Cheap Motels
December 31, 2006 | permalink
A week ago Friday I went with my sisters up to The Old Man's place for his Solstice Feast. The Old Man, you see, has long since decided that he cannot countenance the commercialized, christian-centric, consumer Christmas of modern times, and so celebrates the solstice instead, preferring to focus on the company of family and friends and good food and drink rather than material things. There are gifts given, of course; I suspect it sounds much more radical here in words than it actually is in practice, and is not much different than Christmas at any of your houses. The Old Man always was a little bit of a pagan at heart.
The trip upstate was a little bit of an adventure. Not so much for me as for my sisters; they were returning from our brother's in California that day. On Thursday they left Fresno and drove the 220 miles to Los Angeles. Friday, the day we traveled, they got up at 6, went to the airport, caught their flight to Phoenix, waited for and caught their connection to JFK. They landed at JFK at 10:15, got their luggage, took a cab to Manhattan, picked up the rental car, went home, re-packed, and picked me up.
Now it's just about 1 am. The Palisades was wet and foggy, and we spent a good deal of time moving less than 20 mph with the hazards flashing because we couldn't see more than 15 feet in front of us. (Meanwhile people with apparently much better fog-vision than any of us had kept blowing past us at at least 40 mph. I am amazed that we didn't pass any of them wrecked further down the road). The upshot is that a trip that usually takes about an hour and fifteen minutes, give or take, took about two and a half. We were feeling bad, expecting to wake up half the house as we stumbled in and tried to sort out sleeping arrangements for ourselves, but half the house was up anyway, hanging out on the porch smoking and drinking (classy, right?). So that was kinda fun. When's the last time your folks were trying to entice you to throw back a couple of drinks and and all you wanted to do was go to bed?
The next day was the big feast. nothing organized, mind you- people cooked and brought and set out food all day long, and everyone just grazes as they feel the need. While my sisters were making their cross country trek, I was baking cookies for the masses; Oatmeal Chocolate Espresso, Sugar, and Old Fashioned Peanut Butter cookies (all of them very well received, thank you). It was quite a spread, all told, and in addition to the nine extra people staying at the house, another dozen came through at one point or another over the course of the day.
That night, those of us that were still at the house (that is, The Old Man and Step-Mother, me and my sisters, and Step-Mother's sister and her husband and children) hung around on the porch, played darts and drank and (well, the 'adults', anyway) smoked. It was a lot of fun. I felt closer to and more comfortable with The Old Man than I had in a very, very long time.
Posted in Family Matters & Holidays & Out of TownStuff in The Old Man's Yard was the last entry.
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