Alone at Christmas Is Not Half Bad

I don't know about you, but it threw me for a loop the first five times people went all agog with pity upon finding out that I was going to be alone for the holidays.

I didn't particularly feel deprived. I was orphaned in my teens, and I have done more than my fair share of mercy invites R.S.V.P.s. After a certain point, you would rather just not have to schlep on over to somebody's house – for another couple rounds of agogness at your purported staggering lack of family and plans.

I volunteer at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I fix swell little meals. (My favorite is to recreate the menu from Mister Steak Restaurants). I sleep in. I read the morning paper with Motorboat the cat on my lap. I have a second cup of coffee and take an extra long walk mid-morning and a nap in the afternoon. I love old movies, and Turner Classic Movies runs some great ones around the holidays. (Yesterday was a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers marathon). And I come back to work rested and relaxed and still enamored of my friends and relatives.

But back to the volunteering. The trick for singles in the holidays is to stay very outwardly focused. I set a December 5th goal for myself to make my contacts at Meals on Wheels and the Salvation Army. I set a December 10th deadline for myself to do a small, home-cooked gift for everyone at work. and my neighbors, and my vet.. I buy Ball jelly jars and fill them with homemade salad dressing or homemade sauces. I fill a small sandwich bag with homemade cookies and sweet-and-salty munch mix and string that and a jingle bell around the jelly jar with curly Christmas ribbon. In all my years of doing this, I have only had one stinkerooni of a person turn it down, and she turned out to be a bad, manipulative apple all the way around. People just don't get homemade stuff with top grade ingredients in their lives on a regular basis anymore, and they go Ga-Ga.

I take treats to the public librarians. I tell them "Thank you for public libraries." I make homemade milk bones for my friend's dogs if I have time. I sing at a Do-It-Yourself Messiah every year and I go to Tuba Christmas

www.tubachristmas.com

And I love church at Christmastime. I have the neighbor ladies in for high tea with my Christmas china. I read "A Christmas Visitor" by Truman Capote, and "Sampson The Christmas Cat" and "Christmas For The Heart and The Home" by Susan Branch every year. I made sure my grown daughter has a Merry Little Christmas, and that it is totally separate from her birthday, which comes right afterwards. None of this involve, uh, a date. Or being the fifth wheel.

And none of which—and this is important—involves sitting around contemplating my own pitiful navel.

And yes, I set up a Christmas tree, even when I was stuck in Minnesota and nobody saw it but me. I also have, from my yuppie days, a whole porcelain Christmas village, but I have been too busy to set that up for years.

This year I am also going to make a bolster pillow in royal purple for Clyde, the college girl dollbaby, who came and helped me unpack in June, and a counted cross-stitch sampler for my new grandson. I am also starting to study up on a grand-looking sock caterpillar and a little felt Santa Claus that I probably will not get to this year, but I have been plans for in the future.

And the exception proves the rule, in that the best party I ever went to was a Thanksgiving meal at a co-worker's house. Marv and Maria were orphans themselves, and always invited four singles over to eat with them and their two brainiac little girls. We saw Maria's oil paint gallery. We saw Marv's stock charting computer program. We told funny stories at the dinner table, and inbetween the main meal and the dessert, we took an stuttering cold walk, a long walk. Then we came back and ate pie. But the likes of people with the hospitality chops of Marv and Maria don't come around very often.

The saddest human being I ever met was a friend of mine who had just found out that her husband had embezzled from her father and raped their 12-year-old daughter. And as we sat at a little cafe luncheon table, she explained to me why she was not leaving this man. "If I leave him," she said, with genuine Betsy-Wetsy tears in her eyes, "then I will be alone."

Alone is not fatal. It can be very calm and gloriously peaceful. And alone is something every adult has to learn to do. It took me a while to realize that the alone-est you'll ever be is in a bad marriage. Just being alone with yourself—that is – in the big picture – a piece of cake.

This year I am very blessed with events too. There is a roast beef dinner and karaoke contest that my union is putting on. And I taking a new friend to that. There is a cookie exchange at work (will be posting those recipes. more on that later). There is a luncheon at work too. And a co-worker has an extra ticket to The St. Louis Symphony Holiday Pops Concert. I am one lucky little old lady. But I've had years where it was just Mister Steak, me and the laundry too. And that is fine too. Peace Like a River, Baby.

So book yourself up. Drive around with a Starbuck's hot chocolate and a CD of cheezy jazz Christmas music playing in your car and make fun of other people's Christmas yard lights. Go watch the tenor at your church sing "O Holy Night." Stay away from The Mall. There be dragons. Find the yuppie grocery store where you can buy single serving pie. Glorious pie. Get one of those quarts of eggnog. Put a Santa Claus pin on your good winter coat. Let everybody you love know you love 'em, nice and early, and then leave them alone. They are busy. And you are, heh-heh, free as a bird.

Janelle