Monday, December 14, 2009

Tis the Season

Does anyone else get flat-out emotional during the holidays? Remember the old Folger’s Coffee commercial where the guy surprises his family by coming home at dawn… “Peter, you’re home!” I cried every time. Each Christmas program my kids performed in--even year after year when they sang about the inebriated grandmother getting run over by a reindeer—had me weeping. I don’t know if it’s the solstice, shorter days with not enough sunshine, memories, expectations, or what, but I am a puddling, sniveling mess all season.

Today I went to a book signing event hosted by our Frontier Market. They had several local authors at tables throughout the store. Mostly, they looked bored and lost and wondering how to attract organic food lovers over to their tables to sell them romances, children’s books, or books on tough love. I wanted to show support and generate good authors’ karma by buying books and hoping it comes back to me. (Does karma work if there’s a mercenary element to it?—a topic for another day.)

I started chatting with an author of several books about speaking to animals and plants and generally being one with the world. I might be a skeptic about just how far the intuitive mind goes with respect to, say, the family goldfish. But the author drew me in with answers to my questions about just how she asks animals questions.

Bottom line: with her talk about dogs and how they react to their human, combined with my seasonal emotional imbalance, tears filled my eyes and I ended up buying a book I’ll probably never read just to get out of there. You see, our old dog “crossed over” this summer and I miss him. It’s also the first Christmas I won’t see either of my grown children and that’s the tough part of this year. I pretty much melted in the middle of the supplements aisle.

I love Christmas. Trees, presents, decorations, cards, lights, tinsel—and tears.

2 comments:

  1. Reading this made me chuckle, but even more importantly, made me reflect on the generosity of spirit the season represents. To express the pure emotion of the season with tears is beautiful.

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  2. The holidays make me feel so wrung out, my eyes are so dry they sting. Too little time to write, too many mixed memories and current day obligations and expectations. Crying might be better. I might have to dig out a movie that makes me cry every time. Maybe Elephant Man, Beaches, Wizard of Oz. Or maybe I'll look at the synopsis of my new book and see if any of it warrants tears. Thank goodness I have sisters to share the season with - even if one is from a distance. Love ya sisters! Inkpot

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