Finally Friday! And I’m absolutely wiped out, so I turned to Holidailies for a prompt. It said “Share your best advice for surviving the holiday season.”
My best advice is to learn how to say “no.” I think what stresses most folks out about the holidays is that they feel like they need to say “yes” to every invitation and every bit of crafting, decorating, and baking. This year I said yes to a few things, initiated plans, and put up a tree for the first time in 10 years, but after my salon visit tomorrow, it will most likely be “no” for the rest of the weekend.
Speaking of decorating, here is one of my most cherished ornaments, one from a set of four that my parents broke up to give to their four children. Each ornament was a different color—red, yellow, green, and blue—and we each got one in our favorite color, except for me. My favorite color is purple and there wasn’t a purple one. At first I felt a little left out, but then it occurred to me that yellow was my mother’s favorite color.
She was definitely an angel to me this year, what with the heart attack and all. I remember saying “I want my mother” at one point while the EMTs were working on me. If you’re in health care, you know that’s not a good sign: People often ask for their mothers when they’re about to die. And I did feel like I was about to die, enough so that I said as much to the EMTs, thanked them for trying to save me, and finally said “goodbye.” They told me they were going to lift me, and the next thing I knew, I was in the ICU trying to pull out a breathing tube.
These days, hospitals don’t keep you for long after a heart attack. Aside from insurance companies giving them a hard time about paying for more than a few days, it’s largely for a good reason because hospitals are not all that safe. There are all kinds of pathogens there and it’s easy to pick up a hospital-acquired infection. Still, I was pretty weak when I got home, not to mention sore and a bit anxious about being alone so soon after such a catastrophic event. What if I had another one? What if I died in my sleep?
But then I heard my mother’s voice, clear as a bell.
“It’s not your time.”
It was like she was sitting right next to me. I also felt my father’s presence there, and heard him say “No, sweetheart, it’s not.” Inigo was there, too, softly nudging me back from thoughts of my own mortality.
So far, so good.
And now for tonight’s state Christmas tree, New Jersey’s. This one is going out to two people, Andrew and Kathy. Andrew was my boss at Most Favorite Job, one of those rare gems of a manager who knows how to bring out the best in others and appreciates both the benefits and the necessity of downtime. To this day, he’s a dear friend and someone whose sage advice I always heed. There’s one line of his that stays with me when I’m in a chaotic situation, “Bend like the reed.”
I’ve known Kathy since the early 90s. We worked together at the job I had before I became a contractor at the USPS. If you’ve ever seen thirtysomething, she was the Eliot to my Michael, the creative graphic designer to my uptight writer. Yet we were cut from the same bolt in that neither one of us took it personally when the other said to do something. If she told me I needed to cut a few lines to make something fit, I’d cut a few lines. We’d sit together and try a few edits. “Try this phrase. No, that phrase. Perfect.” If I needed her to move something on a page, I’d tell her and she’d simply move it. And then we’d go for a beer after work. Kathy taught me the art of being calm, too: One of my favorite Christmas memories is of her sitting on the living-room floor of my then-apartment, patiently detangling lights for my tree.
Best part is, neither Andrew nor Kathy got mad when they told me they were from New Jersey and I asked “What exit?”
