Today marks the end of my holiday vacation. I am currently laying on my bed under a multicolored fleece blanket my mother made for me with my cat, Cleo, nestled into the crook of my knee. On New Year's Day I acquired my daughters' cold...no not H1N1, just a regular cold with a cough. Several days before I had already decided the theme of 2010 needed to be SIMPLIFY. I made this resolution after spending a typical two week holiday racing around like a lunatic wrapping, baking, cleaning, and cooking.
The actual moment of clarity came as I sat on the couch next to my 17 year-old daughter Elysse who was frantically knitting a scarf for her boyfriend that she began on Thursday and needed done by Saturday, although she has done very little knitting in her life. This project was my idea and thus, my fault. She had been trying for weeks to come up with an idea for a special gift and finally resorted to asking her mother for ideas. There was no time for shopping and my other ideas she proclaimed as too lame. As I sat next to her on Christmas day watching her try to knit faster, I was visited by the ghosts of my Christmas projects past: baking a yule-log cake for eight hours that tasted terrible, sewing a comforter cover for the guest bed the night before the in-laws arrived, hand beading fringe for velvet scarves for my daughters (then ages 9 and 6). Like Scrooge, I had an epiphany. This is not what I want to teach my daughters, to do more, making Christmas, all other holidays and most of the other months of the year something to get through instead of something to enjoy.
So this is my vow to myself this year. Each day I will find one way to do something more simply or just to do less. I hope this will create more opportunity to appreciate the good parts of life and find time to create the things I enjoy making.
Today my one thing is to lay in bed. It was actually my mother-in-law's idea. I was standing in the kitchen prepared to bake multiple loaves of banana bread before we had to throw out bananas when Lavonne suggested I go lay down. She thought this was the best path to improved health. I went immediately upstairs. I may or may not make banana bread in the future, but not today with a cold.
I think I will follow the lead of my cat and curl up for a nap. Less is truly more.
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