Change on the home front is a constant but some time periods are more like rapids with swirls, eddies, and water rushing over submerged objects rather than the bucolic progress of a gently meandering stream.
The Holiday rush has ended, sort of, but just like this day that has the name of medieval, or possibly older, origins a sense of confusion about this next period aka the last 10 days of Christmas exists. That is how it is with our family life over the next few days and weeks: a bunch of eddies, swirls, and steady progress toward who knows what or where.
It’s been a hectic few weeks. Zilla moved back in with us for the last few months of her university days, with her 110 lb. puppy. Hubby decided in July to take a short semester-long sabbatical this Fall. I frantically tried to get as much of a book written as I could but became overloaded in October and haven’t gotten much done for about six weeks.
All this fal-der-al, and fiddle-dee-dee is a way to say I do not have as many neato keen discoveries for you today as I might have wished for a Must Know Monday or a Friday Finds and Facts.
I’m looking forward to being able to focus and follow-through on projects big and small beginning mid-January after my hubby is back teaching and researching everyday at the U., and I’ve helped Zilla safely move across the country to begin her life as half of a couple. Guess I better start saving up for a wedding in a year or two. She won’t live with someone without some sort of promissory portable wealth (a phrase from my anthropology days) of some sort. She’s my daughter and she learned her lessons well; you know, cows and milk and such.
I have to admit I’m looking forward to a road trip, even in the middle of Winter. I discovered, only a few years ago, that I love solitary road trips. There is something about the call of the open road that I just can’t resist given half a reason to venture out on one.
A bit of a digression here: I haven’t been on the road since driving back from my Mom’s place for the last time after caring for her as she passed away in 2007. That last trip wasn’t fun. There was another trip that was hard too, it was the one where I stopped to see my brother on my way to the Counter-Inaugural in January of 2005. It was the last time I saw him and was only a few weeks before he passed away from cancer. I suppose this may seem a bit morose but this Christmas Day was the 25th anniversary of my Dad’s passing. Some anniversaries just can’t be forgotten.
But it is time for some perspective that only the road seems to be able to give to me. Some of my less than wonderful life experiences taught me that I was only safe when I was by myself. In a car in the middle of the country, hundreds of miles from home where people know to look for me, and hundreds of miles from a destination where people expect me to be at some point in the future seems safe to me. There is a section of the book on this: “Inversion of the Expected.” It is, I believe, a sort of protective semiotic strategy but that is too heady and abstract a concept to take up head or thought space during the holidays. I want to think about this more and in relation to a couple other ways people create rather intricate behaviors supported by belief systems that may be based on total logically created poppycock.
But you will just have to wait to find out more about all that, because it is a time for conversation with family and friends over jigsaw puzzles and board games while sipping mimosas or hot chocolate and nibbling on gingerbread and chocolate truffles, and have one of each for me will you, please, as I can’t for many reasons. The Time of the Longest Nights, the days around the Winter Solstice, the 12 days of Christmas, the 8 days of Hanukkah, the 7 days of Kwanzaa, call it what you will is a time for hot drinks, rich food, and leisurely getting together with friends and family over a longer period of time than other times of year seem to allow these days.
Hope your holidays are continuing and you are with those you love!
I have never taken a solo road trip. Wow, that seems weird.