We have finished Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays, one that involves food and travel. My ride to New Hampshire on Thanksgiving Day so as to avoid the other 19 million other travelers meant driving through Vermont with so little traffic that I found myself wondering if I really do have cell reception since some of the remote stretches had a certain Stephen King feel to them, such as the seemingly empty motel that still advertised "FREE LONG DISTANCE CALLS".
I do like the winter holidays because they are places that are warm in a time when the world is cold and dark--so much so that I have already checked to see when the solstice is: December 21st. This time was always the most difficult time of the year when I was working full time, not because of the end of the semester or the Christmas rush, but because they both happened in such cold and dark that I needed at least two (and sometimes three) alarm clocks to get me up in time to make it to work. Getting up in pitch black went against all my body was telling me. And then ten hours or so later, I drove home in an equally dark and cold world. Although the last few years I had an office with windows, they were not as much comfort as I expected, probably because day in and day out I looked out on the many shades of grey (well, except for a couple pine-type trees) in a parking lot. Grey grey grey and little sun.
But once I got home in the winter, I could not imagine living any place that had no winter as I know it. Although every summer I look at the braided rugs in my house and tell myself I should be rolling them up and putting them in the garage for the season so as better to see the floors, I never do. And in the winter I cannot imagine not having the braided rugs on the floor for their bright colors, their coziness, their comfort.
Since I now have time to think a thought or two uninterrupted, in the spirit of the season: I am grateful not just for the snow and the dark and the nip in the air, not just for company and pies and Thanksgiving, not only for the spirit of Christmas. I am grateful for being able to watch, again, the Alistair Sims' Christmas Carol, and It's a Wonderful Life--and maybe this year also Love, Actually, sappy in some ways but also the one place that I know that makes the point that on the godawful day when the Twin Towers fell, nobody involved left messages of hate; the messages were all about love. Plus the movie gets the important silliness of school pageants right, and Hugh Grant does a credible High Grant version of a Prime Minister. And who--anyone who is not a Grinch, that is--wouldn't think it was worthwhile to watch Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson once a year?
Anyway, here I offer, in the spirit of the season, more that I am grateful for. It is not a comprehensive list. I give thanks and I celebrate..
First: shoes. More specifically, comfortable shoes. I am beyond wearing heels although I did keep a pair of dressy-enough black flats, just in case. The extra dollars for shoes by Clarks or Ryka or Hotter (this last a British company with shoes just this side of dowdy) are worth the money. (As are cushy heavy socks, but let's set those aside for now.) My shoes are flat but fashionable, maybe to the point of being nondescript--and if that is the case, so be it. There was a time when I wore bright blue heels, but those days are long gone (and I am not sure what good they did me anyway except feel good when I took them off). Once I made my peace with the ideas that shoes exist to assist transportation (well, mostly), I stopped wearing heels. My feet stopped hurting and I found myself in a better mood, too.
At home with heavy socks I wear fuzzy slippers or Teva sandals. I have L.L. Bean boots from long before they were the fashion. I have old white sneakers. I own a pair of Beatle-ish boots in case I have to dress up. But for me, shoes serve by being between the surface of the earth (or the floor, or the rug) and me. They offer support and protection. They help me go where I want to go. Shoes are a means to an end.
Next item: a bra. Let me refine this: a good bra. I had heard for years that most American women are wearing the wrong size bra, but of course I assumed I was not one of them. Wrongo. I discovered when I ventured into Zoe & Co. in Concord, New Hampshire a few years ago just to see what was what that I was one of the majority. I no longer discount the value of a correctly-fitting bra. Yes, bras at Zoe's are more expensive than those from Macy's or J.C. Penney. (And once after I started regularly replenishing the stock from Zoe's, I did try Penney's again when the local store advertised a bra-fitting event which, as it turned out, meant the clerk measured over both a turtleneck and a heavy sweater--not the way it should be done.) So. Clothes from Zoe's are not Victoria' Secret nor, well, industrial; they successfully and fashionably combine form and function. And the same goes for shoes, by the way. (It does help that Zoe's gives me a discount on by birthday.)
Like comfortable shoes, the right bra can be a transformative experience.
There is probably much to be said for good-fitting and comfortable clothes, period
I am also grateful for much of what other people are grateful for: family, friends, the cats, health, a heated house, hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, electricity. Contact lenses. Music. Wifi. A new snow shovel. Time. Transportation. My car.
I am grateful that my car will be paid for in a year; in its fourth year, it has only 35,500 miles on it. It is a cool-enough car, a red Jetta with a sunroof and cruise control. I like the sunroof but rarely use the cruise control, and the car does have more features than I need, especially the heated seats it came with. Why did I need heated seats? When I looked at cars in the middle of the summer, heated seats seemed not just unnecessary but also embarrassingly bourgeois. I mean: why?
But heated seats are one push of a button away (and there are three settings), and in the winter they make the cold drive to New Hampshire comfortable. They arrived in my life unsolicited, a non-negotiable surprise since there was no way to buy the car I wanted without them.
I am grateful for heated seats.
In this season of all seasons, winter thoughts remind me that some things are more important than others. I know that if I had to, I could manage with much less. (And I have lived for most of my life with much less do-what-I-want-time.) I am writing about creature comforts, after all, about first world problems, things WAY beyond the necessary. I know this.
Be that as it may, I like heated seats because they keep me warm enough that I don't need to blast the heat and end up with dry eyes; I swear heated seats make it possible for me to see better when I drive. More than that, I like the seats because they make it possible for me to go in comfort over the river and through the woods to see people and places more important to me than heated seats.
And so for a couple days around Christmas I pack the undies and shoes, the jeans and flannel nightgown, and I leave the cats in their home cozy with heat and bright braided rugs. With the heated seats, my car takes me through the dark and cold of Vermont to a place where I am most grateful, a place of light and music and gifts. a place of holiday joy. Yes, the cold and dark matter, and I enjoy them while I can. I really do like winter--and I do think I would like it even if I did not know that in a few months, the dark will lighten, the snow will melt, and things green will bloom again.
Merry Christmas.
Copyright Sandra Engel
December 2016
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