And we’re off! The busy holiday season is in full swing, and the countdown to Christmas and Hanukah has begun in earnest. It’s a hustle and bustle time, such a joyful time.
But it is also a wistful time for so many of us. It seems we have all lost someone we love, and the holidays shine a spotlight on that empty place at the table, that empty stocking on the mantle. We wonder what we will get them for Christmas before we realize that they are no longer with us. It’s an emotional time.
It can be a stressful time. People can be a little cranky.
A couple of decades ago, I thought I might get beat up on Christmas Eve. I had dashed out to the store to pick up a can of cranberry sauce for Christmas dinner. The grocery store parking lot was packed, and I had to circle around a couple of times before I found a spot.
I was unbuckling my son from his car seat when a big burgundy Suburban pulled up and stopped right behind my SUV. I balanced Myles on my hip, and started to step around the vehicle, when the driver-side door exploded open and out lurched a frenzied, furious female, screaming that I had stolen her parking spot.
Well. Huh. I wasn’t expecting this. Neither was Myles. He whimpered and clutched my sweater in his fist. Again, I tried to step around her, and again she blocked my path. I waited for a break in her rant and then I stated the obvious — “I see that this parking space is really important to you.”
It wasn’t to me.
With very slow and deliberate attention, I strapped Myles back into his car seat, kissed him on his noggin, and got back in the car. I actually fastened my seatbelt and adjusted my mirrors, before backing out of the spot (she had inched back). I drove four spaces closer to the store and reparked the car.
She was waiting for me when I got to the entrance. She looked at me sheepishly, at the baby on my hip, and mumbled, “Sorry.” I, perhaps still in passive-aggressive mode, offered a cheery, “Merry Christmas!” and went to get my cranberries.
I wonder if she remembers this encounter. I wonder why I do. But it’s a pretty vivid memory for me. There was Christmas music playing in the parking lot — Jingle Bell Rock. Chestnuts were actually being roasted on an open fire there on the sidewalk. The whole place was ablaze with poinsettias. And this crazy lady was screaming at me.
Only she wasn’t a crazy lady. She was me; she was you. She was simply behaving the way so many of us often feel during the holidays — irrationally irritated. It can be overwhelming to leave the house in December with all the holiday shoppers and traffic.
I love George Carlin’s observation: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?”
I recently read a great quote by poet Mark Nepo: “The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.” And a happy corollary to being easily pleased, is that you cease to be easily irked. It takes practice though. First, in not reacting grumpily — not even with an eyeroll. (Even if the object of your exasperation doesn’t see your disgust, your own body registers negativity and stores it away in your lower back or neck or left temple.) And second, in starting to change the very thoughts that put you above that pokey driver or angry Walmart shopper. You never know what might be missing from their mantle, what chair sits empty at their table.
We are all messy mortals. You will surely transgress too. It’s okay.
You are that idiot. You are that maniac.
And so am I.
