Sometimes, losing something one felt attached to turns out to open doorways one would never have thought of opening otherwise.
As I mentioned before, I grew up at my grandparents' house. My parents moved in there, too, up to the year when I finished school and went to study at a university several hundred kilometers away. The same year, my parents bought a house of their own and moved in there, along with grandma who at the time couldn't live on her own anymore.
But she did keep ownership of the old house, which after her death passed on to my mother.
I had always taken it for granted that one day, that house would pass to me.
I was also certain that I would spend my retirement there. I actually had that fantasy of putting everything that my grandparents had owned back in the places where they had kept it, every piece of furniture, every knicknack, every picture.
So, I hung on for dear life to every single piece of my grandparents' inheritance. I even kept my grandmother's aprons.
Then, one day, I learned that my mother had sold the old house.
I was devastated.
For a while, I toyed with the idea of buying it back, or recreating it. After all, I still had a copy of the blueprints.
It took me a long time to realize that my needs for a place to spend my retirement might be dramatically different from what my grandparents needed.
And I also realized that many of my grandparents' things I had kept, or that I had expected to someday come into my possession, did not fit in with my lifestyle at all.
Preserving one's inheritance was something that was very important for my grandparents. Great-grandma's watch, or Uncle Edward's books, were, just by virtue of who had owned them before, treasures to be kept and passed on to the next generation along with the stories of their former owners. For almost every piece in that household, there was a story.As a child, I sucked up those stories like a sponge, certain that I was the keeper of my family's history.
I also imagined that I would someday pass on the stories along with the items to my own children, who of course would be brought up to value them as much as I did.
What I had not thought of was that there might be no one coming after me to pass those things on to.
But that is exactly what happened. I am, at close to fifty years of age, childless. There is nobody left who will memorize the tales of my family after I am gone. And it's almost certain that one day, my household will be dismanteled by someone who is not even a relative.
Knowing this, I have been forced to take a long hard look at the reasons I had for keeping certain things.
What I found was that I had kept a lot of things that I would never even use so I could pass them to my children- who quite probably wouldn't use or need them, either. There were even things that had been worn-out and tattered when I had first come into their possession. Most importantly, there were also plenty of things that might have been at the height of style and fashion when my grandparents acquired them. By today, they were painfully outdated and old-fashioned.
If there is no one I can pass those things on to - apart the fact that imposing last century stuff on my offspring would have meant passing on my grandparents' unhealthy attitude towards such things, too, and would most likely only have annoyed them- that means I am free to decide which items I want to keep to remind me of my childhood home. The old house having been sold means I am free to decide where and how I want to spend my retirement.
It has taken me awhile to come to this point. In a way, it is a scary place to be. Moving away from a path I thought was preordained for me, to a place where everything is possible.
But those very possibilities demand that I release my grip on the things of the past. Spending a sizeable part of my income on maintaining a museum of my family history is not a wise use of my money.
Today, I have better uses for my time, space and resources. Perhaps I will write down some of the family stories someday. But I do not need to keep all of the attendant stuff for that.
And I know that the former owners would not want me to spend my life in a cluttered mess, either.
Julia
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healing. Show all posts
2013/02/21
2012/07/19
Poison gifts
Last night, I went for another go at my bookshelves. The worn-out tomes I mentioned in yesterday´s post were the first to go. And then I went at the hardcover shelves.
Now, as I mentioned, I don´t buy hardcover unless -there is no pocketbook edition, or- it´s a book I so like that I absolutely want a more sturdy edition to last forever.
Thus, a lot of what I have there are presents, namely, from my family.
Having somebody else buy your books for you is a tricky business at best, as in "you know my taste quite well- I already own all of these".
At worst, it´s an attempt to make someone over into what the buyer thinks that person should be.
So, from my dear family, there´s a steady influx of politicians´memoirs, travel experiences, books on theater and opera (I´m not a fan) and odd specimens of rubbish, which usually go into the shelves unread, some with their protective foils still on.
Every time I get one of these, I get angry at the thought of what useful thing the money they shelled out for that could have bought instead. I also get frustrated because I have told them quite often what I wanted, and got one of those pieces of trash instead.
To me, that shows that they are buying gifts for a person who doesn´t exist, a person who should conform to their idea of what their child should be like. Needless to say I don´t fill the bill in the least. And I sometimes think the sole purpose of those books is to make me feel guilty that I don´t.
Which doesn´t incline me in the direction of reading them, either.
Sometimes, DH reads one of those books, but there was one particular book that no one in our household would ever read, which was "gifted" when there was a serious falling-out as a slap in the face in gift wrapping. I always think it´s funny how the word "gift" in English means a present and in German it means "poison". This book definitely represented both meanings.
So, I put it into the recycling bin. I am still mulling over the fate of the other ones- they are good for keeping up those middle-class academic household pretensions when you line them up on your shelves, but then again- who watches, and who cares?
What I did, incidentally, find out was that these books are of interest to so few people that the online resales place I went to to find out if I could at least recoup some of the money wasted on that book had an offer of...9 cents. Not even a dime. And definitely not worth spending wrapping material on.
And definitely not worth keeping around just to have my hackles rise every time I come across that book.
I have better uses for the space that took up, and for my peace of mind.
Julia
Now, as I mentioned, I don´t buy hardcover unless -there is no pocketbook edition, or- it´s a book I so like that I absolutely want a more sturdy edition to last forever.
Thus, a lot of what I have there are presents, namely, from my family.
Having somebody else buy your books for you is a tricky business at best, as in "you know my taste quite well- I already own all of these".
At worst, it´s an attempt to make someone over into what the buyer thinks that person should be.
So, from my dear family, there´s a steady influx of politicians´memoirs, travel experiences, books on theater and opera (I´m not a fan) and odd specimens of rubbish, which usually go into the shelves unread, some with their protective foils still on.
Every time I get one of these, I get angry at the thought of what useful thing the money they shelled out for that could have bought instead. I also get frustrated because I have told them quite often what I wanted, and got one of those pieces of trash instead.
To me, that shows that they are buying gifts for a person who doesn´t exist, a person who should conform to their idea of what their child should be like. Needless to say I don´t fill the bill in the least. And I sometimes think the sole purpose of those books is to make me feel guilty that I don´t.
Which doesn´t incline me in the direction of reading them, either.
Sometimes, DH reads one of those books, but there was one particular book that no one in our household would ever read, which was "gifted" when there was a serious falling-out as a slap in the face in gift wrapping. I always think it´s funny how the word "gift" in English means a present and in German it means "poison". This book definitely represented both meanings.
So, I put it into the recycling bin. I am still mulling over the fate of the other ones- they are good for keeping up those middle-class academic household pretensions when you line them up on your shelves, but then again- who watches, and who cares?
What I did, incidentally, find out was that these books are of interest to so few people that the online resales place I went to to find out if I could at least recoup some of the money wasted on that book had an offer of...9 cents. Not even a dime. And definitely not worth spending wrapping material on.
And definitely not worth keeping around just to have my hackles rise every time I come across that book.
I have better uses for the space that took up, and for my peace of mind.
Julia
2012/02/29
Analogue tweets
...what I heard this noon when taking a stroll along a park around here. A flock of sparrows had been settling on the tips of one of the big- presently leafless- trees there, twittering their little hearts out at the hint of spring in the air. It was that kind of live, unfiltered experience you´ll never get from any computer program.
Being on a spending fast makes me a lot more conscious of such things than I used to be.
It´s all too easy to reduce one´s life to the hunt for more and more stuff, just paying attention to the next sale or the next item you want to have, or even to the work you have to do in order get the money to purchase the next whatever-it-is.
I have been so guilty of that one. There was a time in my life when whole seasons could pass without my paying attention to nature, apart from changing my wardrobe to match the changing temperatures, and I would have to look at a calendar to tell which season it was.
I spent my time at the office, and when I wasn´t there, I was shopping. When I decided what to do with a day off, it was always just the decision where I would go to shop on that day, or if I should stay home inside instead.. I have been, in that time, living near some spectacular sightseeing places I have never visited. What I knew instead was where to find the best bookstores, or where to shop for shoes or handbags.
Actually, I dreaded those days off because I didn´t know what to do with myself if I neither worked nor shopped. Where I work, I can, if I chose, take thirty days in a year off from work. They call that a holiday. Guess what, for at least ten years I forfeited those days off, preferring to keep working. To me, taking time off work was a sign of weakness. I thought only people who weren´t good and satisfied at their job took time off it, while I should be able to just keep on working at it indefinitely.
You can guess where that mindset took me. One day, my body simply gave out, and instead of taking my days off, I found myself on sick leave for several months in a row. What with medical copays and doctor´s orders to rest, going shopping was suddenly out of the question. Instead, I was more or less confined to a flat chock full of stuff I had dragged home, to the point of being completely cluttered. The only escapes were the regular visits to the doctor´s office, or short forays to the mall for the barest necessities like food and TP.
It was during one of those trips that I did, for the first time since I had moved into that city, hear a bird singing. I stood there, looking up and realizing that I was standing next to an enclosed park with trees, bushes, and flowers, and that the sky was blue, and it was summer. That day marked the point where I started to get better. I wasn´t allowed back to work for awhile yet, but I did make use of the free time I had by starting to tidy up and declutter my flat. As that was a first for me and I was living in a flat twice the size of what I have now, it wasn´t that much stuff that got weeded out at first, but it was a beginning. And it helped me when I finally decided to downsize to the flat I live in today.
The what-to-do-with-a-day-off problem has been hanging on a bit longer. Part of it was that mindset of my Granny´s, who was all her life extremely frugal and a firm believer that it was frivolous to leave the house if one didn´t have something serious to do outside of it, with sightseeing, museum visits, or vacations in general being classified as frivolous pursuits. Shopping, on the other hand, was a legitimate reason to leave the house. So, whenever I felt I had to go out of the house, I went shopping. I never even considered going out in my free time for any other reasons.
When I first fell in love with my now DH, that was actually a sore point between us. He would ask me what I wanted to do on the weekend, and I would say "go to .... and shop for...". DH, now, hates shopping. Even if it´s him who needs something, like a new pair of trousers, or shoes, getting him to shop is a bit like getting him to have a tooth pulled (just kidding, when I am shopping for clothes he´s a paragon of patience :)). Thus, the limited range of my suggestions wasn´t satisfying him at all. He wanted to go sightseeing, visit new places, see historical buildings, in short, to do things that definitely did not involve shopping and did not have, by the standards I had been brought up to, any redeeming value at all. There were some weekends where we almost ended up having a tiff when we were driving to a city and instead of hitting the shopping center of it he´d steer me to the next monument, or church, or castle, while I was all the time seething at being kept from taking at least a teensy look at the shops. Still, slowly, I found myself enjoying those excursions. I found out that I loved to discover new places, that being able to see a gothic cathedral in real life was better than seeing its photograph in a book.
And, after a while, I discovered that those experiences were making me a lot more happy than if I had spent the day shopping.
That discovery, for me, was the start of my personal road to minimalism.
Collecting memories instead of collecting stuff. Doing instead of buying something.
It´s quite sad that I had to learn that first.
But now that I have learnt it, I won´t allow myself to forget it again.
Julia
Being on a spending fast makes me a lot more conscious of such things than I used to be.
It´s all too easy to reduce one´s life to the hunt for more and more stuff, just paying attention to the next sale or the next item you want to have, or even to the work you have to do in order get the money to purchase the next whatever-it-is.
I have been so guilty of that one. There was a time in my life when whole seasons could pass without my paying attention to nature, apart from changing my wardrobe to match the changing temperatures, and I would have to look at a calendar to tell which season it was.
I spent my time at the office, and when I wasn´t there, I was shopping. When I decided what to do with a day off, it was always just the decision where I would go to shop on that day, or if I should stay home inside instead.. I have been, in that time, living near some spectacular sightseeing places I have never visited. What I knew instead was where to find the best bookstores, or where to shop for shoes or handbags.
Actually, I dreaded those days off because I didn´t know what to do with myself if I neither worked nor shopped. Where I work, I can, if I chose, take thirty days in a year off from work. They call that a holiday. Guess what, for at least ten years I forfeited those days off, preferring to keep working. To me, taking time off work was a sign of weakness. I thought only people who weren´t good and satisfied at their job took time off it, while I should be able to just keep on working at it indefinitely.
You can guess where that mindset took me. One day, my body simply gave out, and instead of taking my days off, I found myself on sick leave for several months in a row. What with medical copays and doctor´s orders to rest, going shopping was suddenly out of the question. Instead, I was more or less confined to a flat chock full of stuff I had dragged home, to the point of being completely cluttered. The only escapes were the regular visits to the doctor´s office, or short forays to the mall for the barest necessities like food and TP.
It was during one of those trips that I did, for the first time since I had moved into that city, hear a bird singing. I stood there, looking up and realizing that I was standing next to an enclosed park with trees, bushes, and flowers, and that the sky was blue, and it was summer. That day marked the point where I started to get better. I wasn´t allowed back to work for awhile yet, but I did make use of the free time I had by starting to tidy up and declutter my flat. As that was a first for me and I was living in a flat twice the size of what I have now, it wasn´t that much stuff that got weeded out at first, but it was a beginning. And it helped me when I finally decided to downsize to the flat I live in today.
The what-to-do-with-a-day-off problem has been hanging on a bit longer. Part of it was that mindset of my Granny´s, who was all her life extremely frugal and a firm believer that it was frivolous to leave the house if one didn´t have something serious to do outside of it, with sightseeing, museum visits, or vacations in general being classified as frivolous pursuits. Shopping, on the other hand, was a legitimate reason to leave the house. So, whenever I felt I had to go out of the house, I went shopping. I never even considered going out in my free time for any other reasons.
When I first fell in love with my now DH, that was actually a sore point between us. He would ask me what I wanted to do on the weekend, and I would say "go to .... and shop for...". DH, now, hates shopping. Even if it´s him who needs something, like a new pair of trousers, or shoes, getting him to shop is a bit like getting him to have a tooth pulled (just kidding, when I am shopping for clothes he´s a paragon of patience :)). Thus, the limited range of my suggestions wasn´t satisfying him at all. He wanted to go sightseeing, visit new places, see historical buildings, in short, to do things that definitely did not involve shopping and did not have, by the standards I had been brought up to, any redeeming value at all. There were some weekends where we almost ended up having a tiff when we were driving to a city and instead of hitting the shopping center of it he´d steer me to the next monument, or church, or castle, while I was all the time seething at being kept from taking at least a teensy look at the shops. Still, slowly, I found myself enjoying those excursions. I found out that I loved to discover new places, that being able to see a gothic cathedral in real life was better than seeing its photograph in a book.
And, after a while, I discovered that those experiences were making me a lot more happy than if I had spent the day shopping.
That discovery, for me, was the start of my personal road to minimalism.
Collecting memories instead of collecting stuff. Doing instead of buying something.
It´s quite sad that I had to learn that first.
But now that I have learnt it, I won´t allow myself to forget it again.
Julia
2012/01/12
The silence of the wolves
So, the dreaded event has come and passed. I went to that family celebration, and I met my critics in person for the first time in four years. I also met a number of old acquaintances I had not seen for as long, and each of them complimented me on my new weight. From "them", not a word on it. It´s more than I hoped for.
Otherwise, the general mood was that of a pack of wolves faced with a newcomer, not knowing how to treat each other, being extremely careful not to step on any conversational land mines. Normalcy that was not. Not even the semblance of it. But we went through the motions of acting civilised, making small talk and pretending the big bang had never happened. I guess that is the maximum I could hope for, considering how much I dreaded that event and meeting them.
Knowing that that meeting is now a thing of the past instead of looming before me means knowing that now I can go back to doing things, weight-loss-wise, not in order to prepare for that meeting, but for my own sake.
On the one hand, that means no more deadline ahead. On the other hand, the knowledge that I had to go and see them and the desire to be as slim as possible until then has perhaps been too big a part of my motivation to lose weight.
Now that is gone, I will still have to get myself back on track with eating and exercise. I have had a seven-pound regain over the holidays, which I want recondensed as fast as possible, and I´m still clinically obese, which means that I missed last year´s goal, too.
So what do I aim for this year?
Getting below morbid obesity is, of course, still top of the list. Getting back to "normal" BMI would mean condensing another 37 pounds, or almost twice my annual losses from 2010 or 2011, so I don´t think it would be realistic for me to set that as a goal.
Then again, I didn´t start losing in 2010 until late August, and in 2011, there was a six-month stretch of plateaus and regains that effectively stalled my weight loss half of the time. Were I to go down with my weight at the rate I did during the periods of my big weight losses, and not hit another plateau, I could indeed be normal-weighted by the end of the year 2012.
But first I have to get back into the groove of recondensing, which means re-starting to journal what I eat, and being extra careful about carbs.
Three weeks of having to eat a "standard" diet with bread, potatoes, and sugar in it have been working havoc on the control I had over my eating impulses, too, which means I´ll have to apply more willpower than what I needed by the end of last year.
They also had a detrimental effect on my digestion, which I hope will disappear fast when I return to the way of eating that helped me lose those first sixty pounds. If I regard the experience as an experiment, I have proved that I feel less good all over, have poor digestion, and gain weight, as soon as I eat more than minuscule amounts of carbohydrates.
Luckily, the temptations in the shape of Christmas sweets and cakes have mostly left the house by now. The last unopened package of stollen I gave as a hostess gift to my relatives. Let them eat cake, as Marie Antoinette was supposed to have said, while I will return to a way of eating that is better for my body, and my shape.
I´ll see how far that takes me.
Julia
Otherwise, the general mood was that of a pack of wolves faced with a newcomer, not knowing how to treat each other, being extremely careful not to step on any conversational land mines. Normalcy that was not. Not even the semblance of it. But we went through the motions of acting civilised, making small talk and pretending the big bang had never happened. I guess that is the maximum I could hope for, considering how much I dreaded that event and meeting them.
Knowing that that meeting is now a thing of the past instead of looming before me means knowing that now I can go back to doing things, weight-loss-wise, not in order to prepare for that meeting, but for my own sake.
On the one hand, that means no more deadline ahead. On the other hand, the knowledge that I had to go and see them and the desire to be as slim as possible until then has perhaps been too big a part of my motivation to lose weight.
Now that is gone, I will still have to get myself back on track with eating and exercise. I have had a seven-pound regain over the holidays, which I want recondensed as fast as possible, and I´m still clinically obese, which means that I missed last year´s goal, too.
So what do I aim for this year?
Getting below morbid obesity is, of course, still top of the list. Getting back to "normal" BMI would mean condensing another 37 pounds, or almost twice my annual losses from 2010 or 2011, so I don´t think it would be realistic for me to set that as a goal.
Then again, I didn´t start losing in 2010 until late August, and in 2011, there was a six-month stretch of plateaus and regains that effectively stalled my weight loss half of the time. Were I to go down with my weight at the rate I did during the periods of my big weight losses, and not hit another plateau, I could indeed be normal-weighted by the end of the year 2012.
But first I have to get back into the groove of recondensing, which means re-starting to journal what I eat, and being extra careful about carbs.
Three weeks of having to eat a "standard" diet with bread, potatoes, and sugar in it have been working havoc on the control I had over my eating impulses, too, which means I´ll have to apply more willpower than what I needed by the end of last year.
They also had a detrimental effect on my digestion, which I hope will disappear fast when I return to the way of eating that helped me lose those first sixty pounds. If I regard the experience as an experiment, I have proved that I feel less good all over, have poor digestion, and gain weight, as soon as I eat more than minuscule amounts of carbohydrates.
Luckily, the temptations in the shape of Christmas sweets and cakes have mostly left the house by now. The last unopened package of stollen I gave as a hostess gift to my relatives. Let them eat cake, as Marie Antoinette was supposed to have said, while I will return to a way of eating that is better for my body, and my shape.
I´ll see how far that takes me.
Julia
2011/12/02
Wreaths and decorations
When setting up my Advent decorations, I had been somewhat vexed by the fact that I could not find the little decorated wreaths which go over the bottom ends of candles to make them look more festive. I knew for sure that I had had one for every candle holder I put out, and I was fairly certain that I had not decluttered them, either. But they weren´t to be found in my living room cupboards, so I had already guessed I´d tossed them.
Yesterday, when taking the trash down to the cellar, I decided to look for them in the china boxes. Inside a waterproof chest, I discovered, not only the wreaths, but also a whole bunch of artificial flower decorations I hadn´t even remembered I owned.
Now, me and Christmas decorations has always been a mixed story. Christmas at home was always a bit of the "be merry, dammit" variety, my father being about the only one who insisted on there being a perfect feast, which absolutely had to include a real tree, oodles of decorations, and a multi-course dinner that kept my mother and me nailed to the kitchen most of the day, while my Grandparents and myself could have well done without all that ado.
As such things go, the likelihood of anything going wrong rises exponentially when you try to make things perfect, so, there ensued invariably some culinary or other drama which led to tears, door-slamming, and everyone feeling, not festive, but altogether lousy. The whole affair was so upsetting for me as a child, that, like clockwork, right when that gorgeous dinner was about to be served, I came down with stomach cramps so bad that I had to retreat to my room and couldn´t even eat any of the food served.
So, as soon as I could, I decided not to go there for Christmas any more. Which led to another round of drama, because visiting for Christmas was one of those "done" things my parents insist on.
For several years, I avoided Christmas by volunteering for emergency duty at the office over the holidays, that being a reason they had to accept why I couldn´t come.
I was, in those years, glad that I did not have to celebrate Christmasat all any more. One of my more memorable Christmas eves was spent at the office, listening to Gregorian chant on my computer, catching up with work, and enjoying the quiet outside. That was, actually, the first Christmas I experienced where there wasn´t any crying or door-slamming.
How my -otherwise rather intelligent- parents managed to turn the holidays into such a turn-off while claiming all the while that they should be beautiful, still escapes me.
For a while, I had become a veritable grinch. Anything to do with Christmas was, for me, taboo. That did lead to some tensions with DH, who did not have the same kind of Christmas memories I had, and would have liked to have our flat decorated for Christmas, while I flat out refused to have anything of the kind in view.
All through that time, my relatives kept sending me those decorations. Most of them, actually, came from my beloved Aunt, so, I didn´t outright throw them away, but I wasn´t ready to put them up yet. Just to humor DH, I still exchanged decorations for summer and winter, but I kept them relatively neutral, trying to avoid that christmas-y look.
Which is why all of those pretty silk flowers and wreaths were, years ago, unceremoniously dumped into that box and went down to the cellar, waiting for me to change my mind about Christmas.
When I found them again yesterday, I picked out the most beautiful ones and took them up to our flat, and spent the rest of the evening distributing wreaths to candlesticks and poinsettia bouquets to vases, all the while watched by DH who must have wondered who that woman was and what she had done with his wife.
Guess what, the flat looks good. Festive, joyful. And we are going to celebrate Christmas together, not perfectly, but perfectly our way. There won´t be any slammed doors, and there won´t be more than three courses to the Christmas dinner, but I will be able to try all of them. There won´t be mountains of unwanted presents, but the joy of being together. And that is, after all, what Christmas should really be about, isn´t it?
Julia
Yesterday, when taking the trash down to the cellar, I decided to look for them in the china boxes. Inside a waterproof chest, I discovered, not only the wreaths, but also a whole bunch of artificial flower decorations I hadn´t even remembered I owned.
Now, me and Christmas decorations has always been a mixed story. Christmas at home was always a bit of the "be merry, dammit" variety, my father being about the only one who insisted on there being a perfect feast, which absolutely had to include a real tree, oodles of decorations, and a multi-course dinner that kept my mother and me nailed to the kitchen most of the day, while my Grandparents and myself could have well done without all that ado.
As such things go, the likelihood of anything going wrong rises exponentially when you try to make things perfect, so, there ensued invariably some culinary or other drama which led to tears, door-slamming, and everyone feeling, not festive, but altogether lousy. The whole affair was so upsetting for me as a child, that, like clockwork, right when that gorgeous dinner was about to be served, I came down with stomach cramps so bad that I had to retreat to my room and couldn´t even eat any of the food served.
So, as soon as I could, I decided not to go there for Christmas any more. Which led to another round of drama, because visiting for Christmas was one of those "done" things my parents insist on.
For several years, I avoided Christmas by volunteering for emergency duty at the office over the holidays, that being a reason they had to accept why I couldn´t come.
I was, in those years, glad that I did not have to celebrate Christmasat all any more. One of my more memorable Christmas eves was spent at the office, listening to Gregorian chant on my computer, catching up with work, and enjoying the quiet outside. That was, actually, the first Christmas I experienced where there wasn´t any crying or door-slamming.
How my -otherwise rather intelligent- parents managed to turn the holidays into such a turn-off while claiming all the while that they should be beautiful, still escapes me.
For a while, I had become a veritable grinch. Anything to do with Christmas was, for me, taboo. That did lead to some tensions with DH, who did not have the same kind of Christmas memories I had, and would have liked to have our flat decorated for Christmas, while I flat out refused to have anything of the kind in view.
All through that time, my relatives kept sending me those decorations. Most of them, actually, came from my beloved Aunt, so, I didn´t outright throw them away, but I wasn´t ready to put them up yet. Just to humor DH, I still exchanged decorations for summer and winter, but I kept them relatively neutral, trying to avoid that christmas-y look.
Which is why all of those pretty silk flowers and wreaths were, years ago, unceremoniously dumped into that box and went down to the cellar, waiting for me to change my mind about Christmas.
When I found them again yesterday, I picked out the most beautiful ones and took them up to our flat, and spent the rest of the evening distributing wreaths to candlesticks and poinsettia bouquets to vases, all the while watched by DH who must have wondered who that woman was and what she had done with his wife.
Guess what, the flat looks good. Festive, joyful. And we are going to celebrate Christmas together, not perfectly, but perfectly our way. There won´t be any slammed doors, and there won´t be more than three courses to the Christmas dinner, but I will be able to try all of them. There won´t be mountains of unwanted presents, but the joy of being together. And that is, after all, what Christmas should really be about, isn´t it?
Julia
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