Happy Holidays

I did not expect a visit from Ebenezer.

It was surely my due. I had turned as jaded as the Grinch. Perhaps greener, though the envy was so subcutaneous as to escape any social scrutiny. I was, afterall, quite nice, but... I was 29.

A precarious age, an idiotic one I would say. Old enough to have tasted some successes... To have felt the weight of “potential!” ...And too young to appreciate either. I was, in short, an ingrate. Others had achieved more, sooner, or on time... as if Life were linear! There was nothing to celebrate, in my mind. Winter was a particularly dark time.

By all accounts, I was doing fine. Like more than half of everybody else, I’d guess. I had no appreciable income, no stable job. The idea of a “career” was an abstract slogan for a pamphleteer. I had no children, aged 9 or 10, like so many of my so-called friends. The prospects of it, like marriage, indefinitely shelved. Holidays are a time for family folk to get together, and for the rest of us to get over as soon as possible, was what I subconsciously felt.

I suppose you’d say I needed to get over myself. The rim of my glasses had gotten too thick. I was dull. Tired. And sick. I had little perspective, and was losing even this. I nursed my perceived inadequacy, bit by bit, making everything in my life bland, like food for an invalid.

And so I layed me down to sleep Christmas Eve, with the contemptous outlook of another day “off.” Perhaps I was a little more pissed than usual. I had disagreed with myself with a larger dose of disgust. In anycase, I slept. The bored sleep well even when awake.

I got up, showered, got dressed in my usual drab secretarial best. I poured a tasteless breakfast blend, from the autodrip I had predictably pre-set, into my travel mug where it stays hot half the day. Coffee is a bandaid for many things besides physical fatigue. It also remedies conversational awkwardness and social debility. Like the out-of-vogue cigarette-break, it makes one look smart, and busy. I gathered my briefcase and office homework, my overcoat and matching umbrella, just in case. I had five- or ten-minutes to spare, but I hate to be late.

I walk to work, a thing which aggrevates, for embarassing lack of transport. But today was different. As I stepped through the door of my rental unit 9A, a chill swept my face. A pleasing thrill that tousled the hair of an innocent. A child who still believed in a better today stirred. Of course I was grown up, and was about to write it off as sniffling sentimentalism, but I felt... Taller. I realized I was holding my head up. It sounds so silly in retrospect.

I was holding my head up, like an infant babe, sticking out its neck. The world was a strange new place, with much less concrete... Glittery and picture postcard, even in the shadowy nooks. The path that I thought had been so streamlined, suddenly wasn’t as narrow. It sounds all too obvious, but in the moment I was shocked. And all the more appalled when my unwatched feet suddenly walked another way. The long way around. That scenic route, filled with family vingettes, wafting fireplace scents, fantasies and window displays.

“I will be to work late!” I told my former self... but then vestiges of pragmatism recalled that there were five - ten minutes to spare. You see how confused I was. Especially when I sensed something special in the air about me, like the ringing of a bell. Holding my head high, people said, “Hi” and smiled. They seemed shinier, and taking their time. Ornamented. I saw someone sipping a cup of steaming coffee, and remembered about mine. I took a sip automatically, just to clear the morning fog. And it was... delicious! Spectaluous. Devine. I can’t explain it. I was stupified. It was, like I’d said, just the same stupid coffee I buy out of habit all the time...

But in this moment, it was a little party in a mug. My face lightened ten years, maybe twenty. You see how attached I was to my numbers... I had been carrying on as if a middle-aged bodybag. I saw people of forty, fifty, perhaps even well-kept sixty, stepping sprightly along in their daily affairs... They were celebrating something, something in the now. They walked arm in arm, intimate. In pantomime they were wishing each other well. I couldn’t of course hear what they said. I took pleasure in their enjoyment. Damn it, I haven’t done that for a very, very long time.

I got to the office building feeling fine. I even liked my reflection in the big glass door of the skyrise. There was a colour rising in my newspaper cheeks. I took the stairs. I thought to myself, “There IS something to be said for exercise.” Seven flights and I was brightening all the while. It wasn’t just the tinsel in the hall. The security guard seemed a little disconcerted at my sight, but I gave such a pearly smile that it was as disarming as an extravagant tip.

I even (imagine this!) started humming a tune I’d heard from childhood. Snow and sleighbells. I’m sure I messed up the lyrics, but not the cheery message. And so elated, I arrived at the office door to find it thoroughly locked. Huh, just my luck!

I was dumbfounded for a moment more... till it hit me like an organ. The sign on the door, simplified as it was, written by my own hand: Closed for the Holidays.

This really was my day off.

12.22.2020

Happy Holidays Challenge @LexiCon