I can tell you are a very inspiring worship associate Hops. I am in awe of your detached and dutiful care of your mom. You look after her with great constancy. This is no small thing or mere knack, but must be the result of evolution and gaining in wisdom - and this is where I stand in awe and appreciation of what you have accomplished. I strove constantly to reach that kind of place when I was caretaking (in such a rainbow of senses of that word) my dad; it was completely out of reach for me. But somehow I like to have an idea of you kicking up your heels on a beach somewhere (say, Aruba), wearing one of Uli's creations from Project Runway last year. Maybe that could be a plan for a future holiday.
Well, this topic definitely made me think of our holidays. I don't have any especial feelings about the consumerism (distaste) or the outward trappings (sometimes we did them, sometimes not). Our holidays were relatively okay as long as I did not mind my dad getting me what he thought I should have. This does make creating an xmas wish list perplexing because it is not so simple as listing what you want, but is an exercise in listing what your best guess your dad thinks you should have is. What a good little mirror! The Role is clear for a holiday like that and it means you work up genuine enthusiasm for receiving what your NP thinks you should have, just as if you really wanted it.
The next part of xmas I always found the hardest though. After the presents were open and "The Girls" (that's me and my sister) cleaned up - then the whole day was like Simon Says. The whole day was about absolute obedience to my dad's wishes and commands. Usually it was warm enough that we would wash his car. This is not a simple process where we go out and do it. No. My dad 'managed and supervised.' He sat and directed our every move, from how the wheels were soaped (thoroughly and copiously) to how the rinsing was to be accomplished (with sheeting action). If we were cooking, then he managed that. Don't get me wrong, normal weekends had a fair bit of this, but holidays for some reason were particularly intense. I think it was that he could extract extra in return for presents or something. It's hard to convey the total commitment of time and self to the will of another person, without any thought at all of what you want to do, would rather do, might like to do. I know sometimes, before I learned, I had the foolish temerity to verbalize what I would rather do, suggest something to do - ha ha, what a betrayal, how selfish.
One year when I was dating my H, he and I went up to visit for turkey day. As 'tradition' dictated, after dinner we (that is my sister and me, not my future H as an outsider) were available for the complete convenience of my dad. He had my sister and I catalog part of his book collection. He 'managed and supervised.' He had invented an exacting, multi-step process that involved him sitting at a computer from where he directed me to pick up a book and recite bibliographical information, for my sister to write in the number he assigned to the book and place it on the shelf or in a box according to his specifications. Then we would wait while he made an entry to the special database he had created. Oh my, what a jolly time was had by all. My future H was sitting out of everyone's sight line, except for me, and was silently laughing uproariously. Of course, as usual, I asked my dad why he did not use an existing database (Access) or existing catalog system (Dewey Decimal), but with the force of a thousand repetitions, my dad waved away my whinging complaints as female foolishness. Because Iphi still didn't get it, that it was not about that. I really liked it that my H laughed at my predicament. It was freeing that he saw the absurdity in it, and as Mr. Bennet says in Pride & Prejudice - "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"
The punch line, to me, is that ND was planning to give away some part of his collection but he wanted to catalog it before he did that so he could have a record of what he had previously owned. Mmmmmmmhmmmmmmm.
(Iphi, you just don't understand. These high, abstract things are too far above your venal, low mind.)
Holidays!
My idea of a holiday is to lie around doing very little (and certainly no car washing, intensive house cleaning, errand running for imaginary items from closed stores, or library cataloging(!)) other than reading several books at once, eating chocolate and dozing at will. Fortunately my H shares this view point. Ideally I would like to plan fun excursions for holidays and maybe as a parent I will so that my child doesn't climb the walls with boredom.
