Reverse psyched

When I was a lad, big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas were basically the easiest times of the year to coast through. First and foremost, school was closed, and since my parents were of the general mindset that doing well in school was my only real responsibility, not having to go to school meant I had nothing at all hanging over my head in the way of obligations (barring some kind of over-the-break long-term project, but I was a procrastinator, so same difference). There were compulsory family gatherings, to be sure, but I was very lucky in that I got along with all of my cousins and there was nary a terrifying grandparent nor awkward aunt or uncle to be found at any point. And, again, my portion of the work being shouldered was zero; all I had to do was wake up, get myself dressed, and pack whatever I might need for a day trip or at most an overnighter, including a big fat book. My father would drive to whichever household was hosting, and I would just sit in the back seat and read until we got there, answer smalltalk questions about school while other people cooked, eat what was served, and then read some more on the ride home again (unless it was too late and too dark).

Needless to say I always looked forward to these times of year a great deal.

But it all changed, as all things do. At some point everyone goes from the role of a child within a family to autonomous adult; or in my case, before I was fully autonomous the family split apart to the point where I was no longer precisely within it. When my mom and dad got divorced, it fell upon me as the one child with a driver’s license to shuttle myself and my brothers back and forth between separate celebrations with each parent, as well as the extended family. So when I graduated college and moved away, I already had a couple years experience climbing behind the wheel of the car instead of into the backseat on holidays, and of course it has stayed that way ever since.

What I’ve found is that I now have to get myself good and psyched up about the holidays in order to tackle and (hopefully) successfully accomplish the necessary to-do’s, whether they involve hosting (cleaning the house, shopping for food and drink, preparing and serving same) or being hosted (packing, driving, herding along the little ones). I still like the holidays, don’t get me wrong, and they’re worth every ounce of effort. But they’re no longer undiluted downtime; they’re a different flavor of work, as I do the pulling rather than simply being pulled along by whoever is in charge. The good news is that the sea-change happened so long ago that the psyching up happens more or less on its own in an unobtrusive subconscious kind of way.

But I also found myself a bit out of sorts today, because all of that psyching up for Thanksgiving was happening and I never, ever got to the “and done” part of the process. Sometimes the finish line is making it all the way back home again; other times it’s simply arriving at a designated point on time, after which I don’t care how or when I manage to retrace my steps. But the staggered (and staggering) illnesses of the kids this time meant that we didn’t actually go anywhere as all plans were systematically negated. In fact, for both my wife and myself there were stretches, days at a time, over the long weekend where we didn’t leave the house at all. As I explained yesterday, it was not exactly the Thanksgiving we expected, but furthermore it was not the culmination of events that my patriarchal self-concept expected, either, and being back at the office feels decidedly strange, even moreso than any Monday after a four-day weekend typically would. Fortunately, it’s incredibly quiet around here today and I have the rest of a full week to get on top of things mentally, so it could be worse. Still strange, though.