Vacations, even short vacations, are an absence from life, even an abandonment of life. An interruption, a pleasant and necessary kind of abyss. There is the return to life. We have been at our favorite inn in Vermont for three nights and two days and are heading back to the farm tomorrow. I am out sync with many people, as usual, as millions of people will be out buying things, the current American transformation of Thanksgiving.
I’m afraid this holiday is one more thing corporations have taken from us, along with our political system, popular culture, publishing and media. A good friend is getting up at dawn, she is looking to buy clothes that are supposed to be sold at 40 per cent off. “Forty per cent off of what?,” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said,”but Black Friday has become the new tradition for me and my family. We love it now, it is our holiday.”
Old Fartism is a debilitating and sometimes fatal disease that spreads the notion in the brains of older people that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and the old days used to be better. I don’t buy that, but I have been wary of corporations ever since I was a young reporter, it is nothing new for me, not a symptom of aging I don’t think. I would hate for my daughter to think our most important family holiday has meaning when we get a big screen TV at a mall or online for 25 per cent off.
Some traditions are worth preserving, all change is not good change. When I take my Dunkin Donuts Senior Coupon for a cup of coffee, I know I will have crossed the line. When my Thanksgiving tradition is going to a mall in search of discounts, that will be another, but this is America, and I try not to judge other people or tell them what to do, how they spend their holidays is their business.
My friend and her kids have fun on Black Friday (so named because it is the day many corporations go into the black, turn a profit.. The Pilgrims might have choked on that.), and so do growing numbers of people, so this is a permanent thing. Get used to it, I told myself, or go stuff it. Nobody really cares what I would prefer to do.
We made a good choice for us. When I heard about the storm, I moved up the reservations, texted Deb Foster, and we took off. We had a wonderful time at our inn, it was the best place to be in a big snowstorm. Deb reports that the animals are all cozy and warm and happy – she did have to chase the brown chicken around to get it into the coop, she was thrown off by the snow. The dogs helped, she said, I’m not sure I want to know.
Families are a complex thing, Maria and I are family to one another now, that is a beautiful thing and yet a sad thing in some ways. We read, walked for miles in the snow, talked and talked.We had a Thanksgiving feast this afternoon, classic – turkey, stuffing, potatoes, Brussel sprouts, pumpkin pie.
I had my quite predictable holiday crash after dinner, the melancholy and depression that hits me at some point during every holiday. As with most people, holidays are fraught with awful memory and sadness for me, and at one point or another, this beast will emerge. I feed him and pet him and count my blessings, he is a part of my holidays.
Sadness can be cleansing, I do not fight it, I wait for it to flow through me like a mountain stream, I will be cleansed. Tonight, some brooding. See you tomorrow from the other side of vacation. Next week, an important week for me. The last week of cardiac rehab. Finishing up my play “Last Day Of A Dairy Barn,” to be a staged reading in the winter sometime, returning to work on my “Talking To Animals” book. Returning to life is complex, bittersweet, but I love life I don’t want to leave it for too long.
