alexis in the city

The Grinch who loved Christmas, or, my efforts to go giftless

It wasn’t until this year that I realized you can both simultaneously love Christmas, and in fact the whole holiday season, and still be cynical and annoyed by it. I realized this because I am that person.

That’s right: I’m a Grinch. But I swear it’s for all the right reasons.

The biggest thing for me this year is gift-giving. I didn’t used to want to abolish the gifting tradition - in fact, I would get upset and argue with Ryan about it when he brought it up. He’s long been a proponent of giftless holidays, making the case that the best gift was something unexpected at an unexpected time. I have, however, always been in favor of giving experiences not things, and for many years the two of us have mostly operated under this practice. I can’t remember the last time we exchanged literal, physical gifts for a holiday or birthday, opting instead for trips, theater tickets, museum memberships, and my personal magnum opus gift - the World Class Driving experience.

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Off we go, into the wild blue yonder

I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said about the service of our veterans or the debt our nation owes the people who choose to spend their lives protecting us. I will say that being an Air Force brat has given me an opportunity to see just a fraction of what this service looks like for the people who dedicate their lives to it, and for that I’m immensely grateful. It’s not always pride and parades, sometimes it’s tragedy and funerals, or the minutia of day-to-day life; but having that spectrum of experiences as an integral part of my life is something that continues to define me even as my direct connections to the military grow more elastic.

I’ve also been lucky that the direct connection I do have - my dad - has rarely caused the fear or panic that I know many military families face. Since my dad’s time is spent in hearings and meetings, and rarely directly involved in conflict, my military experience has likely been different from than the experience of many others. I’ve had opportunities to do things like speak to wounded veterans at Walter Reed and visit servicemembers who were working on holidays - experiences that have proven to be memorable, pivotal moments in my life. The brat community is a culture all to itself and one I’m proud to be a part of.

Ok, so somehow I made this post about me, when I really wanted to just say a few words of heartfelt thanks to our veterans - those who have served and those who still do - from the perspective of someone who’s been privileged enough to see some aspects of their service in a personal way.

My Reverse Childhood

I was born 30. At least. And in some ways I’ve continued to age to the point where I’m now somewhere in my late 50’s. In terms of my social life I am and always have been pretty lame. I never partied and never really wanted to. I never experimented with drugs or sex. I went to class and went to bed on time. I ran for student government … blahblahblah. You get the point.

I’m slowly catching up in some areas - I played beer pong for the first time last weekend with my neighbors - but I’m still that girl who brings wine to a kegger. More than once. And I know some people think all this will catch up to me and sometime soon I’ll become a raging partier with more rebellion than sense. It could happen but I’m skeptical - in part because I’m living my childhood now, and I kind of think I appreciate it a lot more.

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Patriotism, 9/11 and Guantanamo Bay

I get perhaps disproportionately defensive when people question two things about me that I hold sacred: my faith and my patriotism. I wrote this post last year in response to a comment I saw that people who wanted to close Guantanamo Bay prison had forgotten 9/11. The Gitmo debate has faded from the headlines but as we near the ninth anniversary of 9/11, I think the points still stand.

I do not wish this post to be a delineation of why I support closing Gitmo or how I feel about torture. I’ve already explained all that here and elsewhere. I do wish to point out how absurd and offensive this conclusion is in general, and to me specifically. In general, it shouldn’t take much common sense to determine that remembering and mourning 9/11 is not mutually exclusive with wanting to shut down a detainment camp.

Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it upsets me GREATLY that someone would infer that a political and/or humanitarian stance would remove any and all sympathy, empathy, pain and suffering in regards to that tragic day.

Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I take it personally. 9/11 hit close to home for me, in a sense. I don’t mean to put myself on the same par at all with 9/11 survivors or people who lost friends and family - I’m not at all trying to equate my experience with theirs. But it was none the less traumatic for me in a way it probably wasn’t for many people: my dad was deployed when we engaged in operation Iraqi freedom. He was sent to Saudi Arabia to help command the satellite/space aspects and operations of the war, so he wasn’t on the front lines and in terms of war it was probably the safest place he could be. But I was 18, away from family at college, and I was scared. We didn’t know when he was coming home and there was that frightening nagging thought that none of us wanted to articulate: “what if he’s NOT coming home.” I remember that thought. I remember scrounging through magazines and newspapers looking for references to my dad’s base and his operations. I remember getting emails from him - and hoping I would continue to get them.

I remember all that - even now my hands are shaky, my heart is beating fast - I will NEVER forget. To say that I ever could, simply because of a political position I’ve decided to hold, makes me angry. It reduces the fright and the memories to nothing, based simply on partisanship. It infuriates me that my dad’s - and my family’s - sacrifice and uncertainty during those times could be so easily written off.

To say that I have forgotten just because I support closing a prison is completely unfair - and completely inaccurate.

The Baby Talk Deal: how my 23-year-old self sold me out

I thought I’d be a different person by now. When I think about myself as a kid and what I expected my life to be like as an adult, I guess I thought things would be … different. I didn’t have any sort of tangible, explainable idea of the exact life I would live, I never had 2.5-kids-white-picket-fence delusions of grandeur. And overall I think if my teenage self could’ve seen me now, she’d be pretty happy with where I’ve ended up so far.

And yet in the last few months I’ve been thinking a lot about how I just expect that one day I’ll wake up and be someone different - someone more adult, more mature. I still look at my friends who are a few years older than me and think - when I get to that point, I’ll totally have it all together. But I’ve been thinking that for years now and I have not managed to accumulate any sense of said “togetherness.” At lest I don’t feel like I have.

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