This is the season for parties, festivities, socializing, seeing old friends, making new friends and just a lot of hustle and bustle. It is a season of extraverts. But this season I am feeling anything but extravert.
This year I am feeling very be cozy and warm mama bearish. I just want to be home, or with a close circle of friends. Yes, the invites have been pouring in for this and that. And surely these are people whose company I have enjoyed in the past. But my couch is so very comfortable and the fire is warm.
This year, after being terrible displaced from my home due to toxic mold, I am more appreciative of e safe place to hang my hat. I want to make this space warm and welcoming to all those whom I love and care.
And as the pictures of festive parties, pretty dresses, fixed hair, perfect make up and lots of drinks are posted on Facebook and other social media outlets, I smile and click like from the comfort and warmth of my own hearth, on my flannel PJ’s and fuzzy socks (yes, super sexy, I know).
I sip wine and listen to my favorite music, unpacking, organizing, arranging furniture and getting settled. And who says you have to be and about on the town seeing and being seen to be social? I have my friends close by, still meeting for dinners and drinks. I run to theirs or they come to mine. It is nice and quiet and small and quaint.
There is home cooking – soups and sauces, new recipes and old favorite, smells and fragrances filling the house. Putting up and decorating the Christmas tree, with all the old ornaments from childhood that make me smile and love my parents. There is eggnog and mistletoe and kisses and laughter. There is the gentleness of starting over.
And sometimes, in the big world, it is good to be small and close. It is good to make sure that all of our fingers and toes and accounted for and painted pretty colors, enjoying the small comforts that build the foundation of a good and happy life. Sometimes the small celebrations are even more meaningful than the big ones.
And sometimes, when it is all said and done, it is the building of many of those small moments that make a life worth living and loving. Sometimes being the opposite of the season is what gives it it’s meaning.