Post Christmas, a Relief that’s Palpable

So it’s all over. The anticipated Christmas holiday with its requisite feasting, gifting, opening, houseguests, holiday music, suspension of diets, consumption of eggnog and too many brownies, the tattered living rooms of yesterday, the smell of balsam and the fires in the fireplace, the tinsel strewn and the tree slightly listing, lit up defiantly, it’s over.

I slept in a confusing fantasy land of dream last night, retiring early after the heady day of gifts, celebration, feasting and wine, an early sleep that coudn’t come soon enough as I sat on the couch drooping. My slumbers took me into a wide and crazy world where characters from old days switched into people who are now in my life, it was broad and huge and took place in another country.

I awoke, startled, but happy that my dream was over, and that it wasn’t part of reality and then I spoke to my partner beside me. She was relieved, feeling drained by the pressure of cooking a new recipe, fearing it would come out wrong, the pressure, it was over, she said, she felt relieved that we had made it through intact.

I am often called upflappable, because I don’t get as easily upset by things like complicated recipes for coquille St Jacques, I remain confident that it will all taste good but I am different than other people who want it to come out and fret that it won’t. After everyone was pleased with the dinner, I think she breathed a sigh of relief. This morning there was a palpable sense of pleasure in that all had passed.

We had survived another Christmas, with visitors including a one-year-old visiting from Oregon and the big dinners all behind us. Now we are back to simply two people without plans to buy, make or do anything other than enjoy life as the winter sets in in earnest. Oh, and in five days we are going to Mexico…gotta get packed.