The Holidays

The holidays seem to bring out either the best or the worst in us. In my family, it's usually a combination of the two. We are initially excited and prepare meticulously who will bring what and where This event will be held and how. The problem begins well before we are all in the same place at the same time. Now, I raised these people so I should know what they're about, but I seem surprised every time when things don't play out as planned. Well, I shouldn't say surprised, but more of shocked would be the appropriate adjective. I shouldn't be either, as the same issues happen every single time we are celebrating holidays.

It's a good thing when we're all actually eating, as when there is food in our mouths, we can't speak at the same time. Jews, like Italians or Greeks or Chicagoians, are highly emotional and loud creatures and we tend to talk all at once. The loudest one will be the one who is heard and so the volume increases to the glass-breaking point. Glass doesn't actually break of course, but you think it will. At this point, shy people in my extended family are usually quietly freaking out in a corner. I try to reassure them that this is all normal for us and they have nothing to fear. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. Frankly, I've never understood quiet people. They always seem to have an agenda for which I am not privy to. Don't get me wrong - I love quiet people too. I just don't understand people who don't express themselves. I think that as soon as I leave the room, they will be talking behind my back. But then, why would they? I'm simply not that important. But you never know....

I'm also leary of people who don't finish all the food on their plate. How can you leave a little bit - or a lot of food on your plate? Didn't their mother raise them with the same quality education that they had to eat everything on their plates because people in Russia were starving? We were, although I never understood how finishing the food on my plate had anything to do with starving Russians. As far as I was concerned, they could have the peas and carrots and broccoli, although I would have been smacked if I had told my mom that. To this day, it is a compulsory act on my part to finish every morsel on my plate, whether I am full or not. My mother accomplished her goal and I'm sure starving Russians thank her.

So, the holidays. A time when we eat truckloads of food and sit around and play games, sing or discuss politics, religion or the people who frequent Walmart. Sometimes these conversations lead to angry discourse, slamming fists or rolling of eyes, and sometimes they lead to much laughter. Sometimes I wonder when and how my children became autonomous adults, who all have strong opinions and loud voices, much like their mother. I wonder how their childhood was so fleeting and seems like so long ago, and yet it really wasn't. I wonder how their children will be when they are grown, and I hope to see my great-grandchildren. I realize that these people who I bore and raised have become their own individual persons, but still have a bit of me in them. And although I did a mediocre job in raising them, they have grown to be intelligent, spiritual adults with whom I am very proud.

So with all the bickering and the attitude, the laughter and the love, we're not as dysfunctional as once I had feared. We are normal, opinionated and stubborn people who express our feelings openly and without abandon, and as long as we don't hurt anyone else, we are, in fact, ok. Thank you, Lord for the holidays, for it's at these times that we learn how to link our past with the present to create memories for our future.