The Gifting Season

Today I am pondering the upcoming holiday season. How to structure things so that we enjoy the season, so that we don’t overspend or overindulge. What traditions to maintain, and what to let go.

I feel somewhat detached from things right now. Maybe it’s aging; or the fact that the World seems to be spinning more and more out of control every week. Maybe it is actually detachment, and wisdom, and growth. But the outcome is this. Certain things just don’t seem important to me any more.

One of those things is buying gifts.

I remember last year going to TJMaxx in search of a pie pan and a rolling pin. I left with a velvet jacket and a bottle of shampoo. So I didn’t really accomplish what I wanted, but also I found it interesting how few things in the store actually held my attention. As I wandered the busy store, I realized how much my consumerism has been changed over these past couple years.

Maybe it was the pandemic. Maybe at the midlife age of 56 I finally have ALLLL the things that I currently think I need or want. But I think it’s something more.

I think I have finally realized deep down that nothing I can buy will bring me happiness. I just don’t crave owning or buying things much any more.

Now, it is true that having a warm cozy bed to sleep in with nice blankets and a good pillow is really great. I could go on and on listing things like that that I am so truly lucky to be able to buy and to own. Things that I am really attached to and would be weeping without.

Even in the times of my life when I was pretty darn broke, I at least had a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on and I am deeply grateful for those things and also grateful that I really don’t know how lucky I am to always have had them.

But it wasn’t that long ago that I would gaze longingly at the Crate & Barrel catalog, convinced if I could afford THAT bed and THOSE sheets, I would be happier.

I recall years of being in my old living room, the children small and every corner occupied by some huge bright plastic toy or contraption. The mail arriving broke up the day, and when the Pottery Barn catalog arrived, I would sit down to nurse the youngest babe and covet the clean minimalism of some fabulous living room set up or neat kitchen with matching stemware and accessories.

I can admire those beautiful things now, for sure; but I just don’t desire them in the way that I did in the past.

A big piece of this new way of being was born from cleaning out and selling both my parent’s home and my sweetheart’s parents’ homes over the past couple years.

In the case of my parents, they had done the “big” clear out when they downsized a few years back. And a bit more when they moved into assisted living. But there was still an enormous amount of stuff. Treasurers and heirlooms and straight-up junk. Things they had saved because they were “worth” something. Things they had accumulated. Useful things and useless things.

It was easier to manage because Dad had passed and Mom was in assisted living, her mind so broken that she couldn’t participate in the process. I am grateful they were not there to see it all get boxed, sorted, sifted, sold, donated or trashed.

For my sweetheart’s family, it was a truly sad time and more complex. One parent healthy in body and mind, and the other drifting away into the cruel emptiness of dementia. The enormous three-story home absolutely filled with the accumulations of family life. With a little extra, because my sweetheart’s Mamma saved everything.

I mean, everything.

During this great time of sorting and packing and lifting and driving between the two different states and the two different homes, I started looking at “things” differently. Even though I have a very nice home filled with very nice things, every so often I scan around and ask myself “If I had to fit everything important to me into a suitcase, what would I choose?” And the list is shockingly small.

I’ve been doing my own clearing, and even recently had a conversation with my daughter about what I would want them to keep of mine when I pass on. She actually brought it up first; and I told her to keep what mattered to her and her siblings, and to let go of the rest.

This all comes into my mind as I think of the approaching holiday season, and the flurry of consumerism that will feel traditional, necessary and generous. I am looking forward to giving thoughtful gifts that center more on experience.

But I hope I can maintain this perspective, and be most intent on being in the moment, and making good memories.

Shanti,

Jill