Saturday, November 26, 2005

Holidaze

Stuffed with food like the turkey we devoured on Thanksgiving Day in Georgia, I fell into a deep and dreamful sleep, chasing cranberry relish visions and scampering slabs pumpkin pie, which sought to flee from my fork all to no avail.

The dream swirls with images, packed bumper to bumper like the traffic down I-40 and I-75, families and really-not-so-much families in cars and SUVs crammed to the ceiling with gifts and tupperwared remnants of sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and casseroles and hot-buttered-but-now-cold dinner rolls. A bounty of feasting and a parade of the leftovers traveling north and south and east and west across America as the holiday blurs into the shopping days where retailers dream of profits of Christmas future.

I make a stop in South Knox to decompress from families and the battle of the endless traffic, sipping wine and laughing with my new best friend until the wee hours of the morning. I have so much to be thankful for and I hope I say it enough. She makes me smile and we listen to Johnny Cash and Van Morrison and the sometimes wee barks of a tiny dog who finds the oddest things to gnaw upon in the early dawn hours.

Then back on the road to Home, stopping to get necessities at a nearby MegaWhopperRetailWarehouseStore where men and women wearing Christmas sweaters and Grinch T-shirts shove shopping carts thru a maze DVDs and trainsets and specially boxed-sets of shampoos and bath-oils and techno-gadgets, steering their carts through the aisles like Captains on a boundless sea, searching for the discounts which will soon find their way into boxes wrapped in shiny paper, the shoppers like neo-hunter/gatherers tracking the spoils of discount sales.

Home now, and in this dream of the Holi-daze, I look for a nap as the dream has been exhausting in itself. But I know it is only the beginning of a month of carving paths between the shopper/hunters who track elusive bargains armed with lists and pencils and I know again this year, I will be focusing instead on gifts I can make myself, collections of words and music and perhaps candles made to give flickering lights as December nights turns slowly moment-by-moment into the Year to Come.

The bloggers have hung their posts with care, wondering if the Technarati Saint Nick will lead a Google-Search-Sleigh down the chimneys and curl into their mailboxes and e-links.

But yes, Home now, both in the dream and awake - and I feel the stirrings of feasts and fellowship ahead, count my blessings and drift into another nap.

If home is where the heart is, I have found I have homes to numerous to count, and I try to express my gratitiude and send my best thoughts to all. Soon so many houses and neighborhoods will twinkle with lights and giant blow-up snow-globes gathered on lawns like totems to happiness and hope.

And I hope your first steps into the world of gifts and wishes will bring the Joys you seek for yourself and for others.

(oh and look for some posts next week about Faith Hill who hugged my brother-in-law Fred on her TV special )

9 comments:

  1. You can count our house as another home if you need it!

    Glad you are home safe and sound.

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  2. Well it's about dern time! You ol' twitterpated thang, you (thanks to Lady J for keepin' ya safe and sound, fed and loved on).

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  3. Love the way you write Powell.. have you started on the book yet? You should.

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  4. Ah, to wax fondly over the holidays, how few can do!
    Thank you Jp, writer extraordinare!
    thank you editor, ain't no problem at all :)
    It's good he's got others watchin over him as well!

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  5. *blush*
    lookit these women saying such nice things! thank you.
    (and btw Editor - what the sam hill does
    "twitterpated" mean? i thought that was something that Conway Twitty did when he had too much to drink.)

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  6. I think it's from a Disney flick:
    Everybody's twitterpated in the Spring
    Skunks go sweet
    Rabbits sing


    Bambi,at one point, gets twitterpated and then gets into a stag fight.

    My sister might know what it's from.

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  7. Doesn't someone kill Bambi? No wait, that was just her mom. So much fer twitter-whatever.

    Last time I saw Bambi she was like, in her 50s and doing a pole dance at the Mouse's Ear -- er, so a friend told me.

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  8. Um... Bambi was a boy.

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  9. not at the Mouse's Ear ....

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