Shifting Gears for the Holidays

I like cars, like my dad did. I don't know nearly as much about them as he did, but I know enough of the basics to make me conversant in situations where a diagnosis is necessary. My dad liked American luxury cars--Cadillacs and Lincolns; I like sports cars. From anywhere.

Sports car aficionados usually like to drive with stick shifts so they can have that special feeling of "being one with the car." I know how to drive a stick--Tom taught me when we were in college on an old white Ford sedan, because he was hoping that I would like driving a stick as much as he did. (The Green family grew up driving with stick shifts.) But as noted above, I had grown up with luxury cars, so I guess it was too late for me to absorb the thrill of guiding a car through the gears when I knew that if properly equipped, it could do so on its own, leaving me time to push the buttons on my GPS, floss my teeth, fiddle with my iPod, and dig through my purse to find my badge so as not to delay traffic going through the gate at work.

People have gears too. People work together best when they're all in the same gear, as if we all assume that working on a common task requires a common commitment of effort. Maybe one reason the holiday season is so nice is that we all are running at the same speed in order to shop, travel, decorate, wrap, cook, host, visit, etc., in the same short time period.

I'm always tempted to resist getting into the holiday traffic flow, thinking maybe I could just pull over and park for a while and let the pack go around me. Somehow those Christmas Eves spent with Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, them cooking and me wrapping at 2 a.m. while everyone else in the house had been asleep for hours, took a toll on me. Every year I think, maybe we could do a "destination Christmas"--spend a few days together in an exotic place we've never been before; let someone else do the cooking and dispense with the tree so that we don't have to worry about putting anything under it.

This year is particularly tough. For a sports car driver, I'm having a hard time finding the accelerator pedal. My mind reverts a lot to mental before-and-after pictures--one of a lazy boy recliner chair with an 88-year-old man in it and one in which the chair is empty.

But I am a sports car driver, and the pack is catching up to me. The giving season began at work with the Combined Federal Campaign, and the organizers for our office are always members of the under 30 generation that so many of my fellow baby boomers consider to be so self-centered. Amid the hub-bub of holiday plans is a special feeling of excitement--the anticipation of Inauguration Day, the change in our set of customers, and the growing conclusion that the President-Elect is someone special even in the context of his prestigious predecessors.

More personally though, the family is coming. Thanksgiving Day in Annapolis will be quiet for Tom, my mom, the dogs, and me, but on Friday, Dan, Sheri, and our granddog, Mingus, will meet up with us at my mom's house in Annandale, a place that is new to us as far as celebrating the holidays goes. Our Thanksgiving dinner will be Saturday and will feature ham, not turkey. How's that for flaunting tradition--or creating a new one? With a little luck, we'll translate some of that holiday energy into finishing off the last two major house projects--turning one room into a sewing room for my mom and another into a workout room for me.

I've been stockpiling gifts for birthday and Christmas celebrations with friends and families in December, including the one occasion when we'll all be together--Angela's birthday, which we will all celebrate at a restaurant of her choice in New York City and eat birthday cake and hang out together at Dan and Sheri's home in New Jersey.

With the plans ahead of me and the people involved in them, I don't think I'll have to worry about leading the pack, as I have often felt I had to do in previous holiday seasons. My days of relying on Jim and Tammy Faye are long gone. I'll do my share, but I think we'll all be in the same gear. No need to race in any case--this holiday season is a particularly long one, stretching into late January. It will give us all a chance for reflection, a chance to recognize the joys brought by both the pack and its individual members, and an opportunity to let our memories and traditions begin to refill empty chairs.