sexism, because it's like saying there are specific areas in which women can never be equal to men and certain arenas in which they should never be listened to, as opposed to just being generally ignorant. Passive resistance too often leads to just sitting there and taking the shit this country throws at us, and maybe I'm a radical but I will fight to the death for the things I deserve. We all should; it's the only way to get anyone to listen. The Movement has DIED; now we all practice passive resistance, and our men and boys rot in jail, and our children fail in failing schools, and our success stories are ostracized and remain single and childless for being strange exceptions to unwritten rules...it's not getting us anywhere. Blindly accepting King as the face of the Movement, as the King of race relations in America and as having the chief ideas that should be recognized and remembered just sets us back into the faults of his time, and I for one shall not regress.

The Meaning of Christmas...

GAH, MY FACEBOOK NEWS FEED HAS TURNED INTO SOME RELIGIOUS WEBPAGE WITH SHOUTOUTS TO JESUS, AND CALLS TO REMEMBER THAT HE'S THE REASON FOR THE SEASON. *runs for cover*

Just so you know, this is not another religion-bashing post. This is, after all, their holiday. But as someone who didn't realize that Christ had anything to do with Christmas til late childhood, I'm endeavoring to understand what exactly Christmas is supposed to mean to me. I love that the Wikipedia page for Christmas recognizes the secular aspects of the holiday early on; I feel...validated in my understanding of Christmas as an American cultural holiday, as opposed to as a Christian religious one.


I've talked about Christmas a lot already, because this Christmas is...different for my family this year. To make a long story short, times are tough for everyone involved--myself definitely included--and thus things are being kept...simple. And I've been kind of down in the dumps about it. But on the phone tonight, my friend M a) inadvertently reminded me how good a friend she is and how much I miss her, and b) told me that it takes a Christmas like this to appreciate all the other Christmases. And she's right. It's a Christmas like this, apart from the small children and the cookies for Santa and the tree and the anticipation that makes me sit back and think about what Christmas really means.


Christmas means taking at least a few days off from the rest of life. Christmas means being with my family, even if not everyone is thrilled about this. Christmas means doing everything within your means to get your loved ones in the Christmas spirit, meaning the spirit of love and peace and joy and giving. Christmas means love, the kind of love that, while it may lie peacefully dormant for most of the year, shows itself flamboyantly in bouts of colorful joy every once in a while, and gives of itself even knowing it can expect nothing in return. Christmas means creating your own traditions to supplement the ones your childhood gave birth to. Christmas is being in the arms of someone who loves you, and resting your head on your mom's shoulder, mixed in with a hint of how it feels to be picked up for the first time in years. Christmas is the familiarity of your Grandmother's kitchen combined with the thrill of a young Denzel and a pre-crack Whitney in The Preacher's Wife and the slightest of desires to jingle when you walk. Christmas is always wanting to believe Santa is real, no matter how old you get; it's hating snow but wishing for it anyway. Christmas is warm and somewhat fuzzy and somehow magical. Christmas is love.

 

I "paint" to make myself feel better...

They say the most suicides happen around the holidays...

...because people whose families are gone or split up or just not coming to town get really depressed, especially as said people get older. The opposite kind of phenomenon happens to me when I go home for the holidays...

The hardest thing for me to get used to about being home is consistently the shock of how much time I spend alone. I thought this would change this year, because I have a single, but I simply don't spend any significant waking time there, so it unfortunately has no desensitizing effect on me. Even at a school that falls into the "small private" category for my JP, on campus I'm almost always in the presence of other people. Even though I live in a single, a hundred or so people live in my building, and I can hear the girls across from me laughing sometimes. It's no big deal for the girl in the shower stall next to me to ask to borrow my body wash; bathrooms have been deprivatized. (Yes I just made that word up.) I eat all my meals with a subset of the same group of 70ish people, the Large Library has a crew, and there are certain friends I can't see without hugging.

But my house isn't structured for such interactions. With the split levels, it's really as if every person has his or her own floor. My sister and I flip-flop between the living room (2nd landing) and our bedroom (5th landing), rarely coexisting in the same space. My brother's room is on the third landing, next to the office with the computer he broke, so no one else is ever there, and my mom spends all her time in her room on the third landing. We each exist in our own separate worlds, and rarely do they meet.

My friends aren't within walking distance here. Even if they were, I don't feel the same ability to just show up uninvitedly; here in the real world, there are families and gatherings and other plans.

So here there are days when I realize I hadn't spoken until after 3 this afternoon, simply because there was no one to say hello to til then.

India would say Sometimes I'm alone, but never lonely. I wish I could agree with her. And E says this shouldn't bother me as much as it does. She says free time is a gift that I should be thankful for, but free ALONE time has always been a curse to me. I'm good at creating space and time for me within lots of hustle and bustle, but I'm at a total loss when "free time" stretches before me like a lake with the stillest of waters. It's not even that I would like to have everything planned out, because I'm not the biggest of planners, it's just...if I'm watching TV, I would rather have someone to laugh at the TV with, someone to steal the blanket from, someone to roll their eyes at me when I tear up. It's that, while I wouldn't mind getting one of those fancy new touchscreen handheld Scrabble console things, I would always rather have an actual partner to play an actual game with. It's so quiet here. I miss the strange commingling of first-person-shooter and Mario Galaxy sounds coming from the Game Room.

Fact that others may find sad but I just consider to be a fact of life: My friend circles have always felt more familial to me than my actual family feels most of the time. That only really bothers me at all around the holidays, when everyone disappears from AIM and Facebook and talks about all the fun they're having/going to have with their families. I smile and nod like I'm cosigning that, but really all I think about is how much I miss the people I share my life with. Those people and the people who share my DNA or even my permanent address have never been one and the same.

Thought that actually saddens/terrifies me: Is this what's waiting for me when undergrad life ends?