Home for the Holidays
thoughts on what it means to feel 'at home'
Yesterday I shared this photograph I made on Christmas Day last year on Instagram.
It’s from a last minute drive on our way to ‘celebrating’ the holiday alonetogether. I spell it that way, all one word, because it’s an apt descriptor for how we often spend our days. Since they were born, I have never had a spouse and they have no sibling(s) and so the majority of our time is spent alonetogether. Two souls. One state. We bond over the fact that we each like ‘alone time’ (and fiercely protect this for each other.)
That state of singular duality is only slightly interrupted by the presence of our oversized canine. The domesticated wolf is like an add-in for the app we comprise. The heated seats option, were we an automobile. We included him for extra comfort. We are two introverts in a world that extols and exhaults extroversion. Our hermitic habits have even rubbed off on our pandemic pooch who exhibits anxiety when encountering other pups or people on the planet. Shepherd is a good name for his breed. We fiercely protect our alonetogetherness and he fiercely protects the three of us.
Not being religious, neither my kid nor I celebrate “Christmas” (our big holiday is the Winter Solstice and Yuletide so we do get the tree, we exchange gifts and we celebrate light on the darkest night of the year. And each other.) Even so, driving rural roads last Christmas Day, far from our pup and the home we just began to make out East, I could identify and sympathize a bit with the Grinch when his heart was still 3 sizes too small. I didn’t plan for the day to unfold that way. That was part of the problem. There was no plan. We had to improvise and knit something (alone)together last minute.
For many people, the ‘holidays’ aren’t always warm and fuzzy. Sometimes you have to find your own way to make them picturesque or memorable.
This year we do have a plan. We will stay on the Atlantic coast in December. We crave a low-key winter break for many reasons, not the least of which: to offset the carbon footprint we already made this year. We will don flannel pyjamas and warm slippers and tuck into the haven we begin to carve out here for some real quiet, coziness, the hygge I caught like a contagion in Copenhagen earlier this year. We will nibble on warm food and recuperate after moving house twice in 11 months. We’ve earned a genuine breather.
I’ve been telling folks we’ve befriended and those we meet that we are staying home for the holidays. Home. I roll the word around in my mouth like it’s hard candy I’m not sure I should suck or bite into. Even after two decades there, I still don’t consider Ontario “home” (and hardly did the entire stretch I lived there.) Growing up the only place referred to as “Home” within our walls was Ireland.
I suppose my first idea of Home means Earth to me. I just finished reading an amazing book: Jo Marchant’s The Human Cosmos about the connection between humans and the stars, the sky, the universe since shortly after we began our evolutionary stride. A connection that has morphed over time and our brief history. In 2024, I’d like to explore more what ‘home’ means. To myself and to others. Other beings who call this coast Home.
What does it mean to feel at home? To make yourself at home. When I was a child, we moved around an awful lot. A small corner of Southwestern Ontario became repeatedly a home ‘base,’ a place to return between other moving and living we did. I’ve always felt a strong pull in the heart while in Ireland which is home to all of my known ancestors. Denmark became its own potent pull last July. Perhaps some Scandinavian sinew still tugs from a deeper past within my genetic makeup. I was born in Canada to Irish-born parents, but the only part of me that feels a tie to these North American lands is the emotion stirred by winter and wintry scenes. Ontario made me love winter. I’ll give it that. The snow, our dearest friends and my parents are what and whom I miss the most, but I admit it freely: I don’t miss living there.
As December nears, we make a plan: into this house—a house we count ourselves extremely lucky to rent during a provincial and national housing crisis—we will pull and pitch a fragrant pine from the local tree farm. We will decorate its boughs. We’ll light candles and, consequently, hope in our hearts. Bring added comfort to the four-legged comfort option squeezing between our shins when we hug. Place a star atop the Yule Tree.
We will invite new friends to gather with us and sip some traditional wassail. Watch snowflakes descend from clouds so high and air so cold that they do not melt before landing and gathering upon the Good Earth. And we shall make ourselves at home here for the time being (another lovely phrase.) For the time being. Being what it is and who we are. For the time we get to be. For being in this time and in this moment.
We wish for all that is good to carry us and everyone into 2024 as we each begin the final year of the first quarter of this new century. A century whose end I am already aware I will not see. In Marchant’s book, there’s a chapter called Time. We count our days by Earth’s tilted revolution, by sunrise and sunset. A year by one orbit around our star. Some days time feels like it is running out. Other days it feels endless. Time is a spectacular figment of the human imagination. But we are not the only species who keep track of it. The trees have shed their leaves and the birds have flown South. I didn’t need Marchant’s mindblowing words to remind me on a planet in turmoil—climate-wise and conflict-wise—that time is of the essence. It’s so very, very precious.
So for now, this is our plan. (Perhaps the most important part of the plan we make.) Come December and the new year that follows, we will be in this time and make it count. Come December. Come!
We look forward to exploring more of this coast over the winter break which cannot come too soon. We wish everyone a restful one, a happy one. Holidays and a new year filled with laughter and love. Less loneliness. Less heartache. Less isolation. More time spent meaningfully. Whether alonetogether or together with others. More joy. More peace. In our hearts and on this singular planet we all call Home. Peace on Earth.
