This has been a good holiday season, though staying up late nights, visiting with friends and skyping with family (far-away) has been getting my schedule out-of-whack! I didn’t run for an entire week and then ran today on the treadmill (it was icy when I came to work). Not a lot of thoughts going through my mind except for dreams of future holidays.
First off, I am usually the crafty one in our family, making soaps, wine charms, tiny books, bath fizzies, etc. for people for Christmas, but this holiday–with Eco-fiction and my press keeping me so busy outside work, I did not craft a thing. Rather, my husband, who is a woodworker, made our local family and friends these beautiful maple and (I want to say pine) bottle openers. They look just like this one, but are wider. They also have a magnet in the back to catch the bottle caps that fall. Other than that, and my memorial forest donation in honor of my dad (present to Mom), we just didn’t do the consumer thing at all again. I really don’t like it. The glitz, the glamor, the excess–it gets me down.
As I was running today I had this dream of my future. Wow, it doesn’t involve being where I am at, at all. In this dream life, my husband and I fix up a big but old house somewhere else (not here). Somewhere in which it’s cold and crisp in the winter, with bright stars at night, and warm and breezy in the summer. There is a big porch to gather on. There are trees, a nearby creek, a country atmosphere. In this dream, my whole family visits during holidays and summers, and we play games, drink, talk, and laugh.
No more carpools in streams of traffic to work or reminders everywhere of dull holidays: plastic santas and blow-up snowmen, for instance. There is a scene in Brian Adam’s Love in the Time of Climate Change that hits the nail on the head about all that is wrong with blow-up, plastic snowmen.
In my dream it is cold but warm. The smell of pine and burning wood exhilarate the scene, and I have perfected the making of mulled wine. In a simple but big house, with no extravagance, we celebrate. We celebrate life, the turning of seasons, and the love of friends and family. Honestly, what better time can you get but that?
