Fa La La La Forget It

Photo by Hilde Vanstraelen
 www.biewoef.be

Let's just say that my Holiday Spirit has been waning today.  It was running high this weekend as we decorated our tree while big fat snow flakes fell in the background, gently covering everything in white.  I live in the south.  Big fat snow flakes hardly ever fall and if they do, it is even more rare that they stick.  The kids spent the next morning playing out in the snow with neighbors for hours until they came in pink cheeked with frozen snot running down to their chins.  It was revoltingly adorable.  We drank hot chocolate with cinnamon (my fav!) and watched BOTH the Charlie Brown's Christmas movie and Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Perhaps I overdosed on the whole spirit thing over the weekend and that is what made today so very unbearable.  Today felt like a big holiday cheer hangover.

Remember the signs I said to watch out for?  I've been doing my best to recognize and heed them as they come.  That's some hard stuff to do.  Just because I'm seeing the stupid signs everywhere now does not mean I have to like what they say.  A rather insistent sign is currently telling me to change my exercise routine or my knee will be retiring and relocating itself to some nursing home.  Stupid sign.  Today began with a poor excuse for a workout, which just made me all kinds of pissy because the freaking signs are trying to tell me that I'm getting older and (gasp) am not in fact invincible.

From this poor beginning, it seemed like every where I went I was faced with people's worst sides.  Maybe they were having bad days, too.  Maybe all their signs were telling them things they didn't want to hear either. When you pile one person's bad day on top of another though, you just get a mountain of crap.  The summit of my mountain hit me late in the afternoon when I decided to go to the post office (because surely one can find Christmas Cheer at the post office in December) to mail an important package to an important little girl.

The package contained 28 letters to Santa Claus.  The letters were being sent to a little girl in New York who is collecting them to take to Macy's.  Macy's will then donate one dollar for every letter to Santa to the Make a Wish Foundation.  This particular little girl collected 1700 letters last year and wanted to reach 3000 this year.  This little girl is a rock star in my eyes!

So, I mail my letters and am starting to feel just a tickle of the old holiday spirit playing about my sadly withered heart.  As I walk outside, I see a man struggling with an overloaded shopping cart full of packages.

I ask, "Do you need any help?"  Because, remember, I'm now in the holiday groove.

"Nope," comes the gruff reply, and I try not to collapse in on myself from the weight of his stony glare.

"Oh," I stammer.  "Okay."  I practically run to the car thinking, What the hell is that guy's problem.  He clearly needed help.  Why won't he just let me help him?  Why, when I am so clearly bursting with holiday cheer!?!


And then I think, Forget him (except we all know I didn't think the word forget, but I'm trying to be all non-cussy because I have a feeling the F-word might just land me on Santa's naughty list).

So, I am driving home.  Despondent.  Where has all the joy gone in the world?  Why are people such asshats?  What am I supposed to fix for dinner?  And with each new ponder, my spirit sinks lower.  Sitting at the red light (stupid F-ing light - because I'm so low that I don't care which list that fat dude sticks my name on), I watch a big, burly looking man get out of his car, walk to the trunk of the car ahead of him and then run to the driver-side window.

Oh, no!  What kind of suckiness is going on here?  I wonder.

He knocks on the driver's window and the woman's eyes go wide because she's just waiting at a light and her little kid is in the back and why is there a man knocking on her window?

But then, he smiles.  He smiles and holds up something and points toward the trunk of her car.

She looks confused, but that something he's holding makes her get out of the car.

The light is now green, we should all be going.

I watch as he hands her the something and quickly explains it was sitting on the back of her car.  She looks at the item and clutches it to her chest.  That's when I can see it is a lovey.  An old, busted up, broken down, Velveteen Rabbit kind of lovey.  Had she kept driving, chances are that lovey would have been lost forever.  Had that man just ignored it (much like he was now ignoring the angry honking of others waiting to go), the little kid sitting in the back of that car would have probably had many sleepless nights ahead and perhaps a little psychotherapy in her mid-thirties.

The woman hugs the lovey tighter as she smiles back at the hulking man before her.  Then, in a flash, they are both in their cars and they drive away.

Spirit.  Just a little goes a very long way.