Childhood and the Holidays

I remember this overwhelming sense of joy during the holidays when I was a child and into my early adulthood.  As a child, my mother would decorate the entire house for Christmas.  It literally was a wonderland.  I particularly remember she would put these candy garlands up on the door frames and I used to just stare at them and drool.  She also had this little Christmas village she collected and displayed that I loved to sit in front of and create little families and whatnot in my imagination.

As I got into my teens, decorating the house turned into a tradition for my mom and me.  I would help her take everything down from the attic and unpack and unwrap it all.  Then we would spend about a day and a half decorating the entire house.  When I bought my own house, she would come over and help me decorate mine as well, although that would only take us a couple hours, mainly because I was lazy and didn't have nearly as many decorations as she did.  We continued that tradition until she got sick.

My mother also baked around the holidays.  Once I was old enough to help her, somehow the holiday baking morphed into this massive endeavor.  There were staples that we made every year and once she knew I had mastered those on my own, she then started bringing in new recipes.  Some ended up staying in the repertoire and some did not.  At our height, we were probably baking close to a thousand cookies, bars, fudges, and breads in two days.  We would package these confections up in beautiful trays and cellophane and deliver them to our friends and family on either the day before Christmas Eve or Christmas Eve morning.  People always talked about our cookie trays and hoped they would make the list of deliveries.  I baked with my mother until Jeff got sick.

I always looked forward to the holidays and these family traditions.  Once I became a teacher, it was so nice to have at least two weeks off for Christmas.  I knew that I just needed to get through finals week and then I was free, free, free to spend that time with my mother and family.  Once the exhausting holidays were over, I usually still had at least a week to relax and unwind before gearing up for the new semester.

All of that changed once Jeff got sick.  Jeff was diagnosed late October and began radiation and chemotherapy around Thanksgiving.  I did not help my mother bake the year he was diagnosed.  The following year, he went into the hospital December 12th and was in the hospital during finals week, then came home December 22nd, just in time for Christmas.  He died December 29th.  Ever since his diagnosis, things have not been the same for me around the holidays.

Now, instead of looking forward to all of the family traditions and the happiness, I don't feel any joy really.  I still have the stress and exhaustion of finals week.  But instead of the excitement and joy once finals are over, it's more a feeling of gearing up and bracing myself for the emotions.  On top of that, I also need to buck up now that my mom is gone because I'm the one that organizes Christmas and communicates the plans for Christmas with the extended family.

My sister is trying to continue the tradition of holiday baking with her twin daughters on a significantly smaller scale.  She wants me to be involved but it's just too hard and I just get sad, which is not something I want my nieces to witness.  They are children and they deserve to have the same childhood I did, full of excitement and joy, not sadness and loss.

My sister and I also go over to my parents' house to help my dad decorate since Christmas with the family has always been there.  This is also something that I no longer enjoy, since it was something I did with Mom who is now gone.  This and Jeff's death contribute to this overwhelming blanket of sadness that just hangs over me.

But such is life.  I gotta put my big girl panties on and deal with it.

There's a Japanese saying: Shakata ga nai, which means it cannot be helped, nothing can be done about it, it must be endured.

I miss the excitement and happiness around the holidays.

I miss the naivete of never having lost someone close to me because of death.

I miss the simplicity of being a child around the holidays.

I miss my mom and Jeff.