Sylvia's Journal

A night full of dreams; about old friends in Holland; someone going back to school to become a doctor; narrow streets and someone explaining why in Holland people have things delivered rather than dragging them home from the mall; a trip to a lush vineyard with an abundance of fruit – full summer, and no one there to eat the fruit. A trip with women who used to be girl scouts who revealed to me that once a girl scout, always a girl scout, entitling you to camp out with the young ones, given one’s own tent, out in the front yard of a hotel – wondering, do I like to sleep in my hotel room or on an air mattress in a tent? And, would there be snakes in the front yard? And then finally coming home to Lobster Cove with our land clearcut from trees and brush and seeded with a rolling lawn onto the water – clean, simple and boring, with the cove turned into a lake. I did not like it.

In between these various chapters of my dream I woke up and then fell asleep again – I am still a little bit on Bangla time. The clear cut land was the last part of the dreams, or possibly the most memorable one. I think it is a reaction to the clutter and complexity of our lives these days. I have been playing with the idea of getting lots of boxes and packing things up and move them out, like books not read, clothes not worn, toys not played with, and pans not used, etc. And to bring these to people who would could or would use them. One of the local aid agencies had its basement flooded and so lost its Christmas toys for poor families. There is plenty of need out there.

But then I don’t act on it because thatwould be another (huge) chore and I already feel overwhelmed with things that need to be done, fixed, completed, read, written or organized. Even having a Christmas tree at this point is too much as it requires thinking of where to put it in our house with the displaced furniture everywhere, boxes, piles of things that cannot be in their ordinary places. We are still waiting for the new fireplace to be delivered (someone made a mistake) and the (de)construction crew to show up. Now, the best place to be is in the empty living room – I love the open space and am not sure I ever want to move things in there again. It brings up memories of apartment/house hunting and standing in the middle of an empty living room and imagining what living there would be like (before the inevitable clutter moves in).

There are many reasons why I don’t like Christmas. One of them is the boxes with Christmas stuff that come up from the basement as soon as the Christmas tree enters the house (which is why I try to postpone that moment as long as I can to the great consternation and frustration of the rest of my family). All the stuff in the boxes needs to be hung or placed on empty spaces, like Axel’s plastic reindeer set with the missing legs that, without its memories of Christmas long ago, is simply ugly; the porcelain elves with their bare bottoms sliding up and down candles, what to do with those when you have no childhood memories that make them attractive?

As always I am struggling through this Christmas season. At Quaker meeting yesterday I listened to people talking about how wonderful this season is and I feel like Scrooge, saying ‘bah, humbug!’ My experience of Christmas in America has always been about shopping, not quite being able to afford it and then paying for the madness during the dark days of January and wondering why I got so carried away. My own Christmas memories are so different – large family meals, a Christmas tree with real candles, red and white, positioned with care in little clip holders so they stand straight and won’t drip their wax on the ground or branches below, and a large bucket with water next to the tree, just in case.

Newspapers show pictures of out-of-luck families that cannot celebrate Christmas because there is no money for gifts (note the ‘because-there-is-no-money-for-gifts). No matter what people tell me, Christmas is about gifts. It’s hard to swim upstream and pretend that Christmas is about grace, love, light, family. I have this terrible urge to escape to a place where Christmas either doesn’t exist or where it is not associated with gifts, as it used to be in Holland (but I suspect that has changed now as well).

Axel is trying to coach me to be more relaxed and ignore the gift giving but it is hard because all the talk around me is about gifts and the three shopping centers on my way home create enormous traffic jams for the next few weeks at any time of the day. Bah, humbug.