Letting Go of the Perfect Holiday

Tags

Acceptance, adoption, Christmas, expectations, families, gifts, Nostalgia

By: Emily Shirley

We have all seen the Folgers commercial where the big brother comes home from college and starts making coffee. As the coffee smell reaches upstairs, the family comes down to greet him. They are all smiles in the perfectly decorated home with this perfect holiday moment of love all around and… well, perfection.

In other Christmas commercials, the adult children with their perfect families drive up, all smiles and carrying gifts. The food somehow magically appeared without anyone shopping for days, standing on their feet preparing for hours, and stressing over.

I have been guilty of trying to have the holiday depicted in commercials. But I have decided to be honest with myself this year. Those commercials were made up by someone, and many people are doing what I used to do, pretending to have their own version of a ‘perfect Christmas’ because others tell them this is how this season and Christmas Day is supposed to be.

It’s media like the commercials that creates an unrealistic expectation for holiday perfection, that hijacks the moments we could be having with others, or even spending the day alone. And it is this kind of emotional feed that makes us think we have fallen short if our Christmas doesn’t look like the commercials. We get upset with our adult children for not being what the commercials have told us they should be. And what about those people whose lives have changed, and they no longer fit the mold of the families in the commercials. What about the single parents, or those that have lost their spouse, or even children, due to death.

Many older parents are feeling left out of their adult children’s lives at this time of the year. Perhaps these adult children are behaving in ways the parents don’t understand. This can happen when we have certain unrealistic expectations that are not met by someone else. The more likely explanation for their not involving their parents more than they do is that they are working very hard to have their own version of a ‘perfect’ holiday.

We think of Christmas as the season dedicated to everything merry and bright. But let’s face it. Sometimes, it can also be one of the most stressful times of the year. Most of us want a little holiday magic, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. What if the magic happens in the simple moments that we often miss because of our heightened expectations causing this to be a stressful time of the year?  One of the first things we can do is admit that Christmas will never be perfect, or like any of the commercials. They never have been, and they never will be.

We can give ourselves credit for all those “almost-perfect” Christmases that we provided for our children, and others. Now, we can enjoy seeing others having whatever version of Christmas they want for themselves, while we enjoy our own version of this holiday. We can stay home, relax, and simplify things. If decorating is too much to do every year, we can even consider taking a year or two off and just decorating every three or four years, if ever. There are no Christmas police!

The real gift we have at this stage in our life is experience that allows us to step back and accept how things are. We can relax and be grateful for what we have and think about those ‘Christmases past’ that we survived. Rather than stressing over what we must do, we can be grateful for what we don’t have to do. We should all remember the real reason-for-the-season, and beyond that, this day can be focused on young children. It is nice to be able to take it easy. We can even meet up with friends and go to a nice restaurant for dinner, and walk away from the table and not have to clean up after ourselves.

Our gift to ourselves should be to get through the next few weeks without guilt for not participating in this season the same way others are. We can let go of some of the unrealistic ‘magical thinking’ of the past. It is time to adjust our expectations and embrace our own imperfect holiday. We can practice self-care through the holidays by carving out time each day to do whatever reconnects us with ourselves. This is especially important if we are alone this time of the year. 

The magic is there. We must be willing to look for it. We can do our version of this holiday season, based on the season of our lives. The part of the Folgers commercial we should consider is relaxing with a nice cup of hot coffee, Folgers or otherwise, and breathing in that coffee smell, while we munch on store-bought cookies that someone else made. 

About Today’s Guest Contributor:

World traveler and master gardener Emily Shirley is a part time resident of Louisiana and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Writing all the while, she divides her time between two homes. Past careers include Social Services Case Worker and Director and Human Resource Manager. She is currently at work on a memoir titled And Then There Were Ten.

Join Elaine on Mondays for reflections on the writing, hiking and the outdoors, Santa Fe life, and the world as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Check out her newest novel The Hand of Ganesh. Follow adoptees Clara Jordan and Dottie Benet in their  quest to find Dottie’s birthparents. Order today from Amazon or www.pocolpress.com. And thanks for reading!

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Letting Go of Letters

Tags

Adopted daughter, adoptee, Archives, Correspondence, Decluttering, Letters, memories, Nostalgia

“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
January, a great month for new beginnings. Inspired by Marie Kondo, queen of the Declutter World, I once again vow to sweep through the entire house and prune the excess, reduce the redundancies, eliminate the irrelevant. It’s not the first time I’ve embarked a declutter campaign, but this time, I am being non-negotiable. My constant mantra: OHIO (Only Handle it Once). Years of selling stuff at neighbors’ yard sales, donating to charities, giving things away: I still felt hopelessly cluttered. The “things” grew back, multiplied, maybe even reproduced at night while I was sleeping.
Correspondence collections are close to my heart, harder to part with than books, photos, or just about anything else. Because it would be tough, I decided to start there. I recently tackled a column of banker boxes that resided in a closet, unopened, for several decades. I’d do my heirs a favor by going through, keeping a precious few letters, and taking the bulk of them to the recycle bin.
As an adult adoptee, I’ve always believed that the best way to know where to go, one must see where one has been.
“The past is not dead. It is not even past.” —William Faulkner
Not surprisingly, most archived letters were from my parents, both biological and adoptive. Giovanni Cecchini, the birthfather I got to see three times after I was adopted, was a Navy photographer during WWII. When he and his new wife Margaret moved to Amelia Island, Florida, he became a well-known photographer in the town of Fernandina Beach. He gardened and photographed for many years before his death in 1998. I travel yearly to Amelia Island to visit Margaret. On 12/29/91, Giovanni wrote “Another letter from me — lucky you (I guess).”
My birthmother Velma and I had a long correspondence, and I came across her epistle of 2/13/94. She wrote “Dearest Daughter, I had to peek at my Valentine on Friday (I sent one to her every February) but put it away until Monday…Your four parents are very proud of how you grew up to be beautiful with many talents.”
My adoptive dad’s WWII letters provided the material for my book From Calcutta with Love-The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard (published in 2002 by Texas Tech University Press, due to be re-issued by Pajarito Press in 2020). He also wrote to me every Sunday until his death in 1997. His letters were filled with reports of his life with my adoptive mom Reva, observations about everything from world events to the weather. On February 18, 1990, he wrote “Dearest Elaine: This week has featured several wonderful springlike days, but today and to some extent yesterday were more like typical February weather. It has been dull, overcast, and just cold enough to be raw and uncomfortable outside — I know, I tried walking around the lake and even the Canadian geese looked discomfited.”
I am reading through the boxes of letters, keeping a precious few but relegating most of the epistles to the recycling bin. Typed and penned words from the past made time fall away. I was reminded of a time when letter-writing was the way to keep in touch. Those missives kept us close despite the miles in between. Now, with Email, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and other channels of communication, letters are nearly obsolete. With their passing, we will have lost something irreplaceable. On the other hand, think of that person who’d love to hear from you, not instantly. Perhaps it’s not too late to revive the custom of letter-writing.
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Join Elaine once or twice a month on Mondays for reflections on life as seen through adoption-colored glasses. Do you enjoy writing letters? Comments are welcome!

The Goodbye Baby gives an insider view of growing up adopted.

Goodbye, old Home

Tags

adoption, Beginnings, Endings, memories, Moving, Nostalgia, Timeliness

I’m saying goodbye to my home of 45 years. Hard for me believe, but I’m selling the house that’s taken care of me all these decades. The housing market here in Santa Fe, New Mexico is excellent. I can do without five extra rooms to heat and clean, without two acres to tend and without closets for a family of four. Last month I located a nearby townhouse, still in my same neighborhood, but with charm and virtually no maintenance, I decided the time had come. My realtor and I made an offer and it was accepted. The die is cast…

I’ve loved it but I’m leaving.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’ve been endlessly decluttering. Or at least since January. Purging and more purging, but still way too much of everything. But the need to upgrade my current house to put it on the market: that’s a motivator. As the saying goes, I am putting the pedal to the metal.

Time is of the essence. My life has become all about de-acquisition. Packing to move. Room by room, I am emptying every shelf and cabinet. But then there’s the question: “What to do with EVERYTHING?” A garage sale here and there, some things put on consignment. A lot of donating. Once I started to dig, I learned who can use what. Barkin Attic, a charitable resale store that benefits homeless animals, has been wonderful. So far, I’ve given them two desks, a large bookcase, two couches and boxes of kitchenwares. The Barkin volunteer staff is very professional. Two muscular people and a U Haul truck arrive exactly when scheduled, give me a receipt for tax purposes and – voila- the stuff is gone!

Every possession is a responsibility.

Casa Familia, a local homeless shelter, has also been the recipient of my excess. Perfectly fine clothing, in good condition. Office supplies, cleaning stuff, cds. The public library in Los Alamos, NM, has a thriving Friends of the Library resale store. A volunteer named Kevin drove here to pick up 100 of my favorite books. Though it hurt to see them leave, I loved the fact that someone else would read and appreciate them and that the money made by the Library Friends would help.

Speaking of friends, last weekend, Richard and Kathy came over to help me pack. We all worked for hours and finally had to take a break. Richard relaxed in the recliner and I told him that he could have it. Turns out, the couple had been thinking of getting a recliner, and mine (barely used) was perfect. It fit in their car and off it went. One less item to shed.

Still mountains of possessions to review, metaphorical miles to go before I sleep…so I’ll bring this post to a close. The next yard sale will be Saturday, August 24. We’ll offer rock-bottom prices and some giveaways. Wish you could be here!