Mixed emotions
I’ve been nonstop reading Yuletide instead of working on my spn_holidays, except for the few hours we went out to see The Golden Compass. I had absolutely no idea how much fun Yuletide is, and I’m really regretting not signing up. I looked at the fandom list back in, like, October, and thought “there’s now way I could find three of those I could write!” except now I’m reading like 15 fandoms and about half of them I could certainly have written something for. Recs to come, mostly for my own reference because there’s a bajillion recs lists out there already.
We took the dog downtown and walked around the Westlake area for an hour or so. And rode the merry-go-round, because I am about five years old this time of year. And watched the street musicians, especially a band of 10 or so VERY handsome lads from Chile. We ate at Anthony’s with Nana (that place does the best crab cakes in the world) and I got my yearly Barnes and Noble gift certificate from my uncle (yaay!).
Then over to Grandma’s, in time for Grandpa to read the nativity and get very, uncharacteristically emotional (more on that later) and then off to bed. Sound of Music on TV, which I haven’t watched in ages, and up again at 7:30 to put the ham in and make orange juice and open stockings and do presents and have the HUGE breakfast.
(Me: some cute stocking stuff from mom and dad’s trip to Alaska, little gel pens and nail polish and socks and such).
Then lots of candy and a VERY long round of Catchphrase (basically that old game Password) which is fantastically fun, especially watching the ways different generations approach it and the different references they get. And then helping clean up and off home at 4:00ish.
Presents at home. AAA membership! Also pajamas, cat toys, really nice comfy earbuds, kitchen knives! And Pan’s Labyrinth on DVD. Dad got no less than three digital picture frames this year- must be something in the water. Constance was very happy with the gloves from me (including the adorable Scotty-dog ones!) and she got herself an iPod Nano, 8 gigs, which I am really quite jealous of. How much longer will I be able to hold out before I trade in my shuffle?
It was a fantastic and utterly traditional Christmas, down to the last detail exactly what we’ve done every year since Nana moved out here. It was EXACTLY what I wanted.
Grandpa spent a long time on Christmas Eve talking about the history of their house. It was built in 1946 by my grandmother’s father, and her family first celebrated Christmas in that house in 1947. My grandfather first spent Christmas there the year they both were seniors in high school. Grandma moved out of the house and in with him when they married in college, and then they both moved back when they had been married only a few years. They celebrated Christmas in that house every year but two (the two years they were in Germany). The house itself has had a few paintjobs, a radical landscaping job when my great-grandfather sold off the lot next door in the late 40s, a kitchen addition built by Grandpa before Germany in the 60s, a complete re-wiring and redoing of the basement after my youngest uncle went away to college in the 80s, and another landscaping job as well as a new windowseat, storm windows, and master bedroom and dining room remodels in my memory.
60 Christmases, each one in the same room (though the position of the tree has changed a few times), with stockings hung over exactly the same fireplace (though they kept having to crowd in more hooks). Starting with two parents and a daughter in 47, up through two grandparents, 8 parents, 13 kids, and assorted in-laws, neighbors, and boyfriends now. Someone has read the nativity story every Christmas Eve (except two) with shifting numbers and ages of children to act it out in various ways, in that exact room.
Grandpa announced on Christmas Day that he and Grandma would be taking steps to move out of that house this year. The problem apparently isn’t the stairs, which Grandma insists she can still take just fine (though living in a three-story house that can’t be easily re-arranged to live in one storey would be a bad idea sooner or later). Rather, it’s that they feel that they simply physically can’t maintain it anymore. Though every landscaping job has covered more of the yard in brick and tile patio and rock garden, Grandma’s knee replacement means that she simply can’t do any yardwork at all anymore. The outside needs a paintjob and roof repairs and the foundation has a crack, all of which Grandpa could have easily done himself just ten years ago, but not now. Financially, they can’t hire people to do all this for them, nor can they easily afford the property tax anymore.
They don’t have any answers right now- all they say is that something will change. There are no family members who can move in and take over the house. It would require an immense amount of money invested to make the house presentable for sale- financially, it would be much smarter to not put in that money and just sell it for the land, to someone who would completely tear it down, but no one wants to face that thought. In any case, the housing market is still slow-motion crashing, and they’ve already lost probably a million dollars worth of value from the height of the boom. Dad will try to help them, of course, but there simply isn’t that much they can do. The market is bad, and they need to pull the money out for their health needs.
That house is the ONLY thing that has been constant my whole life. Honestly. I have been thinking about it ever since, and there has been nothing else. No home, no car, no place, has remained so central and so unchanged in my life. I have visited that house AT LEAST once a year, every year (From age 2 to 8 it was once a month… from 10 to 20 it was several times a year. I lived there for six months). It is more important to me than my parents’ current home (where I lived for 10 years) or any place I’ve ever rented. It has always felt like an anchor, like a rock- you can change homes, apartments, jobs, cities, but the cycle of the year will always revolve around Christmas at Grandma’s house. Without that, what can possibly be taken as a constant?
I know that this is just the natural order of things, just what happens when people get older and need to adjust their lifestyles accordingly. I know that our family will not drift apart any more than it would have otherwise simply for the lack that house. I know that nothing other than the symbolic will actually change in my life. Nevertheless, I feel like my world came crashing down, a little bit.
I have been crying about it off and on since noon on Christmas. Not “my dog died and I got dumped and my world is ending” tears, but just a constant, low-level sadness at the way things change and pass into memory and can never be reclaimed.
We took the dog downtown and walked around the Westlake area for an hour or so. And rode the merry-go-round, because I am about five years old this time of year. And watched the street musicians, especially a band of 10 or so VERY handsome lads from Chile. We ate at Anthony’s with Nana (that place does the best crab cakes in the world) and I got my yearly Barnes and Noble gift certificate from my uncle (yaay!).
Then over to Grandma’s, in time for Grandpa to read the nativity and get very, uncharacteristically emotional (more on that later) and then off to bed. Sound of Music on TV, which I haven’t watched in ages, and up again at 7:30 to put the ham in and make orange juice and open stockings and do presents and have the HUGE breakfast.
(Me: some cute stocking stuff from mom and dad’s trip to Alaska, little gel pens and nail polish and socks and such).
Then lots of candy and a VERY long round of Catchphrase (basically that old game Password) which is fantastically fun, especially watching the ways different generations approach it and the different references they get. And then helping clean up and off home at 4:00ish.
Presents at home. AAA membership! Also pajamas, cat toys, really nice comfy earbuds, kitchen knives! And Pan’s Labyrinth on DVD. Dad got no less than three digital picture frames this year- must be something in the water. Constance was very happy with the gloves from me (including the adorable Scotty-dog ones!) and she got herself an iPod Nano, 8 gigs, which I am really quite jealous of. How much longer will I be able to hold out before I trade in my shuffle?
It was a fantastic and utterly traditional Christmas, down to the last detail exactly what we’ve done every year since Nana moved out here. It was EXACTLY what I wanted.
Grandpa spent a long time on Christmas Eve talking about the history of their house. It was built in 1946 by my grandmother’s father, and her family first celebrated Christmas in that house in 1947. My grandfather first spent Christmas there the year they both were seniors in high school. Grandma moved out of the house and in with him when they married in college, and then they both moved back when they had been married only a few years. They celebrated Christmas in that house every year but two (the two years they were in Germany). The house itself has had a few paintjobs, a radical landscaping job when my great-grandfather sold off the lot next door in the late 40s, a kitchen addition built by Grandpa before Germany in the 60s, a complete re-wiring and redoing of the basement after my youngest uncle went away to college in the 80s, and another landscaping job as well as a new windowseat, storm windows, and master bedroom and dining room remodels in my memory.
60 Christmases, each one in the same room (though the position of the tree has changed a few times), with stockings hung over exactly the same fireplace (though they kept having to crowd in more hooks). Starting with two parents and a daughter in 47, up through two grandparents, 8 parents, 13 kids, and assorted in-laws, neighbors, and boyfriends now. Someone has read the nativity story every Christmas Eve (except two) with shifting numbers and ages of children to act it out in various ways, in that exact room.
Grandpa announced on Christmas Day that he and Grandma would be taking steps to move out of that house this year. The problem apparently isn’t the stairs, which Grandma insists she can still take just fine (though living in a three-story house that can’t be easily re-arranged to live in one storey would be a bad idea sooner or later). Rather, it’s that they feel that they simply physically can’t maintain it anymore. Though every landscaping job has covered more of the yard in brick and tile patio and rock garden, Grandma’s knee replacement means that she simply can’t do any yardwork at all anymore. The outside needs a paintjob and roof repairs and the foundation has a crack, all of which Grandpa could have easily done himself just ten years ago, but not now. Financially, they can’t hire people to do all this for them, nor can they easily afford the property tax anymore.
They don’t have any answers right now- all they say is that something will change. There are no family members who can move in and take over the house. It would require an immense amount of money invested to make the house presentable for sale- financially, it would be much smarter to not put in that money and just sell it for the land, to someone who would completely tear it down, but no one wants to face that thought. In any case, the housing market is still slow-motion crashing, and they’ve already lost probably a million dollars worth of value from the height of the boom. Dad will try to help them, of course, but there simply isn’t that much they can do. The market is bad, and they need to pull the money out for their health needs.
That house is the ONLY thing that has been constant my whole life. Honestly. I have been thinking about it ever since, and there has been nothing else. No home, no car, no place, has remained so central and so unchanged in my life. I have visited that house AT LEAST once a year, every year (From age 2 to 8 it was once a month… from 10 to 20 it was several times a year. I lived there for six months). It is more important to me than my parents’ current home (where I lived for 10 years) or any place I’ve ever rented. It has always felt like an anchor, like a rock- you can change homes, apartments, jobs, cities, but the cycle of the year will always revolve around Christmas at Grandma’s house. Without that, what can possibly be taken as a constant?
I know that this is just the natural order of things, just what happens when people get older and need to adjust their lifestyles accordingly. I know that our family will not drift apart any more than it would have otherwise simply for the lack that house. I know that nothing other than the symbolic will actually change in my life. Nevertheless, I feel like my world came crashing down, a little bit.
I have been crying about it off and on since noon on Christmas. Not “my dog died and I got dumped and my world is ending” tears, but just a constant, low-level sadness at the way things change and pass into memory and can never be reclaimed.