Tag Archives: food

The Last Holidays of the Year

Posted on by

0

It always happens, but I always forget.  The night of Halloween starts the cold, and it continues until there is snow on the first night of the new year.  The ice is black and is so dark that it is invisible until the flurries of snow coat it, making skid marks visible.  The only way to travel is to go slowly and carefully, even the buses and the cyclists.  The hard part is  the flying ice pellets because the lake water rose and froze so quickly to become bullets of ice water.

I am counting down the days, and suspiciously guessing that a deep snowfall will happen before Christmas morning, making work fill our holiday.  In some ways I anticipate this, eager to see the men in the shovel machines–the small ones as well as the giant ones.  It is almost as if the snow melts and galls down the sewers just from the weight of the tires.  I feel more hopeful seeing that the city has not died on  Christmas Day.

The Christmas Time means that I see familiar people in a different way.  Sometimes my behavior changes, but I don’t always know what I am doing.  Sometimes if I just promise to make my money useful, helpful, I start seeing opportunity.  Then comes the work of budgeting appropriately as well as saving enough for the things I like.  I try not to act as if I am in Las Vegas, as there is no benefit in that.  Do I want to win hearts, or do I want to win money?  Feeling at home where I am before the new year is sometimes dependent on the feat of promise.

I also like Christmas, just for the food that becomes available when usually food is not so rich.  I like the busy-ness that excuses my absence from the usual things and places, and the sudden filling of my schedule with functions of food and music.  I like that everyone becomes important, not just the people of power and the famous.  I like that my heart knows what all this Christmas is.  That there is time to find an ever-green-tree, time to decorate it, and time to just spend time in places that as close but different.  I like that there is joy, and peace, and merry-ment.  I like that there is happiness and sleeplessness on the new year eve.  I greeting Christmas as well as greeting that first of the year, as early as I can, which makes staying up until midnight on those two nights a treasure.  The excitement of the first minute is a pleasure an joy.

Only a week separates the two most important events of each year.  It is easy to be generous, grateful, and happy, in this continuous way.  The time of a week is just the perfect amount of time, and is a reminder of what the entire time has been about and what the coming of another year will become.  The entire world is aware of these holidays, regardless of creed, religion, ethnicity, or status.  Whether child or grandparent, age is no barrier, no limit, to participating and understanding the one-ness of the world as it looks at itself, and appraises the situation of marking this year-end and year-beginning, as it comes.  December and January are the months the entire world unites, knowing the meaning of these two months, in agreement of this meaning, without malice, disrespect, or dishonor.  And so, in this agreement, the world celebrates existence, and the evidence of this existence.  There is no doubt or hate of it all.

The awareness grows.  And knowing grows too.  Snow, and cold are Christmas staples, which prove that warm hearts will come out.  So, it has been a month, and another month more is here.  Halloween, Christmas and the New Year will have their run, and then, the usual rest of the twelve months will have their turn.  Being old enough to anticipate these events is definitely something I have grown into, and is something that I invest myself in.  I encounter it in other people too….  The need to celebrate what this world we live in has become.

Fromm witches and goblins to Santa Claus and the New Year kiss, it is a glorious time, a precious time, and I have hope for it, because it is where I first had hope and fun.  The last part of the year is always what we will remember, it we remember anything out of an entire twelve months.  Here is to what is, what will become, and what we will change.  A glass of champagne, will be how we hold on to it all, toasting the past, the present and the future.  I toast you, and whatever language it is you use to greet the holidays.  Good health, good fortune, and great wealth!

Surprise Dinner Party

Posted on by

0

I am surprised by guests arriving for dinner. I thought before the bell rang, that I would make something microwave safe. But the bell rang, and I smiled my surprise. I generally hate anything not scheduled as it seems there is no preparation for the work involved. Again, another surprise with these surprise guests! They brought take-out from the pizzeria.

I wonder about increasing my cholesterol level…. Is it possible to die from too much cholesterol? I often fail to understand what it is doctors are actually telling their patients. And I hesitate to change my diet without the educated and tested opinion of my professional doctor. I do not demean. In fact, I am sure doctors know the exact answer. I just fail to understand as I can’t figure out. I still regret not being able to get into medical school, and, I still pursue the habit of reading all labels including those on medication bottles. Alas! Surprise guests and the mysterious medical profession! Both are uncontrollable!

We eagerly take the pizza to the dining room. No one uses the dining room. It is the place where things that don’t belong have a space. Vases of delicate flowers and breakable containers and fruit that need to ripen, as well as the good cutlery and the good china, and the odd pictures that are framed and bought from an expensive gallery, all things that have a space in the dining room. There are all the things needed in a room and a dining room, but we don’t do more than walk past or walk through. The ripening fruit are fragrant, and remind each of us to get the daily dose of vitamins that don’t come in candies and donuts.

With all these guests meandering around the house, holding greasy pizza and cold soft drinks from the fridge, I am scattered. A greeting here, an apology there, an encouragement to guests to help themselves to anything in the fridge or pantry, and the reminder I keep telling myself to get the pot of coffee on as soon as I have a minute. I am glad that people come over, as often enough, I am alone in a big place that leaves me quiet time and peace to search my soul much too thoroughly. I am best friends with myself. It is a comfortable arrangement, but also, it is a dangerous game of trying to make a lot of things that are important to have a lot of meaning in my life. It is a lop-sided balance of happiness. I find I hesitate to share these precious things with other people, and I delve deeper into the deeper meanings that fulfill the life of acceptance and achievement.

The night carries on. People are soon screaming and laughing and the music — a jazz party — soon adds the ambiance as someone finds the radio. I have forgotten the list in my head of things I need to do to make my guests comfortable, and I am now hopping on my toes to the rhythm of bites of conversation. Everything is happy. I am carefree. And my guests do not want to leave. Saturday night means that everyone is allowed to forget the obligations of all respectable people. We will add an extra ten dollars to the babysitter’s payment when we get home, and we will even take the extra care of cleaning up our dog’s accident. It is worth these few things as people sharing pizza, pop, and the air of a little-used dining room, is precious and golden. Time does not wait for these moments or these days.

By the time the dinner party is over and the guests leave, we are all late. Like the guests, we also have to clean up the pizza boxes and take out the recycling. We have to throw away the coffee grounds and wash the wine glasses. I am tired, and I sigh in relief. Yet another surprise come and gone, and we are all alright.