First and foremost, my usual disclaimer. COVID IS NOT OVER!!! People are still getting it. People (alas) are still dying from it. Not even to mention that plenty of folks are dealing with other respiratory illnesses. And some are dying from those…

That said, one of the victims of covid may be the cFam xmas party. I have been going to the cFam party since I married the GG, maybe even before. I think we may have missed one or two years. On the other hand I went one year when I was recovering from The Worst Vomiting Virus On Earth. I think I spent the entire evening in the same easy chair. No food or whine for me. As usual (but not always), it was potluck and my dish was lasagna. My mouse made it that year, acting on orders I dictated from the Green Couch (R.I.P.) in between sucking on ice chips.

This party used to migrate to various people’s houses, including mine a couple times. In the last few years, only one of the cFam siblings had enough space in a location that most people could travel to. As our numbers have grown, The Landfill long ago became a non-option. Just not enough space in our loverly little house and only one goddamn bathroom.

In 2020 the family made what I thought was a wise decision to cancel. Ditto for 2021 and 2022. I’d’ve been ambivalent this year but generally wouldn’t have looked forward to spending a number of hours inside with a bunch of people, even people I love and enjoy spending time with. Not to mention traveling 40 miles back and forth although at least we don’t seem to be expecting winter weather crapola this particular season. (The party was always before xmas, we all spend xmas at our own homes.)

Are we done with this tradition “forever”? I dunno. There is always the option to rent a “hall” somewhere centrally located. Or we could meet at the Hoton Lake “group home” sometime in the summer. But organizing a summer event would come with its own set of challenges. Ask me about the 100-year moominbeach anniversary that never even came close to happening.

When my first beach urchin was two months old, I was all excited about taking her up to the yooperland for her first xmas. We went to the cFam party a couple days before xmas, then left for the north. In one of our little Ford Fiestas. It was all good for a while until “something” started coming out of the sky. The roads got AWFUL and we ended up making an unplanned stop at a motel half way up. The old fashioned mildew-smelling kind of motel.

The next morning was not much better but we made it and I was awarded a moment of joy when I walked into the grandparents’ house and set my baby down in her grandmother’s lap. My baby broke out an absolutely HUGE SMILE! She remembered her grandmother from maybe a month previously. We had fun that xmas but the weather absolutely sucked with rain and freezing rain and the trip back down wasn’t any better. Because we began our trip in the morning, we didn’t have to stop overnight but the baby cried the entire last half hour of the trip and we were (again) dealing with freezing rain.

I decided then and there that going to the yooperland for xmas was NOT a priority. I didn’t get a lot of vacation time in those days and taking it in the summer seemed like a much better strategy. Not that we didn’t ever go back there at xmas again. But it was not a priority and we always spent xmas DAY here at the Landfill, making our own traditions such as they are. In the end, it is just another day.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2023 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.