Here's what happened:
My pal brought me dinner the other night. Occasion: none. Look on my face: surprised and really happy. She brought it because she has the great good privilege of hearing me prattle on and on everyday about my regular life stress levels. She knew I was having to grade roughly 60 (well, 64 if you must know) student essays. She knew my house was dirty and that I believe in my deepest psyche that a dirty house is pure proof that I am not a Good Enough Woman (worth the click--trust me). And she also knows that I personally could care less about having my house clean beyond the soulful, psychic attack on said dirty house to said identity. And she never shakes her head and makes that *tsk*-ing noise. Plus, she's a seriously good cook.
So she showed up with dinner for me.
The dinner had cute tags on it.
She was smiling like she knew what she'd done was better than anything.
That's because it was.
And even though my Naturopath didn't turn out to be at all mad at me, I'm still working hard to figure out how to wrap my heart and brain around how to make Christmas make sense. I think it might be in something like this: stopping to make sure all of our gift giving is really intended to share love and not intended to prove anything. Even our love. I know: it's complex. It's a fairly new idea I'm chewing on these days. But I recognize that I am fighting against it pretty seriously at this time of year.
I know for sure that this box of food wasn't to prove anything. It was plain old, well-timed love. And I'm sure we could all be figuring out how to give more of that to each other these days.
I think I might be ditching my mysterious christmas project and trying to think instead about how to deliver some love to my family and my people.
I want to figure out how to do the equivalent of this box of food for the people I love at Christmas.
Yes: that's it. That's what I want to do.
In the meantime, just in case I don't pop back on here by the big red and green day: here's a thank you to all of you. For reals. I wish you gobs of cheap fabric. Chunks of time for making--the kind of time where you think you'll only have a little and then it grows and you're surprised by the chance you got to just sit and make something. I wish you good ideas. The luck and blessing to find what you need to make what you need. I wish you a short line at the post office and enough carmel corn to get you from here to Jan 1.
Merry Christmas, Bloggish People Friends.
