I don't think I have garlic in my soul, but...........

I admittedly get a little cranky around the holidays some years.

Maybe not quite this bad, but close.

I get frustrated with all the people who venture into town from the countryside and act as though the mall has moved or they don't do this exact same thing every year.  They cut over multiple lanes of traffic, they drive dangerously slow because they somehow think A: the exit to the mall has moved, or B: if they miss it there's absolutely no way they can take the next exit and turn around.  If they miss the exit, they are bound for the next county and are destined to shop for holiday gifts at a run down convenience store that offers only big jewelry and a collection of bongs.  Go home, outliers, and order off Amazon.  Let the rest of us just get to work in one piece, for the love of God.  Add construction on I-565, and fuggedaboudit.  You might as well pull over and choose your favorite three podcasts and just wait it out.

I also believe, as I know many of my friends and readers do, that the holidays are entirely too much about outdoing other gift givers in our circle.  Those "whoever dies with the most toys wins" people do evoke my empathy.  I was that girl, for a long time.  If we had nice stuff and looked good,  then everything was ok, right?  Right?  RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!  For me it was a holdover from my childhood, when my parents were obsessed with what house we lived in (a sign of my father's ability to be a good provider, something his father was never able to sustain) and how we were dressed on Sunday morning (a sign to my mother that we had "arrived", whatever that meant).  They were both raised in poor households, my maternal grandmother a single widow with a child at 25 and my father a victim of his father's raging alcoholism.   I get it.

I present, for your perusal, three photos from my childhood.  Let's break this down from my mother's perspective.

Why oh why was my hair falling down and messed up?  And why did I push the sleeves up so the lacy goodness wasn't showing?  I'm going to go out on a limb and say because I had anywhere from five minutes to an hour after my mother got me ready before we had to go to the portrait studio.  I was not that girl that would sit pristinely on the couch counting the number of trees on the landscape of our velour sofa.  I was a tomboy.  I was also hot natured.

Flash forward a few years to what I think is my fourth grade school picture.  Red was my jam, y'all.  I love it to this day.  My mom's response to this one was most likely "why aren't you smiling?  That's not a smile.  Sigh."  I'm guessing there were some teeth missing in the front.  My curls, however, were on point.  My desire to please my mother had become stronger.  Recess on school picture days were no fun.

And this one.  My sophomore year of high school.  Still rocking the red, and now I was sporting THE 1980'S MONOGRAMMED SWEATER.  Ironically, I think this was the attire that would indeed show in all our minds that we had arrived.  The sad thing was my parents had divorced, and my dad kept the house, the main thing that made us viable in my mother's eyes.  We had a smaller home that I loved, but in her mind we had fallen from grace.  It was all downhill from there.  There wasn't enough monogram in the world to save us.

If you find yourself pondering whether you're in this trap, whatever your reason is for striving to meet some goal out there on the horizon so you can prove you're ok, I am here to tell you that you are already there.  Are your children happy?  Do they know you love them and would dive off a cliff to ensure their safety?  Do they have three meals and a house that they're not afraid to be children in?  If you feel lacking in these things, trust me when I tell you that more and bigger stuff isn't the answer.  I have so many crazy smart friends that learned this lesson years before me, and I'm so grateful to see them living and thriving and raising beautiful, smart, independent children with self-confidence and compassion.  That's where it's at, y'all.

So, back to the holidays.  I confess I do love a good Thanksgiving meal with framily.  I have a wonderful Tribe and we make time to spend being thankful for each other while we eat too much food and tell funny stories and enjoy the ease with which we can be together.  It's worth everything to me.  I will also confess to having Shipt deliver the vast majority of my groceries to me, because the grocery store is another place that makes me Scrooge-y beyond measure.  I will tip the Shipt person generously, for theirs is a battle I have no desire to fight.

So, I will deal with this holiday season by smiling when I want to stab someone in the eyeball, ordering almost every gift online, not having the least desire to wrap anything and being thankful for gift bags.  I will listen to the soundtrack to How the Grinch Stole Christmas in my car.  I will watch Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story and Bad Santa and It's A Wonderful Life.  See what I snuck in there at the end?  I'm not all holiday grouchiness.

I wish, for everyone who reads this, a Thanksgiving abundant with love, enough food to fill the bellies but not commit you to some turkey dish through the end of the year, lots of laughter and a heart that is able to look beyond what we're told is important to what makes our hearts and spirits soar.  If it makes your heart and spirit soar, I encourage you to get all that you can handle.

Peace and blessings,

Gena