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Writer & Red Dirt Rambler

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Walk through Your Imperfect Holidays

Posted on 12.30.14 | Holly Robinson | 2 Comments

 

red berries old town hill

 

It’s easy to be miserable after the holidays. Maybe you created a perfect holiday with your family, and you’re grieving now that family and friends are leaving.

Or maybe you meant to create a perfect holiday, but obstacles intervened: feuding family members, money, illness, work deadlines.

In my case, I’m often melancholy at this time of year because ours is a blended family of five children. My husband and I have been married almost twenty years now, so I should be used to the fractured fairy tale of our family life. Yet, a part of me always, always wishes that things could be simpler.

At the same time, I’m joyful when any of the children come home. Now that they’re older, we get odd mixes—this year, for instance, we just had the three boys, because the girls are living too far away—and I’m always enormously sad when we all go back to our routines.

This holiday season, I’m combating my emotional flu by making the holiday less grand in the scheme of things. In other words, I didn’t strive for perfection: we bought fewer gifts, chose a smaller tree, made a simpler dinner, saw friends without having a big holiday party.

In addition, I made it a point to walk somewhere every day where there were no cars or stores. And I took whoever was home with me.

It was English weather in New England, and by that I mean rain, rain and more rain. Oh, and lots of mud to go with it. But I didn’t care. I made everyone put on their boots or jump over puddles if they insisted on wearing sneakers. And, if nobody went with me, I walked alone with the dog, enjoying the solitude.

Two days before Christmas, for instance, when our youngest son was visiting a friend and our oldest boys hadn’t yet arrived, my husband and I hiked to the top of Old Town Hill in Newbury in the drizzle, and I was awed by the startling beauty of red berries popping out against the greenery and birches. The sparkle of raindrops on branches was better than any Christmas lights.

 

droplets old town hill

 

On Christmas Day, we opened gifts and then the three boys hiked with us through the Audubon Sanctuary in Ipswich, where we held out handfuls of seeds for the greedy chickadees and nuthatches and forgot all about the sweaters and CDS and electronics we’d unwrapped that morning. Birds are winged miracles, and to hold them in your palm is something not soon forgotten.

We’re still walking, my husband and I, as we do the laundry and restock the fridge after the last of our friends and family members have departed. Today we went to Bradley Palmer State Park, where we marveled at fresh-cut trees felled by beavers for a magnificent dam, and the distant howls of a coyote pack as we snapped through ice crystals on the rutted paths.

 

marsh sanctuary ipswich

The New Year beckons, and with it will come work, routines, normalcy. And, I hope, more moments like these interludes in the woods, where we can remember that we are just creatures, after all.

We don’t have to be perfect. We only have to be.

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Categories: Essays and Random Thoughts, Excercise, Friendships, Hiking, Parenting, Uncategorized, Wellness, Women's Friendships Tags: Bradley Palmer State Park, Christmas, family holidays, health, holidays, Ipswich, learning to live in the moment, Massachusetts Audubon sanctuaries, Mindfulness, New Year's resolutions, Old Town Hill, simplifying the holidays, solitude, stepfamilies, stepmothers, walking

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About the Author

Holly Robinson is a novelist, journalist and celebrity ghost writer. She and her husband have five children and a stubborn Pekingese. They currently divide their time between Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, and are crazy enough to be fixing up old houses one shingle at a time in both places.

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    2 Comments

  1. Ann Ellison says

    December 30, 2014 at 9:37 pm

    You are so right about setting ourselves up for disappointment when we expect it all to be perfect. My mom and dad really set a good example for our family – their motto was go with the flow and don’t stress about it. One of my daughters wasn’t able to get home for Christmas, but hopefully in this weekend and we have a late but fun celebration. Since my daughter that lives here was with her in-laws Christmas day, my sister and a friend and I spent the day relaxing and watching Christmas movies. It was kinda nice – no cooking and just relaxing.

    Reply
  2. susan says

    January 3, 2015 at 10:12 am

    Beautiful, Holly!

    Reply

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